History YMMV / MurderByDeath

* WTHCastingAgency: Creator/TrumanCapote 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 UsefulNotes/GoldenGlobe.

** Sir Alec Guinness supposedly dies and leaves behind only his clothing, just like he would in a certain space opera film one year later.

* DiagnosedByTheAudience: Even given the farcical nature of the film, some of Sam Diamond's dialogue is just...bizarre, full of strange asides and non-sequiturs with no context ("Didja ever make it with a waitress?"). Tess lampshades it by saying Sam had been shot in the head a week before and shouldn't even be out of the hospital.

** Just two years later, David Niven and Maggie Smith again appeared together in a direct adaptation of the kind of story being spoofed here, ''Literature/DeathOnTheNile''.

** Sir Alec Guinness supposedly dies and leaves behind only his clothing, just like he would in a certain space opera film years later.

** Just two years later, David Niven and Maggie Smith again appeared together in a direct adaptation of the kind of story being spoofed here,
''Literature/DeathOnTheNile''.

** Just two years later, David Niven and Maggie Smith again appeared together in a direct adaptation of the kind of story being spoofed here, ''Literature/DeathOnTheNile''.

* ShockingSwerve: Played for laughs.
* WTHCastingAgency: Creator/TrumanCapote 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 UsefulNotes/GoldenGlobe.

* WTHCastingAgency: 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.

* HilariousInHindsight: A Literature/MissMarple expy named Jessica. [[Series/MurderSheWrote Come 1984...]]

* ShallowParody: The way Literature/MissMarple and Literature/HerculePoirot 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 would work. (Sam Diamond is played like a cowardly closeted gay, unlike Sam Spade.) The film also misses the point of [[Film/TheThinMan Nick Charles]]. 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' [[RunningGag Running Gags]] was how little he tried to fit in as a socialite.
** It wouldn't be too hard to assume Creator/WilliamPowell's Nick was posh, given his snappy banter with Creator/MyrnaLoy and penchant for really nice suits.

* WTHCastingAgency: 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.

%%* ShockingSwerve: Played for laughs.