Les dix petits indiens

...the 1945 classic "And Then There Were None". This one also follows the script of the earlier film rather than the Agatha Christie book. It has two cast members who recently were in box office smashes-Shirley Eaton was the golden girl in the James Bond blockbuster "Goldfinger" and Stanley Holloway had been Oscar nominated in the multi award winner "My Fair Lady". Fabian was brought in to attract the younger crowd, and he plays an obnoxious pop singer who gets dispatched early. There is some great eye candy with gorgeous blond Eaton and exotic beauty Daliah Lavi. TV star Hugh O'Brien plays the rugged macho male lead. One of the best things in this film was a well done scene where Eaton holds a gun on O'Brien, the only improvement on the original film.

It's only fair to mention that I saw the 1945 adaptation of this same story before seeing this film, so obviously the plot and characters were very familiar to me before watching. There were some changes between the two versions, however, which helps to keep things fresh...although most of the changes were for the worst. Rather than being set on island, this version sets the story on top of a snow covered mountain; while several of the characters have either had their professions changed or have been made younger than in the earlier version. The film does at least stick more rigidly to the nursery rhyme at the centre of the story. The basis of the story is the same as in previous versions, however, and we focus on ten people that have been invited to stay at a house owned by a Mr U. N. Owns. Shortly after their arrival they are played a tape made by the mysterious host; accusing them all of murder. One by one they are picked off and it's not long before the remaining guests realise that their host is amongst them.

The film feels very upper class and all the guests are well dressed and polite. The script is very similar to the earlier adaptation and so I would imagine that both versions stick very closely to the original literature. The cast is rather good and each actor fits into their role well. Standouts for me include Daliah Lavi, who plays an actress and is very sexy - and Mario Adorf who plays the butler. Eurocrime fans may recognise him as the pimp from the masterpiece The Italian Connection. The deaths are rather well handled and we see a bit more than we did in the earlier version; although 'less is more' is still very much the order of the day. Deaths include stabbing, falling off a cliff and someone has a stuffed bear dropped on their head. I was hoping that the film may have changed the ending, but unfortunately it sticks to the original story on this point so it wasn't much of a surprise for me. Still, this is a rather decent adaptation of the classic story; although I'd certainly recommend 1945's And Then There Were None over this version.

As in Agatha Christie's original, ten people converge on an isolated place only to learn that they are stuck there and will be killed one by one. During the first ten minutes, Fabian portrays a Playboy and his performance is so dreadful that you thank heaven when he sits down at a piano and begins to perform, only to quickly realize he's an even worse singer than actor! Happily, he's the first to 'go,' and from then on, things get considerably better. A focus on three old English gents played by Leo Genn, Wilfred Hyde White, and Leo Genn - each more brilliant than the next - allows a film that appeared ready to flop to truly take off. Hugh O'Brian is acceptable as the hero, but most of his mannerisms are far too reminiscent of Wyatt Earp on TV. But don't turn it off - at least not if you are among us who consider Shirley Eaton (The Goldfinger girl) the most underrated blonde beauty ever. She is dazzling, and even appears in skimpy black lingerie near the film's end. When Hugh lifts her up in his arms, it's hard not to wish you had been born Hugh O'Brian. Never in a class with the earlier version, AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, but solid enough - once Fabian's out of the picture.

Ten strangers are lured to a remote mansion on the Austrian Alps in the middle of winter. They have nothing in common except that each of them harbours a guilty secret and they have all been invited by a mysterious host (whom none of them has met) called Mr U.N Owen. The guests are Judge Arthur Cannon (Wilfrid Hyde-White), Harley Street practitioner Dr Armstrong (Dennis Price), private eye William Henry Blore (Stanley Holloway), actress Ilona Bergen (Daliah Lavi), pop star Mike Raven (Fabian), retired army officer General Sir John Mandrake (Leo Genn), engineer Hugh Lombard (Hugh O' Brien), secretary Ann Clyde (Shirley Eaton) and housekeepers Joseph and Elsa Grohmann (Mario Adorf & Marrianne Hoppe). They are curious and slightly annoyed that their host isn't their to greet them. However, after dinner and cocktails, a tape recorder bursts into life and the disembodied voice of their host accuses each of them of a past crime. Initially, they treat it as a sick joke in the poorest taste. But after Mike Raven has drunkenly sang a rendition of the Ten Little Indians nursery rhyme on the piano, he confesses to a crime before choking on his drink and falling down dead. The others realise that this isn't a joke and that their host is a psychopath delivering retribution for their sins and even more disturbingly, their killer is one of them. In addition, there is a centerpiece on the dining room table, which contains ten figurines and as they are murdered one by one in ways parallel to the old nursery rhyme, the killer removes one figurine from the centrepiece at a time.

