RETRO REVIEW: THE LAST OF SHEILA ☆☆☆

By Albert Lanier

The Last of Sheila is like playing the board game Clue and a round of Chess all at the same time. It is a film composed of mystery, games playing and unexpectedly sly commentary on Hollywood personalities and the film industry.

Shot on the French Riviera, Sheila has a sun drenched look and a laid back energy at times. On the surface, this 1973 film packed with actors like James Coburn, Richard Benjamin, Raquel Welch, James Mason, Ian Mcshane, Dyan Cannon and Joan Hackett may seem a typical 70’s empty, vacuous Star filled vehicle.

Thanks to a sharp, effectively crafted script, The Last of Sheila defies expectations and remains a movie that keeps audiences engaged and intrigued.

The film begins with a death. A stylish woman walks out of a house where a party is taking place after having a disagreement. She started heading out in the dead of night. The woman is later hit by a car on a dimly lit road. The car backs up. We can only see the rearview mirror and not the driver but it is almost as if whomever is driving the vehicle was assessing the situation. Then the car drives off.

The action then moves to the sunlight of the French Seacoast. A number of individuals have arrived to a pier where a yacht is docked. The yacht belongs to film producer Clinton Greene (James Coburn) who has invited a few guests to yacht for an enjoyable jaunt around the coast.

These guests include a screenwriter named Tom ( Richard Benjamin) and his wife Lee ( Joan Hackett) , film actress Alice Wood ( Raquel Welch) and her manager boyfriend Anthony ( Ian McShane), Christine ( Dyan Cannon) an agent and Philip ( James Mason) a director who has been reduced to shooting commercials.

Interestingly, the first thing Clinton does when his guests show up is have them get together for a Polaroid photo. In fact, he specifically lines up them in a strategic way before he takes the photo and once they get aboard, Clinton pins the picture to a board. This photo is not a souvenir as we will learn much later in this movie, it was taken for a reason.

In fact, most of what occurs in this movie is done for a reason.

Clinton gets his invited guests together to explain “the week's entertainment” as he calls it: a game in which they go from port to port trying to decipher from the clues they are given the object of that night's game.

To that end, Clinton gives every one a typed white card with a particular characteristic. This includes Shoplifter, Homosexual, Ex-Con and Informer. Clinton calls them “pretend pieces of gossip.” These are identities that the group will use the clues given to them every night to discover.

The first person who finds the identity wins that night's game. Clinton even has a blackboard with everyone's names to help to keep score and maintain a running tally.

That evening the group gets their first clue: a key. They then get brought out by boat to the shore and try to find the building and room in which the key fits.

Tom manages to find the right location and wins the night's contest.

However, the next night's contest which takes place in a run down abbey located on a small island, things don't go according to plan and someone winds up dead.

This is when The Last of Sheila begins to transform into its murder mystery component.

Tom makes his suspicions about the game clear: He doesn't think this scavenger hunt they started to play was really a game but an effort by Clinton to unmask the person who killed his wife.

You see the woman who died at the beginning of the film was Sheila Greene, gossip columnist and wife of Clinton.

In fact, Clinton even wants to produce a movie based on Sheila's life called The Last of Sheila. Sound familiar?

So if the game may not have been just a game, What about the identities on the cards? Are they really pretend pieces of gossip or something else?

To state any more would give away far too much about The Last of Sheila. The rest readers will learn by watching the film.

The Last of Sheila is really a game that turns into a murder mystery. A hybrid film that is never entirely what it seems and never gives in or lets up.

In fact, the film is a subversion of the murder mystery: there is no detective, no police interrogations, details of the murder serve largely as evidence. The movie is strangely more logical and realistic than many mystery movies.

Thus Richard Benjamin's Tom becomes the film's key figure as to the unraveling of the mystery for he starts to wonder about what is really going on and begins to question everyone aboard.

The screenwriter of Spaghetti Westerns-Clinton mockingly calls one of Tom's films A Fistful of Lasagna-becomes the proxy investigator of the picture.

James Mason's Philip also does a bit of personal pontificating and slight sleuthing himself in the climax of the film.

Both Mason and Benjamin are in the top form in this movie. Both actors demonstrate the agile intelligence and quick thinking skills of the men they are playing and they both at times nearly steal the film.

However they have to contend with James Coburn's scenery chewing turn as Clinton in one of the actor's best and sadly overlooked performances of his career. You can never take your eyes off of Coburn who plays the film producer with sneaky elan.

Raquel Welch is actually good here as Alice Wood. It's actually a role that allowed the then sex symbol room to stretch as an actress and the part was a good fit for her.

Dyan Cannon turns in probably one of her better performances as Christine. Her gossipy and aggressive manner as an agent are on full display and Cannon is often wickedly funny here.

Lee Hackett does fine work as Tom's wife Lee and a pre-Lovejoy Ian McShane is quite effective as Alice's boyfriend Anthony.

The Last Of Sheila was crafted by relative amateurs to the mystery genre. Director Herb Ross largely directed comedies like The Goodbye Girl and the film's writers were Broadway songwriter and composer Steven Sondheim and film actor Anthony Perkins.

With Sheila though. Perkins, Sondheim and Ross put together a gem of a film, an often riveting murder mystery game that forces its audience not simply to watch but to play along intellectually .

Albert Lanier is a film analyst and former Film critic. He has previously served as a contributor to Hawaii Film and Video magazine.