Tonight's Movie: The Last of Sheila (1973)

Last year THE LAST OF SHEILA (1973) was shown at the TCM Classic Film Festival with star Richard Benjamin interviewed at the screening.

I heard from several people how much they enjoyed it and was intrigued, so I picked up the Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray. Costar Raquel Welch's passing last week prompted me to pull the movie off the shelf to watch this weekend.

THE LAST OF SHEILA is a whodunit in which wealthy Clinton (James Coburn) marks the one-year anniversary of his wife Sheila's death by inviting his friends to join him for a cruise on his yacht, the SHEILA.

On hand are frustrated screenwriter Tom (Richard Benjamin) and his wife Lee (Joan Hackett); director Philip (James Mason); talent agent Christine (Dyan Cannon); and actress Alice (Welch) and her husband Anthony (Ian McShane). Everyone in the group except Lee was present on the fateful night when Sheila was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

Clinton has designed a mystery game to be played over the course of the cruise, but the participants soon realize that Clinton is exposing uncomfortable, hidden truths about each of them in the course of the game...which soon thereafter turns deadly.

THE LAST OF SHEILA was entertaining, not least because as I watched it became increasingly apparent that last fall's GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY (2022) was loosely inspired by THE LAST OF SHEILA.

As I watched I gradually started connecting the dots; beyond the plot similarities, with a rich eccentric gathering together a group of friends for an island-set mystery game, there's the fact that the screenplay of THE LAST OF SHEILA was written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins -- and Sondheim has a cameo in GLASS ONION.

And was Kate Hudson's GLASS ONION character ever channeling Dyan Cannon!

I'd had no idea going into THE LAST OF SHEILA that it was so closely connected to GLASS ONION. I later found that Maureen Lee Lenker of Entertainment Weekly wrote an article about GLASS ONION screenwriter/director Rian Johnson's love for the earlier movie.

It was also fun for me to see this as a few years after the movie was released, I saw Ian McShane on stage starring in a production of AS YOU LIKE IT. I wrote a little about that play when I had the chance to chat with McShane's AS YOU LIKE IT costar, Bruce Davison, in Lone Pine in 2017. Davison recalled the production and his costars, McShane and Stockard Channing, fondly and even recited some of "The Seven Ages of Man" monologue for me right there in the Alabama Hills. Both the play and my conversation with Davison are special memories.

I didn't think THE LAST OF SHEILA was great, but I did find it an entertaining and worthwhile couple of hours, and the cast was excellent. I most enjoyed Cannon's brassy, over-the-top character, but I have to give top kudos to Benjamin and Mason for their extended one-on-one interchange late in the movie. It was delicious watching the "old pro," Mason, at work wrapping up the film with some killer (pardon the pun) dialogue at movie's end.

THE LAST OF SHEILA was directed by Herbert Ross (THE GOODBYE GIRL). It was filmed by Gerry Turpin, with most of the exteriors shot in France.

The Warner Archive Blu-ray is a very attractive widescreen print. The disc includes the trailer and a commentary track featuring Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, and Raquel Welch.

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