And We're Not Talking About Sunburn
This weekend's review: Evil Under the Sun.
Even after my disappointing revisit of Poirot for TV-366, I still like the character enough to look for other adaptations. Finding out that there was an adaptation of Evil Under the Sun that had James Mason as one of the suspects was enough to get me to check it out. Oddly, though, while there were some good elements to it, I think it’s ultimately on par with or possibly of slightly lower quality than the David Suchet show.
The story, like most mysteries, has a lot of moving parts. Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) is asked to investigate potential insurance fraud; a jewel has been insured for a huge amount of money, despite being an obvious fake. When Poirot questions the jewel’s owner, Horace Blatt (Colin Blakely), Blatt reveals that he had no idea it was fake, because he’d given it to a “lady friend”, an actress named Arlena (Diana Rigg), who must have swapped the real gem for the imitation when they parted ways and he asked for it back. Wanting his jewel back, Blatt asks Poirot to head to an upscale resort on a Greek island, where Arlena will be staying for a few days with her new husband Kenneth Marshall (Denis Quilley) and his daughter Linda (Emily Hone). Poirot does so, and meets the overbearing Arlena, as well as the other inhabitants of the hotel, including a married couple (Nicholas Clay and Jane Birkin) where the husband seems a little too enraptured by Arlena, a writer named Rex Brewster (Roddy McDowall), and a playwright and his wife (Mason and Sylvia Miles). It doesn’t take long to become obvious (to the audience, and probably to Poirot as well, though we’re privy to scenes he’s not) that almost everyone on that island has a reason to want Arlena dead. And a few days later, she’s found strangled on one of the more secluded beaches on the island. Now Poirot has to figure out who did it, as well as where the jewel is. Not exactly anybody’s idea of a working vacation…
For the most part, this is exactly the sort of thing you’d want from a mystery story, especially one from Agatha Christie. An interesting setting with a lot of rooms and locations, a colorful cast of characters, lots of little clues that don’t make sense initially, and a detective with personality. There’s even a reveal scene complete with flashbacks to help put all the pieces together, and material you wind up forgetting about entirely that comes back into play later. Plus, I can definitely say that this movie plays fair, though some of the clues are so subtle that you really need to be paying attention. And yet…I still feel dissatisfied with the execution.
I think the problem is threefold. One, the cast feels underutilized. There’s a lot of famous or soon-to-be famous faces in there (Rigg, McDowall, Mason, and a young Maggie Smith as Daphne Castle, the owner of the hotel), and yet most of them only get a few scenes to shine. Some of them manage to be memorable, but others (including Mason, sadly) just kind of fade into the background. This helps the mystery when you’re trying to figure out who’s the most likely suspect, but it does make the movie feel overstuffed. Two, the various suspects are all questioned about their whereabouts and activities at random-basically, whenever Poirot happens to run into them-so it can be difficult to keep the chronology straight. Both of these tie into the third issue, and the one that I think is the biggest reason the movie falls a bit flat; the movie’s a little under two hours long. In a book, not only can the author devote as much time as they want to various conversations and characters, but the reader can take their time absorbing the information. In a movie, the filmmakers need to excise some material to keep the pace up, and they need to hit all the highlights (or in this case, all the clues) within a reasonable timeframe. As a result, what may have been well developed in the book is rushed through in the movie. All the pieces are there to make it work, but a little more breathing room may have been all to the good here.
Besides the overall execution of the mystery, there are a few other things worth noting. One is that the filmmakers made the odd decision that their entire soundtrack would be made up of instrumentals of Cole Porter songs, plus one Porter song sung by Arlena. I suppose the intent was to use music that would have been around in Poirot’s day, but in practice, it’s just distracting, since you wind up saying either “Oh, I recognize that song!” or “Wait, I know this song, what is it?”, and not paying as much attention to the plot. The other thing that stood out to me was some of the costuming. Most of it seems reasonable for the 1920’s-1930’s, but a few of the color combinations or designs seem more like something you’d see in 1982, when the movie was made. One outfit in particular (that I was unfortunately unable to screencap) just screams “80’s”, and the fact that the character gets complimented on it left me a bit incredulous for multiple reasons. Well, at least they didn’t feel entirely out of place.
If you like Agatha Christie mysteries, I’d probably give this one a look, though I’d try to temper my expectations. Then again, maybe my issues with the pacing and execution are just personal preference, and you’ll enjoy it a little more than I did. Besides, it’s a Poirot story. They have their flaws, but there’s generally at least one thing worth seeing in every adaptation.
CAT ALERT: When Daphne goes out of the hotel at one point, we get a brief shot of two cats hanging around outside. Part of me isn’t surprised, because they’re useful for keeping mice away. At the same time, though, the hotel’s on a private island, meaning the cats almost certainly had to be brought there, which seems like more trouble than it’s worth. Then again, if Daphne is a cat lover and thought it was worth it, that’s one more reason to like her.
