Truly Dreadful Film

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Hercule Poirot is investigating a murder and a fake diamond. His investigations take him to a holiday resort on an island in the Adriatic Sea. While he is there Arlena Marshall turns up dead, murdered. Plenty of suspects - she appeared to be universally hated - but everyone has a perfect alibi. Superb adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic novel. Clever plot with a wonderful, classic, old-worldy feeling to proceedings. Peter Ustinov is great as Poirot, but that's a given.Classic murder-drama.

'Evil Under The Sun (1982)' is a bit 'made-for-TV', slightly too basic in its play-like presentation and also presents pretty much each movement of its plot as a series of explanations by the portly protagonist, and yet it has a certain charm to it, a sense that the source story, however streamlined and changed it is here, is supposed to be told in a way similar to this, as opposed to the recent forced 'filmic' adaptation that was much more 'Sherlock Holmes' than 'Poirot'. Ustinov is good as the beguiling Belgian, though his somewhat dodgy accent takes a little getting used to, and the kind of stuck-up, no-good-in-a-fight feel he has is perfect for this quick-talking character, as is the rest of the eclectic cast who turn in grandiose and stage-suited performances of the innuendo-laden adaptation of Agatha Christie's source novel. It's entertaining after its slow start, even being fairly enjoyable during most of the equally slow build-up to the inevitable murder, and is at its best when the audience is trying to figure out exactly who is going to bite the dust and how they're going to do it. 6/10

EVIL UNDER THE SUN marks the second of Peter Ustinov's appearances as the famous Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot and it's very similar to look and feel as his first, DEATH ON THE NILE. Once again a bunch of glamorous but ageing Hollywood stars are stranded in a remote exotic setting, where one of their number (an incredibly bitchy Diana Rigg) is murdered and Poirot has to work out who did it. I enjoyed this film slightly more than the two previous Poirot movies of the 1970s, because it has a lighter touch and more comedy, that makes it very amusing at times. The cast is very strong and has nice roles for Roddy McDowall, James Mason, and an on-form Maggie Smith, and I did get a hoot out of Colin Blakely's Yorkshireman. As ever, the only thing that took the edge of this - and it was the same with the other Poirot movies - is that it feels very drawn out, particularly in the first half. The murder takes forever to happen and too much time is spent merely wallowing in the star power instead of getting on with the plot. Still, it's a fun watch.

The fourth in the series of Brabourne/ Goodwin produced adaptations of Christie that began with MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974). This one, set on an island in the Mediterranean (actually filmed in Majorca) has Peter Ustinov in his second outing as Poirot investigating the murder of a self-interested actor (Diana Rigg), with a gang of suspects including hotel-keeper Maggie Smith, cuckolded husband Denis Quilley, camp journalist Roddy McDowall, theatrical producer James Mason and his domineering wife Sylvia Miles, and would-be gigolo Nicholas Clay and his mousy spouse Jane Birkin. Anthony Shaffer's script gives plenty of opportunity for humorous sequences, especially the cat-fights between Smith and Rigg, and the scene where Poirot, clad in a bathing-dress, attempts to have a morning swim. Whereas David Suchet in the television version tended to be low-key in his characterization, referring to his "little gray cells" and how they solved cases on more than one occasion, Ustinov turns in a flamboyant performance, full of little details: the sequence where he overhears Clay and Birkin arguing in their hotel room ends with a shot of Poirot twitching his mustache, as if he doesn't quite believe what they are saying (he is eventually proved right). The score has rightly been praised: John Lanchbery's arrangements of Cole Porter standards are both florid yet particularly appropriate for the film's bourgeois ambiance: the characters' entire lives are dedicated to pleasure rather than work. As Poirot observes, somewhat cynically, they resemble slabs of meat laid out in the sun to brown. Guy Hamilton's direction is both slick and very clear: unusually for most Christie adaptations, EVIL UNDER THE SUN ties up every single strand of its complicated plot, leaving viewers without too many questions to ask as to whodunit and why. Definitely one of the better versions of the great detective novelist's work, even if it departs quite significantly from the source-text.