Agatha Christie‘s The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side is a bizarre choice for an adaptation, a Miss Marple mystery that limits the amount of time you can feature the detective, and The Mirror Crack’d is an equally head-scratching film in hiding our leading lady even more than the original novel did making Marple a supporting character in her own mystery.
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The second Agatha Christie adaptation to star Peter Ustinov as master detective Hercule Poirot works better than the first, even if the awkward opening (necessary to wrap-up the case nearly two-hours later) feels completely out of place until the end of the film. While looking into an insurance matter, Poirot travels to an isolated hotel on an island in the Adriatic Sea where the focus of his inquiry, an egotistical gold digging actress (Diana Rigg) who makes more enemies than movies, turns up dead on a secluded beach.
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I have many of the same issues with the 1978 adaptation of Agatha Christie‘s Death on the Nile as I did with Kenneth Branagh‘s version nearly half a century later. The first film to feature Peter Ustinov as renown detective Hercule Poirot is a dreadful bore that takes more than an hour to get going attempting to rely on beautiful shots of Egypt and overheard snippets conversations to build tepid tension as it treads water until the murder aboard the paddle steamer finally takes place.
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Breaking up the Agatha Christie novel into a three-episode series, Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials casts Mia McKenna-Bruce as Lady Eileen Brent, Bundle to her friends, who takes it upon herself to solve a murder others are all too willing to sweep under the rug. Over the course of her investigation, Bundle will uncover a plot to steal a formula to strengthen metal and the existence of a secret society both of which appear linked to the sudden death of Bundle’s friend.
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Kenneth Branagh stars and directs in his third adaptation of a Hercule Poirot mystery, this time Agatha Christie‘s 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party. Quite different from the novel, screenwriter Michael Green plays up a supernatural element to the story allowing the film to make use of a host of horror tropes. Relocating the story to Venice, where Poirot (Branagh) has apparently retired, the detective gets dragged into attending a Halloween party and séance by old friend and mystery author Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) who made them both famous after basing her fictional detective off of Poirot.
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