The Last of Sheila is a 1973 American whodunnit mystery film directed by Herbert Ross and written by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim. It starred Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, Joan Hackett, James Mason, Ian McShane, and Raquel Welch.
The film was released to positive reviews, and has garnered a solid following over time. Perkins and Sondheim's script was later novelized by Alexander Edwards.
Plot
On a one-week Mediterranean pleasure cruise aboard the yacht of movie producer Clinton Greene, the guests include: actress Alice Wood; her talent-manager husband Anthony Wood; secretary turned talent agent Christine; screenwriter Tom Parkman and his wife Lee; and film director Philip Dexter. 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 underway, Greene, 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 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, then sent ashore to find the proof of who holds the card bearing that secret. The game for that night ends when the actual holder discovers the proof. Following the first day's game, suspicion begins that the "pretend" secrets are, in fact, true. This is confirmed when Alice is talking to a man off camera, whose identity is hidden. She says that the first card, "YOU are a SHOPLIFTER", applies to her and that she was caught shoplifting before she became famous. She downplays the incident, telling the mysterious man that she has his secret and shows him her card, "YOU are a HOMOSEXUAL". She says she will keep his secret, and there are hints of an affair. She is eager to know what the other secrets are, and a bit scared of the whole game.
On the second day, Christine is nearly killed when someone turns the boat's propellers on while she is swimming near them. Christine becomes hysterical with shock when the rest of the guests come to her rescue. The second game secret is revealed to be "YOU are a HOMOSEXUAL." In the evening, Greene goes ahead to the designated island and prepares for the "game" ahead of the guests. It takes place in a monastery, with all guests dressed in hooded monks’ robes; in addition to the robe, Greene is dressed up as Alice, with a wig and makeup. Greene falls out of a confessional box with bloody wounds on his face, dead. Later that evening, when the guests gather together on the yacht to discuss the game, they notice that Greene has not returned. When Greene hasn’t show up the next day, the guests return ashore to the monastery, and discover his corpse. Although the group initially assumes that Greene died when a stone column collapsed during the storm, Parkman points out several clues that suggest otherwise.
Parkman suggests that Greene has been murdered by one of them. Playing detective, he points to clues that he and Dexter found at the crime scene. He suggests that everyone should put their index cards on the table. Five cards are revealed: YOU are a SHOPLIFTER, HOMOSEXUAL, EX-CONVICT, INFORMER, and LITTLE CHILD MOLESTER — and Parkman delays revealing his card. Alice reveals she was the shoplifter, and Parkman says "YOU are a HOMOSEXUAL" applies to him, since he had a brief encounter with Greene years ago, before he was married to Lee. All these secrets are from the past; Anthony reveals that he is the "EX-CONVICT" and is shocked how Greene has come to know so much about them — either since Sheila was a gossip columnist, people confided in her, or due to common industry gossip. Dexter gets nervous as accusations point to him being the child molester, and mumbles nonsense trying to cover it up. Christine reveals that when she was a secretary in the film industry, during the Second Red Scare she informed on left-leaning actors to further her career and become a talent agent. Out of guilt, she says that she now tries to help them find work.