The Pale Horse

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.

A close friend of Miss Marple, Father Gorman, is savagely beaten to death while on his way to see one of his ailing parishioners, Mrs Davis. Miss Marple is deeply upset and suspects it wasn't a random act of violence. She received a letter from him shortly after his death, listing names and a Bible verse from Revelation. Mrs Davis, who died the same night as Father Gorman, had a similar list. There may be sinister forces afoot.

Quite clever and reasonably intriguing. Miss Marple herself is as dull as ever but the case is puzzling and quite dark, making for a suspenseful episode.

One or two interesting sub-plots too.

Yes there are bound to be the usual people that don't like it because Joan Hickson isn't in it and Miss M shouldn't be in it, but, she is here and i'm glad she is. Julia Mackenzie i think is making a wonderful Jane Marple and here she is wonderful, she is getting better with every outing. This is one of Christie's darker novels, I loved her work when she explored black magic and the occult. Fantastic casting, minor parts for class acts like Linda Baron and Nicholas Parsons. Tom Ward, Sarah Alexander, Jonathan Cake are fantastic, but i was so impressed at how good JJ Feild and Pauline Collins were. Heaps better then the ITV version from a few years ago. Seems that there is a lot of effort and money into making these films a visual treat. This is one of the best!!!

I'm not one of those to bash the film just because it doesn't completely and exactly mirror the book. I didn't read it anyway, so judging from what we actually saw in the movie, it's safe to say that gloomy, dark whodunits go very well with the rural, romantic landscapes of English countryside. The production is on its usual high level with Julia McKenzie in the role of Jane Marple, and she actually manages to pull it rather well off. I never really liked Joan Hutchingson, so McKenzie fit the bill much better. The Pale Horse is a small town inn where Marple stays to inquire into the murder of her friend, father German, who dies the same day she received his the letter,after tending to a dying woman who gives it to him, with a list of names. What follows is a series of murders all of which are somehow linked to the The Pale inn, whose owners present themselves as witches with special powers able to control other people's psyche. Eventually, Marple discovers that there's nothing surreal about the murders and lures the culprit into the light by one of the most impressive twists I've seen in the Marple series. The downside is that it takes a bit of time until you work out the connections between the characters and their motives, and it's somehow clear from the very start that the inn owner is up to no good. There are certain echoes of "The Ninth Gate" here, albeit probably unconscious. All in all, good Sunday fun in spite of a few rough spots along the way.

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.