Hercule Poirot: Tödliche Parties

Agatha Christie's Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot and his ever faithful Tonto like companion Captain Hastings are in Acapulco for Murder In Three Acts. As you gather by the title their are three murders, but their connection to each other is in some cases non-existent and to the murderer they are known in varying degrees of acquaintanceship.

The first is of a clergyman Philip Guilmant at a cocktail party given by retired expatriate actor Tony Curtis when a lethal cocktail is given the victim. At another cocktail party with a different setting the same happens to Dr. Dana Elcar. Lastly a poor catatonic woman in an asylum is slipped a box of chocolates laced with the same poison. The old switch is used like in many a magician's act.

Peter Ustinov as Poirot is present at the first and that was the perpetrator's fatal mistake. As Dana Elcar says all too prophetically for him, crime seems to follow him around.

Agatha Christie purists will object to the way poor Jonathan Cecil is treated like such a boob. He's not in the David Suchet BBC series. It's very much like Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson who slowly became a befuddled idiot in the Universal Sherlock Holmes movies.

Still the film is all right not up to the standard of Ustinov big screen Hercule Poirot films. And the murderer when revealed truly steals the film.

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