Wikipedia refers to this as a "comedy mystery film." It was written by Neil Simon, which should have been warning enough for me: I have yet to find a single movie he's written that I liked. But the cast list ... David Niven, Maggie Smith, Alec Guiness, Peter Falk, Peter Sellers. And a fairly young James Cromwell in a silly supporting role sporting a bad French accent.

The plot has "the five greatest detectives in the world" invited to the mansion of Lionel Twain (played by Truman Capote). Each of them brings an associate, and each is a spoof on a famous fictional detective. Niven and Smith are "Dick and Dora Charleston," knock-offs of Nick and Nora Charles in the "Thin Man" movies and books. Inspector Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers in yellowface, so many problems ...) is a Charlie Chan spin-off. Milo Perrier (James Coco) is a particularly stupid Hercule Poirot imitator. Sam Diamond (Peter Falk) is meant to be Sam Spade (think "The Maltese Falcon"), and Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester) is Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.

After they arrive, they're told that someone in the house will die at midnight: that does happen, but many other things happen before and after that. Each of our detectives offers brilliant insights (some based on research, some based on intuition with little-to-no proof), and at other times make incredibly moronic oversights. I found two or three laughs in the entire movie, multiple cringes induced by anti-Asian racism and jokes, occasional sexism, and a set of mysteries that made no sense (I assume this was intentional, but it's still annoying).

A singularly underwhelming production that left me stunned that this thing has a 67% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (and an even higher audience score). I'm going to re-watch the first "Thin Man" movie to get this out of my mind - now that's a "comedy mystery."