Ten Little Indians was the third film version of Agatha Christie's marvelous mystery thriller, which was first published in Great Britain in 1939. Four years later, it was adapted for the stage by the author making its debut at London's St James Theatre in November 1943. It had been previously filmed in Hollywood in 1945 as And Then There Were None (Dir: Rene Clair) and featured an all-star cast (for the time) including Barry Fitzgerald and Walter Huston and in 1949, the BBC produced a TV version starring Bruce Belfrage and Campbell Singer. The 1965 version made a few notable changes, the most significant being the change of setting from an old house on a remote Devonshire island to a mansion on top of the Austrian Alps. The picture was actually shot in an empty mansion in Rush near Dublin, Southern Ireland. The film was produced by Harry Alan Towers whom at this time was enjoying success with the splendid schoolboy's adventure yarn The Face Of Fu Manchu, which starred Christopher Lee as Sax Rohmer's fiendish Oriental mastermind. Interestingly, it was Lee who provided the disembodied voice of U.N Owen on the tape recording heard at the beginning of the film. Towers would subsequently go on to film the story again on two more occasions. First as And Then There Were None (Dir: Peter Collinson 1975), in which the setting was changed yet again to a luxury hotel in the Iranian desert and the second time in 1989 with the drama unfolding from a big game African safari.

All in all, Ten Little Indians is quite a good film. The script penned by Towers as Peter Welbeck does reasonable justice to Christie's wonderful source novel and the change of locale does it no harm at all. A marvelous cast was chosen for the film with Wilfrid Hyde-White perfectly cast as the intelligent and resourceful Judge Cannon while Dennis Price offers a fine portrayal as the upper class Dr Armstrong. Leo Genn gives just the right amount of authority to the role of General Sir John Mandrake and Hugh O' Brien is suitably smooth as Lombard and works well with Shirley Eaton's Ann Clyde, the picture's love interest. Also of note is American pop singer Fabian who does well in portraying Mike Raven an updated version of Christie's original character called Anthony Marston in the book. The character wasn't a pop star in the book at all, but he still resembles the way that Christie described him, irresponsible, and whose only interest in life was "for kicks" as the film puts it.

On the downside, the film lacks the tension and the sense of menace that I was expecting mainly due to an unsuitable jazz style music score and while the black and white camera-work is good, I couldn't help but think that a few more shadows would have helped here and there. Director George Pollock (fresh from shooting the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple films) shows a steady hand at the helm of the picture and brings the storyline together beautifully but he doesn't bring the same level of charm and well-meshed humor and mystery, which he brought to the Marple series here. Another slight disappointment is the climax, which resembles the happy and romantic one from the stage play. In the novel (I won't give it away for those who haven't seen the film or read the book) but there is no sense of relief at all and as a result the film isn't as dark and surprising as I was hoping it would be. I also felt that the 60-second whodunit break just prior to the ending didn't really fit in the with the general aura of the movie and seemed to be nothing more than a gimmick. Overall, however, this is still the film which I return to of one of my all time favorite mysteries because the cast play it straight here whereas in the 1945 version, they overplayed the comedy meaning that it sat uneasily with the plot and a lot of the film's thrills took place off screen which isn't the case here. And finally, I cannot resist a picture that brings such wonderful actors as Wilfrid Hyde-White and Stanley Holloway together -not in a million years!

The first remake of the 1945 classic "And Then There Were None" is a fairly decent effort. While all of the wonderfully sly wit is gone this time, and the locale has been shifted from an island to a mountain resort (resulting in some characters having different nationalities this time) the results are still quite credible. The cast is good, with golden girl Shirley Eaton of "Goldfinger" fame looking quite lovely as the female lead. It's also amusing to see "My Fair Lady" almuni Stanley Holloway and Wilfrid Hyde-White together again in a completely different kind of film and setting. Just like the original, the identity of the killer (and I won't say who!) comes as a surprise because the performer gives a brilliant performance that makes it hard to link that performer with the one who committs all the murders beforehand. All subsequent remakes of this story have been awful. The original is still the best, but this one is okay to look at.