This TV movie
is based on Agatha Christie's fourth novel from 1924. She had two Poirot
books by then but was going back and forth with him and other sorts of crime
novels. This is more a romantic adventure but with a murderer revealed in
the final few minutes. It stays within hailing distance of the book other
than changing the locations for the most part. Her protagonist is a female
with a desire for an adventure. She gets it. It is very much a TV movie though
- weak dialogue, commercial interruptions at moments of drama and a cast
that feels like a movie of the week. The copy that I watched from YouTube
is pretty poor, but I got through it. Whether it was worth it is hard to
say. I prefer Poirot and Miss Marple when it comes to Christie but she wrote
some other fine novels and many of their adaptations are quite good - especially
recent ones. There are enough suspects that make it difficult to know who
the killer is, and I was quite wrong in my guess. As is often the case.
Anne (Stephanie Zimbalist - daughter of
Efrem) is on a trip with her friend waiting for their plane to go home at
the Cairo airport. She is a bit depressed that she had no adventures on her
trip and is going home to her dull job in Buffalo. I get that. But she sees
a man run over by a car and another man in a brown suit go through his pockets
and drop something. It is a note with numbers and the name of a cruise ship.
She decides this is her chance for an adventure and books herself on it.
Among the other passengers are Edward Woodward as a wealthy Englishman, Tony
Randall as a religious zealot doing some weird accent that comes and goes
like the tide, Rue McClanahan as a wealthy often divorced socialite and Ken
Howard as Race. Colonel Race appears in four of Christie's books - you may
recall him as David Niven in Death on the Nile. So, you can be pretty sure
he isn't the killer. Anne isn't the smartest girl in the world and constantly
puts herself in danger but is saved by the Man in the Brown Suit (Simon Dutton).
Romance blooms. This is the only adaptation of this book. So far.
