I love this movie so much

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

TITLE: THE LAST OF SHEILA opened in theaters on June 14 1973 and the runtime was 120 minutesSTARRING: The Last of Sheila is a 1973 mystery film directed by Herbert Ross, written by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, It stars Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, James Mason, Ian McShane, Joan Hackett, and Raquel Welch. The original music score was composed by Billy Goldenberg. The song "Friends," sung by Bette Midler, can be heard during the final scene of the film and the end credits.SUMMARY: On a one-week Mediterranean pleasure cruise aboard the yacht of movie producer Clinton Greene (Coburn), the guests include actress Alice Wood (Welch), her talent-manager husband Anthony (McShane), talent agent Christine (Cannon), screenwriter Tom Parkman (Benjamin), Tom's wife Lee (Hackett), and film director Philip Dexter (Mason). The trip is, in fact, a reunion. With the exception of Lee, all were together at Clinton's home one year before, on the night a hit-and-run accident resulted in the death of Clinton's wife, gossip columnist Sheila Greene. Once the cruise is under way, Clinton, a parlor game enthusiast, informs everyone that the week's entertainment will consist of "The Sheila Greene Memorial Gossip Game." The six guests are each assigned an index card containing a secret -- or, in Clinton's words, "a pretend piece of gossip" -- that must be kept hidden from the others. The object of the game is to discover everyone else's secret while protecting one's own. Each night the yacht anchors at a different Mediterranean port city, where one of the six secrets is disclosed to the entire group. The guests are given a clue, and then sent ashore to find the proof of who among them holds the card bearing that night's secret. The game for that night ends when the actual holder of the subject secret discovers the proof. Anyone who has not yet solved the clue receives no points on Clinton's scoreboard for that round. Following the revelation of the first card, "YOU are a SHOPLIFTER," suspicion begins that each guest's card does not contain "pretend" gossip but in fact an actual, embarrassing secret. QUESTIONS: Why doesn't Clinton return home? Why didn't they call authorities? What did the card say? Who was the card intended for? Why is there is an increasingly growing paranoia? Is the game being played is actually just a portion of a more elaborate puzzle.MY THOUGHTS: To me this was one of those movies that had stars that kept you interested in but the lack of action and drama made it hard to stay interested in. I thought Dyan Cannon did a good job in her role as Christine. Some of the other stars worth mentioning in their roles was James Coburn in his role as Clinton Greene. In addition, Joan Hackett in her role as Lee. I bought this movie because of Raquel Welch and I was disappointed in how her talent and beauty was used in this movie. She was in a bikini once and that was it. When you have a star, like that, you need to expose her more and they didn't. Base on the movies lack of action and drama along with the way they misuse Raquel Welch I give this movie 6 weasel stars.

For me the three best mysteries I've seen where you had to keep guessing to the end, are 'Usual Suspects', 'Identity' [2003. You really have no idea until the end] and 'Last of Sheila' which is lighter than the others but still a great mystery and fun. It was good to have a cast that were all about as famous as each other so, as with TV esp. where there is one 'guest star' and you know he must be the one who 'did it', here you don't know and in fact are not sure what 'it' was for sometime.I and video stores had been looking for it for years but always heard '...six more months...' before available.

This is one of those odd 70's films that (when compared to some suspense today) are falsely interpreted as brilliant. It came out at the same time "Murder on the Orient Express", "Death on the Nile", "Sleuth" and other Agatha Christie like interpretations which came to be popular.That being said it is watchable, Richard Benjamin and Joan Hackett as an unhappily married Beverly Hills couple. Dyan Cannon as a shrill, narcissistic, hedonist actress (no stretch there). Raquel Welch as attractive lesbian, and a few other odd assorted characters including James Mason (always good, no matter how bad the material).James Coburn is a sadistic mogul/producer who invites his assorted Hollywood colleagues on a yacht trip to solve what recently the unsolved homicide of his wife Sheila. Each player has a secret, and Coburn knows them all. There are the usual shell games, ruses and psycho-drama. Anyone who reads and enjoys true mysteries may get bored after the first 45 minutes.Overall though, Coburn and Mason are fun to watch, and there are a few twists here so it may be worth tuning in as you are trying to fall asleep. True mystery/suspense fans will find some comedy here. 7/10.

When it was released in 1973, "The Last of Sheila" hit me like a shot of Johnny Walker red (the preferred snort of the Hollywood heiress played by Joan Hackett). Then, a few months ago, it turned up streaming on Netflix. I watched it again and enjoyed it so thoroughly that I chose it several months later to watch with a house guest– a friend who knows so little about movies that, during "Dial M for Murder," he asked, "Who's that actress?" He enjoyed it, too, enough to discuss it afterward–- something I applaud even though I agree with this pithy bit of dialog spat out by a magnificent James Coburn: "We don't want this topic to degenerate to the discussion phase." "Sheila" is a murder mystery that begins with Sheila herself getting killed in a hit-and-run. That happens before the opening credits. Then her marvelously malevolent widower, a movie producer (James Coburn), sets out to nail the killer. He invites six Hollywood friends for a Mediterranean cruise on his yacht. Once on board, he involves them in an elaborate game to play as an amusement. They don't know it, but the real point of the game is diabolical: to find out who killed Sheila, because Coburn knows that one of them ran her down. It happened during a party that they all attended, and they all had motives. Indeed, the point of the movie, in a way, is that everyone in heartless Hollywood has a motive to kill everyone else. Upon arrival at the yacht, he hands each of the six a card on which is written "You are a…" followed by a personal secret, something "not too light": Shoplifter, Homosexual, Ex-Convict, Informer, Little Child Molester, and Alcoholic. (S,H,E,I,L,A— though the players don't notice that because they haven't yet seen each other's cards).The game involves everyone finding out the others' assigned secrets, and first up is the Shoplifter. Each player is given the same clue– a key with "Sterling 18K" stamped on it– to find out who has the Shoplifter card. With that clue they are ferried to shore to find the answer. Without giving too much away, I can say that the Shoplifter card was assigned to James Mason, but one of the women characters was actually arrested some years earlier for shoplifting a fur coat. She therefore realizes that something more than a harmless game is afoot. The card she holds, Homosexual, is obviously someone else's real secret.Before it's all over, three characters are dead, courtesy of two others, and there are two additional murder attempts, perpetrated by separate players with separate motives.The screenplay is altogether unique, co-authored as it is by two very famous men, neither of whom wrote any other screenplays, alone or together: Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins. The plot is entirely consistent with the friends' fondness for elaborate game-playing. Their dialog is brisk, witty, and delightfully vicious. Except for the predictably wooden work of Richard Benjamin, the performances are sparkling. Dyan Cannon grabs her juicy part with both hands, while Raquel Welch delivers her juicy parts in a bikini. Ultimately, though, the movie belongs to the two Jameses, Coburn and Mason. Mason's character– who shares many traits with Humbert Humbert, including the most obvious– is an aging director who ultimately unravels the mystery.Saying more means revealing more, and Sheila's tangled web is best woven before a viewer's eyes without advance knowledge. The only thing I will add is that the film was shot on location on French Riviera. The principal murder takes place in a wonderfully gloomy old site which, I suspect, is the fortified monastery of Ile Saint-Honorat, near Cannes. Gamesmanship is evident even in that choice: a suitable spot for an unholy picture about Hollywood.