YMMV / Murder by Death

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Sam Diamond. It is revealed that Twain's dirt on Sam was that Twain had picked up Sam in a gay bar. During The Summation Sam claims that he is an actor hired by Bensonmum and that Bensonmum was the real Sam Diamond which is quickly stated to be untrue and later in the car, Sam tells Skeffington (who was actually a cocktail waitress hired for the part) that he is indeed the real Sam Diamond. The question becomes, why did Sam give an intentionally wrong answer? Was he secretly hired or blackmailed by Twain to become The Mole to throw off the other detectives or was he possibly a lover of Twain and did it for emotional reasons?
• Ethnic Scrappy: Diamond treats Wang like this. So does Twain. Wang treats his own son like this, too.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A Miss Marple expy named Jessica. Come 1984...
  • Just two years later, David Niven and Dame Maggie Smith again appeared together in a direct adaptation of the kind of story being spoofed here, Death on the Nile.
  • Sir Alec Guinness supposedly dies and leaves behind only his clothing, just like he would in a certain space opera film one year later.
• Questionable Casting: Truman Capote was not an actor and it shows. His performance is often criticized as being far too over-the-top even for a silly comedy such as this. Nonetheless, for this performance, Capote was nominated for a Golden Globe.
• Shallow Parody:
  • The way Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot are parodied has completely nothing to do with these characters. Miss Marple was prone to long-winding stories about her home village and was a mild-mannered sweet old lady. Poirot was very composed and precise and, most of all, very polite to everyone he met, he wouldn't dream of screaming at people. The characters in the film are pretty much their opposites, which could work (Sam Diamond is played like a cowardly closeted gay, unlike Sam Spade, and is pretty well-received) but just falls flat without anything to emphasise the contrast between expectations and realisation.
  • The film also arguably misses the point of Nick Charles, in that Dick Charleston is portrayed as "enormously well bred" and sophisticated. Nick's wife was classy, but Nick himself was a streetwise New York flatfoot, and one of the series' Running Gags was how little he tried to fit in as a socialite. Mind you, it wouldn't be too hard to assume William Powell's Nick was posh, given his snappy banter with Myrna Loy and penchant for really nice suits.
• Values Dissonance: While it's part of the parody and Peter Sellers is as hilarious as ever, the use of Yellowface still sounds uncomfortable to modern audiences for obvious reasons.

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