Even after my disappointing revisit of Poirot for TV-366, I still like the character enough to look for other adaptations. Finding out that there was an adaptation of Evil Under the Sun that had James Mason as one of the suspects was enough to get me to check it out. Oddly, though, while there were some good elements to it, I think it’s ultimately on par with or possibly of slightly lower quality than the David Suchet show.
The story, like most mysteries, has a lot of moving parts. Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) is asked to investigate potential insurance fraud; a jewel has been insured for a huge amount of money, despite being an obvious fake. When Poirot questions the jewel’s owner, Horace Blatt (Colin Blakely), Blatt reveals that he had no idea it was fake, because he’d given it to a “lady friend”, an actress named Arlena (Diana Rigg), who must have swapped the real gem for the imitation when they parted ways and he asked for it back. Wanting his jewel back, Blatt asks Poirot to head to an upscale resort on a Greek island, where Arlena will be staying for a few days with her new husband Kenneth Marshall (Denis Quilley) and his daughter Linda (Emily Hone). Poirot does so, and meets the overbearing Arlena, as well as the other inhabitants of the hotel, including a married couple (Nicholas Clay and Jane Birkin) where the husband seems a little too enraptured by Arlena, a writer named Rex Brewster (Roddy McDowall), and a playwright and his wife (Mason and Sylvia Miles). It doesn’t take long to become obvious (to the audience, and probably to Poirot as well, though we’re privy to scenes he’s not) that almost everyone on that island has a reason to want Arlena dead. And a few days later, she’s found strangled on one of the more secluded beaches on the island. Now Poirot has to figure out who did it, as well as where the jewel is. Not exactly anybody’s idea of a working vacation…
For the most part, this is exactly the sort of thing you’d want from a mystery story, especially one from Agatha Christie. An interesting setting with a lot of rooms and locations, a colorful cast of characters, lots of little clues that don’t make sense initially, and a detective with personality. There’s even a reveal scene complete with flashbacks to help put all the pieces together, and material you wind up forgetting about entirely that comes back into play later. Plus, I can definitely say that this movie plays fair, though some of the clues are so subtle that you really need to be paying attention. And yet…I still feel dissatisfied with the execution.
I think the problem is threefold. One, the cast feels underutilized. There’s a lot of famous or soon-to-be famous faces in there (Rigg, McDowall, Mason, and a young Maggie Smith as Daphne Castle, the owner of the hotel), and yet most of them only get a few scenes to shine. Some of them manage to be memorable, but others (including Mason, sadly) just kind of fade into the background. This helps the mystery when you’re trying to figure out who’s the most likely suspect, but it does make the movie feel overstuffed. Two, the various suspects are all questioned about their whereabouts and activities at random-basically, whenever Poirot happens to run into them-so it can be difficult to keep the chronology straight. Both of these tie into the third issue, and the one that I think is the biggest reason the movie falls a bit flat; the movie’s a little under two hours long. In a book, not only can the author devote as much time as they want to various conversations and characters, but the reader can take their time absorbing the information. In a movie, the filmmakers need to excise some material to keep the pace up, and they need to hit all the highlights (or in this case, all the clues) within a reasonable timeframe. As a result, what may have been well developed in the book is rushed through in the movie. All the pieces are there to make it work, but a little more breathing room may have been all to the good here.
Besides the overall execution of the mystery, there are a few other things worth noting. One is that the filmmakers made the odd decision that their entire soundtrack would be made up of instrumentals of Cole Porter songs, plus one Porter song sung by Arlena. I suppose the intent was to use music that would have been around in Poirot’s day, but in practice, it’s just distracting, since you wind up saying either “Oh, I recognize that song!” or “Wait, I know this song, what is it?”, and not paying as much attention to the plot. The other thing that stood out to me was some of the costuming. Most of it seems reasonable for the 1920’s-1930’s, but a few of the color combinations or designs seem more like something you’d see in 1982, when the movie was made. One outfit in particular (that I was unfortunately unable to screencap) just screams “80’s”, and the fact that the character gets complimented on it left me a bit incredulous for multiple reasons. Well, at least they didn’t feel entirely out of place.
If you like Agatha Christie mysteries, I’d probably give this one a look, though I’d try to temper my expectations. Then again, maybe my issues with the pacing and execution are just personal preference, and you’ll enjoy it a little more than I did. Besides, it’s a Poirot story. They have their flaws, but there’s generally at least one thing worth seeing in every adaptation.
CAT ALERT: When Daphne goes out of the hotel at one point, we get a brief shot of two cats hanging around outside. Part of me isn’t surprised, because they’re useful for keeping mice away. At the same time, though, the hotel’s on a private island, meaning the cats almost certainly had to be brought there, which seems like more trouble than it’s worth. Then again, if Daphne is a cat lover and thought it was worth it, that’s one more reason to like her.