A Lista de Adrian Messenger

Stunningly original. It's great fun sitting with people seeing the film for the first time and telling them all the big stars who are in it! "OK," they finally say, "I've seen George Scott and I've finally seen Kirk Douglas; where's everybody else?" Once you experience this classic, you'll know what I mean. Scott (one of the few Americans who can sustain a British accent) is wonderful as the sleuth. Houston's slight-of-hand direction is bang on. Goldsmith's wicked little theme and moody score need to finally be released on CD (Varese? Silva?).

I wanted to say something in praise of the masked star gimmick - something I haven't seen anyone else mention.

Rather than viewing the various "heavily made-up" characters as a spot the star contest, look at it from the other side and, suddenly, the gimmick becomes an ingenious way of covering up the killer - hiding him from the audience. Since the filmmakers knew they couldn't find a way to make a full head latex "invisible" to the audience, (and presumably didn't want to go with a completely other actor) they went the Purloined Letter route and threw in a bunch of such "spottable" characters to keep the audience from guessing which one was the killer.

Much like the movie The Spanish Prisoner - where every person seems somehow fakey UNTIL you watch from the viewpoint of "spot the scam" and realize the EVERYONE sounds fake (i.e., like they're scamming someone) so you CAN'T spot the con artists.

Brilliant, really. In both cases.

This enjoyable suspenser contains intriguing events , emotion , and plot twists . A former intelligence officer called Anthony Gethryn (George C. Scott) is tasked by the heir to the Gleneyre estate to investigate the unusual deaths of a disparate group of eleven men on a list . Later on , a mysterious stranger (Kirk Douglas) visiting an English state whose owner is a Lord , Marquis of Gleneyre (Clive Brook) , and the puzzling series of killings that coincide with his arrival . As retired MI-5 officer has to figure out the unusual deaths of a varied group of eleven men on a list , each seems to have died in mysterious circumstances . Working with a survivor from a airplane disaster, Raoul Le Borg (Jacques Roux) he discovers weird clues until an unexpected conclusion . The main question is the following : Someone committed killings . Can you guess who's behind the disguise?

This whodunit packs crisp performance , intrigue , thrilling scenes , suspense , twists and turns . The main gimmick results to be the all-star-cast are all heavily disguised in the character roles . This is a family film made by John Huston , as it was partially filmed on John Huston's own estate in Ireland and played by Huston's friends as well as his son . The best scenes turned to be when the stars appeared at end of the film in unmasking sequence where they peeled off makeup . Highlights of the movie result to be the fox chase scenes under an impressive soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith . Very good support cast such Robert Mitchum , Tony Curtis , Frank Sinatra , Herbert Marshall , Gladys Cooper , Marcel Dalio , Bernard Fox , being the fourth of seven films that Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster made together and final film of Clive Brook . And cameo by John Huston , who was an avid rider and hunter, appeared in a small role as Lord Ashton in a short dialogue scene in the last hunt . The filmmaker's child Tony , billed as Anthony Waller Huston plays Dana Winter's son . Evocative as well as atmospheric cinematography in black and white by Joseph MacDonald . Thrilling and suspenseful musical score by the great Jerry Goldsmith .

The motion picture well produced by Edward Lewis was stunningly by the great John Huston at his best , its tense filmmaking makes this crackerjack entertainment . The picture was made in a good time of the 60s , 70s and 80s when Huston resurged as a director of quality films with Fat City, (1972), The man who would be king (1975) and Wise blood (1979). He ended his career on a high note with Under volcano (1984), the afore-mentioned Honor of Prizzi (1985) and Dublineses (1987). Rating : Above average , this is one of John Huston's best films , a model of his kind , definitely a must see if you are aficionado to suspense films . Huston broke a new ground with this landmark movie , providing classic scenes and agreeable dialogs . Rating : Above average , as the intrigue is entertaining on its own .

Because of that gimmick with Curtis, Mitchum, Sinatra and Lancaster people seem to regard this film as a sort of spot-the-star contest. But it is much more than that. Excellent acting (especially Douglas in what must be his best role since Paths of Glory), superb music (Jerry Goldsmith) and brilliant direction of John Huston more than make up for occasional lapses in the story.

The story is quite simple, but the less said the better. The 'list' in question is a list of 10 names of people from all over the UK, who seem to have nothing in common except...well just see the movie.

And spotting the stars is quite fun too.

The handful of top-notch films directed by John Huston, from The Maltese Falcon in 1941 to Prizzi's Honor in 1986, has always been evened out by more than his share of clunkers -- mediocre material half-heartedly helmed (The Bible, In This Our Life, Judge Roy Bean, Annie). But what was his thinking behind The List of Adrian Messenger? A modestly entertaining murder mystery of the fusty old English school, it's trumped up with foolish gimmickry that's irrelevant to the movie but was vital to its marketing. A starry cast -- Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, Tony Curtis, Frank Sinatra -- wanders around under false-faces for, with one exception, no discernible reason (they all end up looking like late Sean Connery). So sitting through it is to join the celebrity hunt (preferable, at any rate, to the fox hunts which eat up the film footage).

The plot proper concerns a series of fatal "accidents" that leads George C. Scott, sans mask and makeup, to uncover a betrayal in wartime Burma and the scion of an aristocratic family long vanished into the Canadian west. But Huston loses interest in the puzzle with unseemly haste -- as do we. Stifling yawns, we wait for the "stars" -- most of whom contribute little more than walk-ons -- to peel off their disguises, winking and smirking insufferably at the camera.