First, a little inside baseball. Upon watching the credits of this movie several times as a kid, I found it funny that the name of the actor playing the part of “Mr. Boddy” is “Lee Ving” and thought how brave/cruel his parents must’ve been.
I eventually discovered that he was the lead singer for a punk band and it was a stage name. I figured someone in charge of casting was a fan of his band “Fear” and that was the reason he got the part, seeing as I don’t think he’s been in anything else. But while verifying that just now on the interwebs, I came to discover that he was cast in that role because of that stage name!
As in: “Mr. Boddy is Lee-Ving”
ANYway, on to the actual character. Mr. Boddy is (in the first 2 endings, at least) the head of a blackmailing ring that includes as its victims a fair amount of D.C. movers and shakers. Things seem to be going along well for him until one of his former victims, Wadsworth, concocts a plan to take the whole enterprise down by inviting all his current victims to a dinner party and hoping all of them together confronting him would convince him to abandon the blackmail scheme.
It is never outright stated in the film, but I think it is reasonable to assume that the dinner guests comprise all of his current victims. This would be especially true in the third ending, since it was Wadsworth’s stated goal in that ending to dispose of his blackmailing network. There wouldn’t be much point in doing all that if you still had more blackmailing victims on the side.
From the way he behaves at the start, it seems he (rightfully) thinks that Wadsworth isn’t up to the challenge of wrangling all these people into banding together against him. He plays it cool to start with, casually showing up late. It was probably to make certain that none of the other guests had blown off the invitation. Wouldn’t be worth going in the house at all if only a couple of them showed, I would think. He doesn’t appear to be at home in the house, although he does make a b-line to the conservatory and try to break thru the glass windows there before the guard dog convinces him otherwise, so it’s possible he was familiar enough with the house to know the layout.
Then, when it becomes clear that Wadsworth had planned this out and he was trapped in the house, he had his plan B ready: give every blackmail victim a weapon and sic them on Wadsworth. Get rid of him and he can probably convince his informants to stay quiet and nothing changes.
It’s rather ingenious that he decided to bring six different weapons rather than hand everyone the same kind. What with each being unique, he can use them to determine who made the killing blow. Then he can hold a murder rap over the head of whoever decided to do the deed.
This is all well and good, and Plan B almost works out for him, if it weren’t for the fact that blackmail victims aren’t prone to letting their blackmailer to just go on breathing if they can help it. So instead of getting rid of Wadsworth, he now has to play dead when someone tries to shoot him instead.
Now, I’ve covered a LOT of the logical inconsistencies when it comes to this film (see the first couple of these) so I cannot just skate by the fact that when the gun goes off in the dark, Mr. Boddy is supposedly standing near the door where he just turned off the lights. How did the shooter manage to put Mr. Boddy between themselves and the vase on the mantle where the bullet ended up? Did they follow his cologne around trying to get a bead on him?
But since it all happened in the dark, perhaps we can cut the logistics a break on this.
So, for the first two endings where Mr. Boddy is the blackmailer, his behavior checks out. Where things get really interesting is analyzing those same moves when Wadsworth is the actual Blackmailer in the third ending. A lot of assumptions come into question: is he familiar with this house? Is he a victim of blackmail himself? Was he forced to play the part of the blackmailer, or is he a willing accomplice?
Well… willing, that is, until his attempt to turn the guests on Wadsworth.
So, lets start with assuming he was a willing accomplice, possibly even going all the way up to and including trying to have the guests go after wadsworth!
Lets say Wadsworth was planning on either cutting the current crop of blackmail victims loose (perhaps they’ve outlived their profitability) or has concocted a new level of the scheme. This might also explain why he had all his network of informants at the house helping him, not seeming to wonder why they’re all present. It could work right up until after the gunshot, and here’s something I just thought of: he was supposed to pretend to be dead from the gunshot.
“But Dan” you say “there’s just one thing wrong with that.”
“how can he be sure the gun would be fired, and at him?”
HE was the one in the dark who tried to grab the gun! he was SUPPOSED to be shot at, and he made sure he was. Now here’s where he catches on to the double-cross: they were supposed to be blanks! But the live round grazed his ear, making him realize that his employer was trying to get him killed. Nothing for it but to play along until he could get away.
Sadly, someone had other plans.
As for Mr. Boddy being an unwilling participant, I really can’t see it. He plays along far too well, and having a full set of lethal weapons for the guests handy would be an intricate part of Wadsworth’s plans in the 3rd ending for it to be something a fake Mr. Boddy just happened to bring with him.
So, that covers the last guest Mr. Boddy: the doomed blackmailer, or doomed blackmailer, or double-crossed informant. In any event, with a name like that, he wasn’t going to last the night.