I am speakinig of "Death on the nile" and "Evil under the sun". They are great movies with great cast, but this one lacks the cast and strangely the talents of Ustinov. Stupid dialogs, worse acting, put in the time of the actual filming mid 1980s .. I couldn't watch it to the end.
shareI agree it's weaker than those 2 you mentioned. But do try to watch it all the way, the ending is the best part. Ustinov's verbal recreation of the crime, and his own journey to the truth, are still quite delightful.
share
I thought it was enjoyable, but bland in places. Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun are definitely better. It does look lovely, the cast is not so bad and the ending is fun. The script is weak though. I gave it a 7/10
"Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage"- Madeleine Kahn(CLUE, 1985)
It´s the typical adaptation from 80s, not a masterpiece like "Murder on the Oriont Express" or enjoyable stories like "Death on the Nile"... but I found it pretty entertaining. I think it didn´t aged quite well but I am fan of Peter Ustinov but it was Ok. Tony Curtis rocked playing Cartwright!
shareI'm just watching it now, having finally found a copy, and I have to agree with most of the sentiments on this thread.
There are some fine personalities in the cast, ones that I often enjoy watching, and thank goodness they're there - the script is really very drab, so it's just as well they had screen personality to draw on. Sir Peter is charming and effervescent as always, but he's given some dreadful lines of dialogue, and other than a couple of key phrases he really bears almost no resemblance at all to the Poirot of the books. In fact, apart from the cleverness of the plot, the whole thing is much more like an episode of a cheap "Murder She Wrote" copycat than an Agatha Christie film.
It was made for an 80s American TV audience, so I suppose it's not surprising that they would change the tone. It's a pity they didn't manage any sense of style with it, though.
You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.