What well-known movies were “stolen” by a great performance from a supporting actor?

The Butler did it!

Anybody who has ever seen the movie Clue knows that the producers paid big dollars to assemble an A-grade ensemble of the finest comedic actors of the time.

Look at that cast! Michael McKean, Martin Mull, Lesley Ann Warren, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Brennan, and Madeline Kahn. Some of the best ensemble comedic performers of the 1980s. Christopher Lloyd was at his Back to the Future peak. Michael McKean had just come off of Spinal Tap. And Madeline Kahn was still killing it in every Mel Brooks movie.

Yet, who stole every scene he was in from every one of these comic stars? Some little-known character actor, best known for vamping in a corset in a midnight cult film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show:

Tim Curry plays Wadsworth, the Butler. This was the first major film in which he showcased his comedic side, and he just killed it!

If you have ever seen Clue, try not to chuckle in recalling:

• Colonel Mustard: Is this place for you?
• Wadsworth: Indeed, no, sir. I’m merely a humble butler.
• Colonel Mustard: What exactly do you do?
• Wadsworth: I buttle, sir.
• Wadsworth: I suggest we take the cook’s body into the study.
• Colonel Mustard: Why?
• Wadsworth: I’m the Butler; I like to keep the kitchen tidy.
• Wadsworth: Professor Plum, you were once a professor of psychiatry specializing in helping paranoid and homicidal lunatics suffering from delusions of grandeur.
• Professor Plum: Yes, but now I work for the United Nations.
• Wadsworth: So your work has not changed.

…and of course:

If you have not seen the movie, go watch it now. You will see the OTHER movie that made Tim Curry a star.

Curry is one of the few actors who can be funny and terrifying in turn. His IMDB entry lists over 200 roles, including Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King’s It, Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers, Rooster in Annie, and the Lord of Darkness in Legend. In his later years, he continued doing voice acting for cartoons like The Wild Thornberrys and Peter Pan and the Pirates.

If you don’t know why Tim Curry is a star, then you haven’t got a Clue!