The Pale Horse

Okay, it isn't easy finding enough Miss Marple stories in the Christie canon to create a full-fledged series. But the producers have done a nice job of wedging her into one of Christie's most ingenious tales. Like "The Mirror Crack'd," "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" and "Murder on the Orient Express," the tale features a wonderfully original plot device -- in this case, a whole new approach to contract killing. Throw in a kind of British take on re-creating the Salem witch trials and you have a mordantly murky and entertaining mystery. Purists may take umbrage at Miss Marple wandering off her own turf to solve a series of seemingly occult murders. But if it's a well-told mystery (as this one is) and doesn't otherwise twist Dame Agatha's story, why not?

The Pale Horse mystery by Agatha Christie is arguably one of her best stories. It is a story that is on another level and more than just a motive by one of the characters. We saw an elaborate scheme or set up that was almost fool proof. Witchcraft was the supposed centre and cause for many so called natural deaths. Dig deeper and you see a non practicing lawyer taking bets for predicting the deaths and the owner of the Pale Horse Inn also collecting money for the witchcraft. However digging deeper you find the true head of the scheme who is a figure in the dark that actually executes these murders carefully and disguising murder as natural causes. This story is so intriguing and remarkable that perhaps adding action and thriller on a bigger scale would be worthy of a James Bond film.

However the film adaptation was poorly executed. The story was told so badly that it was hard to follow in its entirety. Often stories are paced very badly. You have close to nothing revealed in 3/4 of the film and then a big complex story with no backstory is given quickly to close the case. The audience is wondering how we jumped from A to Z. Sadly a few Poirot episodes have followed the same trend with little revealed throughout and a hasty summary at the end. A good film would have clues distributed evenly before the big reveal. Overall great story but poorly told and portrayed.

I like this Pale Horse better than the 1997 one which did not have a Miss Marple character. This one with Julie McKenzie as Miss Marple was very different than the 1997 version. There were a lot of surprises and intrigue.

As always in Miss Marple and the police work together and spend a lot of time at the end of the movie with all the characters explaining who did what and how they came to their conclusion of who committed the crime.

At the end it was a big surprise ending for me. I just did not expect the way it turned out. This movie had a lot of unexpected surprises and it made it very interesting.

I have been a fan of Agatha Christie for about eight years now, reading her books and the adaptations based on her work. I just love her compelling stories, memorable characters and atmosphere you get when reading. The Pale Horse I was sceptical of, the book is wonderful and one of the best of her later works and I was worried it would be another Sittaford Mystery, Nemesis or At Bertram's Hotel. While not the best of the series, The Pale Horse is far better than I thought it would be, and I was actually expecting it to be worse than it was.

My only real quibble is the pace, the middle segment dragged a bit and had a couple of scenes that either didn't move the story forward as much as ought to have done or were a little too long. That said, the dialogue has its good spots, and the direction is solid on the whole with some interesting little things. The story is compelling mostly even with the changes, it is coherent with a very impressive, chilling atmosphere and intriguing final solution, while the production values are superb with beautiful photography and settings and the music just adds to the atmosphere the adaptation does have. The acting is very good, Julia McKenzie is a terrific Miss Marple and JJ Field also stands out as he manages to do something special with a role that could have been uninteresting or obvious, everything from the body language, voice, face and little things were very well done and contributed to a very good performance.

All in all, much better than I thought it would be. Is it a faithful adaptation? Things are changed certainly, but it is not a complete re-write, and very watchable on its own terms. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Julia McKenzie is as good as Joan Hickson as the mischievous Miss Marple;both are closer to Christie's character than the sturdy Margaret Rutherford in George Pollock's sixties movies.

I read "the pale horse" a long long time ago but I remember the black magic,an unusual subject for the writer.Note that Ariadne Oliver was replaced by Jane Marple.The first sequences ,in a foggy street ,looks more like a Sherlock Holmes adventure ,but what remains takes place in one of these small villages where the old lady pulls the rug from Under the cop's feet.It includes a (mortal) equivalent of Viagra-not in the book-,a list of people who mysteriously died after staying in that "Pale Horse" (from the Apocalypse?),a priest who was murdered after confessing a dying woman,a secret ceremony in which the three witches invoke the evil spirits ,a man in a wheelchair who might be able to walk (and kill?).