Bored Game

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

THE LAST OF SHEILA

Directed by HERBERT ROSS Screenplay by STEPHEN SONDHEIM and ANTHONY PERKINS

Besides their friendship with Clinton, the Sadistic Movie Producer (James Coburn), the six people he has invited for a week's cruise of the Mediterranean have other things in common: they are faintly pathetic has-beens and never-weres in the film business; each has his or her sordid little secret (homosexuality, alcoholism, an old shoplifting charge, etc.); all but one were present the night Clinton's gossip-columnist wife Sheila was killed by a hit-and-run driver outside his Bel Air home and can reasonably be suspected of the crime.

Clinton, like the Laurence Olivier character in Sleuth, is famous for his love of intricate parlor games, and each night his guests are required to endure a cleverly plotted, punningly clued hare-and-hounds chase designed to reveal their past transgressions--and, it is hinted, Sheila's murderer.

For a while The Last of Sheila promises to turn into an amusing maze.

But Stephen Sondheim (the Broadway composer who is himself a famous game player) and Anthony Perkins (the estimable actor) have outsmarted themselves in crafting their script. Their plot is so fiendishly difficult that their characters spend most of the time bogged down in endless expository scenes.

As for the acting, Coburn seems to have calculated his performance on a snide rule, Richard Benjamin reasserts his claim to being the movies' most charmless leading man, and Raquel Welch is perfectly cast as a bad actress.

Only canny old James Mason and Joan Hackett, once again in a role beneath her gifts, suggest lives independent of their existence as counters on the Sondheim-Perkins board. Dyan Cannon does her standard funny, bitchy act. Herbert Ross, as he usually does, directs at an unmodulated and frenetic pace.

In the end the viewer feels like an outsider who can't figure out why he was invited to a closed group's party and why they all seem to be having such a hilariously good time. As usual in such situations, it is a good idea to bring along a spouse or a date -- someone to talk to in the corner while the In crowd ignores you.

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