Peter Ustinov made six appearances as Agatha Christie's French - oops make
that Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Three were released theatrically and
three were made for TV movies. Oddly, one of the theatrical ones came after
the three TV ones. Not surprisingly, the budgets for the TV films are much
smaller, noticed in the choice of locales but even more so in the actors.
The theatrical films have star-studded casts - Death on the Nile (Bette Davis,
Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury, David Niven), Evil Under the Sun (Maggie Smith,
James Mason, Diana Rigg, Roddy McDowell), Appointment with Death (Lauren
Bacall, Carrie Fisher, Hailey Mills, John Gielgud) - while the TV films were
on par with the guest stars on an episode of Murder She Wrote. Admittedly,
the stars of those theatrical films were a bit long in the tooth but they
were still names that looked good on the marquee. Of course, the original
1974 Murder on the Orient Express sort of set the standard with a large cast
of undisputed stars.
This one has Edith Bunker. Ok, not Edith but Jean Stapleton, who basically
does a slightly less dithering Edith. If you stretch it, you might include
Tim Piggot-Smith and Nicolette Sheridan as recognizable names but otherwise
no one to raise an eyebrow. The film is based on a 1954 Christie novel of
the same title and the film follows the plot fairly accurately. The book
felt a bit more clever with a few clues laying about helping the reader to
solve it but the film much less so and yet at the same time it seems obvious
who the guilty party must be. Stapleton plays mystery writer Ariadne Oliver,
a character who pops up occasionally in the books. She is putting on a murder
hunt at the estate of Sir George Stubbs (Piggot-Smith) who was able to buy
the estate from the former owner who could not afford it due to death taxes.
The high British taxes was a real irritation to Christie who brings the subject
up in numerous books. I imagine she got hit very hard.
Stubbs and his much younger beautiful wife (Sheridan) have a household of
guests - all suspects - and throw a local fair when a young girl is strangled
to death. Oliver had invited Poirot and his mate Hastings to the murder hunt
because she had a notion something wasn't right. Stapleton and her silliness
throw the film sideways a bit and Poirot looks to be sorry that he is stuck
in a TV movie. In the end though these films are genial enough, soft as marshmallows
and watching Ustinov has its pleasures.
