Teresa Reviews “A Caribbean Mystery” (1983)

Teresa reviews “A Caribbean Mystery” (1983) and found it a faithful, slow cruise to the islands.

Fidelity to text: 4 1/2 poison bottles

Some minor characters disappear and everyone turned into Americans, but it’s all here, setting the stage for subsequent adaptations.

Quality of movie on its own: 3 1/2 poison bottles

It’s a little slow; slow enough that some missed plot elements could have been worked into the script.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movies on her podcast.

This first adaptation of A Caribbean Mystery set the stage for the next two, as they also made the same change to a major character.

In the novel, Esther Walters is Mr. Rafiel’s secretary. Mysteriously, although no other names were changed, Esther became Ruth in this version so we’ll stick with her new name. Ruth’s a good employee. She’s also got very poor taste in men. Her ne’er-do-well, wastrel husband died in a drunken accident and left her penniless. Getting widowed was a blessing for her. She had to start working for Mr. Rafiel to support herself and her child. She’s also going to be a rich woman when Mr. Rafiel dies, unbeknownst to her.

Jackson, Mr. Rafiel’s manservant, masseuse, and dogsbody, is a snoop. He discovers Ruth’s potential windfall and tells the wrong person. The wrong person is Tim Kendall.

In the novel, Ruth knows Tim Kendall but she doesn’t flirt with him. At the climax, you, dear reader, discover that she’s in love with Tim, but until that moment, there’s no sign they’ve been conducting an affair under his wife’s and her boss’s respective noses. They’re friendly — guest to innkeeper — and that’s all.

This film changed that, a change repeated in the two subsequent movies. Ruth is clearly on Tim Kendall’s side. She disparages his wife, Molly. She repeats rumors about Molly being mentally unbalanced and unfaithful. She, believing anything a bad boy tells her, is sure that poor Tim is trapped in a loveless marriage to a cheating, crazy wife.

Ruth does not know that Tim is a murderer and he’s very careful to make sure that she, potential heiress, never learns anything different. His plan — which he naturally does not share with Ruth — is to marry her after Molly’s supposed suicide when a decent interval has passed. At some later date, following the path laid down with Molly and at least one other former wife, maybe two, Ruth will die tragically and poor Tim will look for another stupid, naïve rich woman who believes what a charming wastrel tells her.

Having her character rewritten means you, dear viewer, aren’t surprised when Ruth defends Tim and blames the murders on crazy Molly. I can’t decide if this rewrite is a flaw or not, but movies are a different medium from text, and they’ve got to compress motivation and add action.

The variation from here on in the Caribbean adaptations is how complicit Ruth (or Esther) is with Tim Kendall’s plans. I’ve always wondered what happened to Ruth afterwards, when she realized what a lovestruck fool she’d been. We don’t get a hint here. The Joan Hickson version (1989) doesn’t cover it either. It’s only in the 2013 Julia McKenzie film where Ruth/Esther sits at the bar with newly widowed Greg Dyson and they stare moodily into their drinks.

Major Palgrave no longer has a glass eye (his right). Screenwriter Sue Grafton decided he didn’t need it for her plot, I guess. That’s a flaw because misunderstanding his vision defects slowed Miss Marple down, giving her a valid reason for making a mistake about who Major Palgrave was looking at when he showed her the photograph of a murderer.

Sue Grafton also remade everyone into an American. As Miss Marple, Helen Hayes may have come from St. Mary Mead in Merry Olde England, but she doesn’t sound like it. None of the other guests did either, so it worked out.

Helen Hayes may not be the definitive Miss Marple, but she performed admirably. She played Miss Marple truer to the novel than some of her filmed counterparts. You’d never believe that Julia McKenzie or Joan Hickson would be seen as dithery or dotty. Their eyes gleam with intelligence, Julia McKenzie especially. Helen Hayes, however, played a foolish old woman to a tee. Watch her manipulate Dr. Graham into coming around to her point of view, gently persuading him that it’s his idea to investigate Major Palgrave’s death. Similarly, when she discusses the case with Captain Daventry, she leads him gently down the garden path until he comes around to her way of thinking.

Helen also has wonderful scenes with Bernard Hughes, playing Mr. Rafiel.

Believe it or not, they have chemistry. Sexual chemistry. Yes, yes, I know that we live in a sex-saturated world but not really. Sex is only acceptable between young and gorgeous people, not when you’re old and gray. But watch them together. Watch Mr. Rafiel watching her, looking wistful. As if he’s seeing a different life, a life he could have had with this charming, witty, sharp, canny woman who gives as good as she gets. If only he had met her decades ago.

But they never met, until they ended up together at the resort hotel solving a murder and that life together is no longer possible. Those scenes are wonderful and all done with longing glances. This is what great actors can do with a good script.

In addition to making everyone American, Sue Grafton put serious effort into showing the power of rumor and gossip. Throughout the film, characters discuss what they’ve heard, from someone. Sometimes the gossip is true and sometimes not, but everyone assumes that what they’re told is true even though no one knows where the story originally came from. How does everyone know that their hostess, Molly, is mentally unbalanced? That she had an unsavory boyfriend in the past before meeting the eminently suitable Tim Kendall? That Major Palgrave suffers from high blood pressure? That Lucky Dyson and George Hillingdon are having an affair?

That last one was easy, because Lucky made it obvious. But the other rumors are harder to pin down. Miss Marple works at it, but even she, super-sleuth, can’t quite find the source. It is, of course, Tim Kendall, setting the stage for his nefarious plans. As the innkeeper at the resort, he’s in and out of everyone’s room, talking to all the guests, overseeing the staff, and he’s friendly and chatty. The right word in the right ear, like, say Ruth Walters who’s ready to lap up anything he tells her, and the narrative he wants everyone to know is all over the resort. It’s really well done. The guests are regulars, coming back year after year for their holiday and when the Kendalls bought the resort, the guests remained loyal. They’re primed to believe what they’re told.

It’s an interesting film, slow at times. Unlike the later adaptations, there’s no voodoo and little about the lives of the staff. But it’s worth watching Miss Marple and Mr. Rafiel flirt while solving a mystery.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.