"The Last of Sheila," directed by Herbert Ross from an original screenplay by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, is an old-fashioned murder mystery that has been dressed up fit to kill and set aboard a fine, white-hulled, teak-decked Mediterranean yacht of the sort that souls have been sold to obtain.... Since I'm told that Sondheim and Perkins are serious game people, I assume that the plot, if run backward, would make sense. More important to me was the generally festive air in which all this genteel mayhem takes place, as well as the rather charming, Agatha Christie manners that are observed. As plot points are explained, people get themselves drinks from the bar. If someone is murdered, the pall of gloom lasts for a maximum of five minutes.... Perhaps the best thing about "The Last Day of Sheila," which opened yesterday at the Sutton, is that it never tries to convince us that its characters are not having fun. They enjoy having money, or having access to it. It makes murder, as well as life, more interesting.

THE LAST OF SHEILA is a superb murder mystery and something of a curio in film history, thanks to a script (by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim) that is written in the style of a British crossword puzzle.... If you enjoy puns, anagrams, and wordplay, you will find THE LAST OF SHEILA a positive Joycean delight. Listen for Bette Midler singing "Friends" on the soundtrack.

...the premise of “The Last of Sheila,”...is a devilishly complicated thriller of superior class. It involves game playing in the way “Sleuth” did, but the game is more devious. And the movie itself comes out of a grand tradition of murder puzzles from such as Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr. Indeed, it’s a little unexpected to see this material showing up first as a movie; it seems like the kind of story that would begin life as a play. Bringing seven people together and then doing the old “one of the people in this room is a murderer” routine is innately theatrical, as the 20-year London run of Miss Christie’s “The Mousetrap” illustrates. Still, it works well as a movie, maybe because the screenplay is concerned as much with characters as with crime. The movie was written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, and they exhibit a very fine eye for showbiz behavior and dialog. They’ve also played a sort of Jacqueline Susann guessing game for us; we can have fun wondering who the bitchy agent (Dyan Cannon) was inspired by, or the down-at-his luck director (James Mason), or the sexpot (Raquel Welch, who may very well have been inspired by herself).