curtis-8

This movie is so all over the place I couldn't figure out if it was a melodrama or a very dry comedic satire of one. The plotting is ridiculous, no one behaved or reacts like any human on the planet ever has to anything and the acting ranges from amateur to insane. I swear costar Miriam Hopkins is so incredibly over the top, bug-eyed manic it's like watching a blonde, coked-up Scarlet O'Hara. It's like she's in a completely different movie from David and the rest of the cast. A fascinatingly accidental comic performance. Davis starts out good, but soon resorts to a bad Bette Davis impersonation. A truly bizarre movie. If it didn't move at such a predictable snails pace it would be fascinatingly entertaining. As it is it's fascinating like a train wreck.

This is a perfectly ok Agatha Christie movie adaptation, but there's absolutely nothing special about it unless you're a huge Elizabeth Taylor fan.

I can understand why the pricers would want to branch out with Christie's other most popular character after the success of Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, which both featured Hercule Poirot. But why did they choose this particular novel to adapt? Taking place in a 1950s English village it lacks the exotic cinematic grandeur and dramatic tension of the previous films. And Marple isn't even positioned as the main detective! Very, very odd choices.

They really needed to find a Marple story with more cinematic possibilities. That said, the film is ok if you think of it as a TV episode.