MovieChat Forums > Appointment with Death (1988) Discussion > Whoa! What's that smell?

Whoa! What's that smell?

posted 17 years ago by SquirePM
7 replies | jump to latest

Oh yeah. It's this movie.

Whew! What a stinker. And it looks like it's all the director's fault, Michael Winner. With some serious help from the editor, but upon checking I see he edited it himself.

This is a pretty fine cast, at least of the main characters, people who can really act. But here they're made into a bunch of overemoting hams by Winner.

I was looking forward to an interesting Agatha Christie mystery, and all I got was a bunch of disjointed shouting and dubbed-in-later lines that didn't even help explain the feeble plot. I wouldn't have thought you could take a Christie story and make it into a nearly unfathomable jumble, but Winner did it.

Too bad.

[–] lesleyanne-hay1 16 years ago

I have to agree that it was not up to the standard of the rest of the Poitot movies. It was a jumble of characters who just did not seem to pull it off.
Given that the cast list was very good, I just have to put it down to Michael Winner who cannot even do much with a TV commercial.
As an Agatha Christie fan, I found it disappointing.

[–] huweyjenkins 16 years ago

Here here! To paraphrase a quote about Otto Preminger, Michael Winner couldn't even direct his little nephew to the bathroom. There is no suspense, the editing is very choppy, the characters one dimentional, the script is trite and boring and the denouement a total let-down. What a waste of a talented all-star cast!

[–] 16 years ago

[deleted]

[–] louiseculmer 8 years ago

It compares very favourably to the dreadful Tv version with david suchet.

[–] Stratego (29246) 6 years ago

Yeah, it really wasn't good.

[–] johnmiller (3350) 3 years ago

The second you see Michael Winner is the director, you know that it's going to be schlock.

[–] agentalbert (2319) 2 years ago

This was bad. Agatha Christie mysteries aren't my favorite thing, but I really liked "Evil Under The Sun" and enjoyed "Death On The Nile" (the Ustinov movie versions), so gave this a try - what a boring, un-involving dud. And with the great cast, I really expected more.