Teresa Reviews “Evil Under the Sun” (1982)

Fidelity to text: 3 stranglers

The usual condensing of characters, revising the location, plus a sex-change and new occupations to ramp up the show biz aspects. But it’s all in service to the story.

Quality of movie on its own: 4 stranglers although Bill wouldn’t agree

This was a terrific bitch-fest; sharp, witty, caustic. Everyone got in great lines. Agatha’s plot, however, didn’t quite work.

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

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I’ll start by apologizing for not figuring out which classic ship appeared as Horace Blatt’s yacht. She’s a lovely ship with clean lines and just the right size (in 1935 or so) for a cockney millionaire to own and show off. These days, millionaires demand mega-yachts to forcibly demonstrate to us peasants how rich they are. They have no sense of restraint at all, despite mega-yachts not being able to moor in charming island coves like those in the Balearic Islands and why else would you own a yacht other than to cruise between and visit charming, scenic islands? There are many boats in this movie, all correct for the period from paddle boats to local ferries to a gorgeous, vintage wooden speedboat to Sir Horace’s yacht. Alas, they remain unnamed.

There’s plenty more eye candy to go around in Peter Ustinov’s second outing as Hercule Poirot. Maggie Smith as Daphne Castle and Diana Rigg as Arlena Marshall are just the beginning and my, how those women despise each other. You can tell they’ve got a long history between them. Both of them worked their way up from the chorus, using similar methods, but Daphne got the better deal. As the King of Tyrania’s mistress, she got his summer palace when he married for “services rendered.” That turned her into an exclusive innkeeper catering to the rich. Hard work to be sure, but better than relying on a string of men as you age and your looks fade.

That appears to be Arlena Stuart Marshall’s fate. She’s a former Broadway star, married to a man she doesn’t love, stepmother to a daughter she despises (the feeling is mutual) and chasing after handsome, younger men.

She’s not that bright. She’s a bag full of neediness, including the intense desire to be the center of attention at all times. What she is — as Poirot observes — is the type of woman whom men care for easily and of whom they easily tire. Horace Blatt proves it; he had a brief affair with Arlena and it’s not her he wants back: it’s the diamond he gave her.

However, Arlena is able to escape the fate of becoming an aging and embarrassing caricature of herself by getting murdered. She has a torrid affair with the wrong man, he steals from her and she doesn’t realize what happened. But he does.

Since Arlena Marshall is a Broadway singing star, the script ran with that notion and many of the changes to the text reflect Arlena’s show business past, including a show-stopping version of Cole Porter’s “You’re The Top” sung by her and Daphne. Most of the background music was Cole Porter in one form or another.

Thus, Miss Brewster, spinster, becomes Rex Brewster, writer, raconteur, and man-about-town. Does he make you think of Noel Coward, getting all the best lines? He should. Like the rest of the cast, it’s clear Roddy McDowall had a blast.

Arlena left Rex hanging high and dry when she refused to sign the release for the lurid, scandalous, factual tell-all biography he wrote about her.

Similarly, the Gardeners are made over into a pair of Broadway producers, chasing after Arlena to star in their next production. She can open a show like nobody else. How do they know? Because Arlena starred in their last show, it opened to rave reviews and boffo box office and then a few weeks later, she walked out, leaving them and the rest of the cast in the lurch and debt to the rafters. They need Arlena desperately to recoup their losses but is she interested? Not a chance.

Then there’s Patrick Redfern. He’s a handsome man, well-aware of his attractiveness, so Arlena doesn’t have to work hard at chasing him. It’s a mutual attraction on full, immoral display, much to the dismay of her husband, Kenneth, and his wife, Christine, and the caustic amusement of the rest of the guests. Is Kenneth happy? Not at all. Is Christine amused? Not one bit. Arlena makes both of them angry and bitter.

It’s no real surprise when Arlena is murdered. Eventually, she makes an enemy of almost everyone she encounters. The question is who did it, when everyone is proved to have an alibi for when the murder must have occurred.

This is where the plot didn’t work for me.

In the novel, the murder takes place on a very tight timetable. The murderers have to work closely together, coordinating their actions along with their unimpeachable and unsuspecting witnesses to make the scheme work. When I read the novel, I didn’t have a problem following along and accepting the distances that had to be traversed in order for one person to be in two places at once.

When I watched the movie, I couldn’t buy it. I’m gawking at those cliffs, those steep, narrow paths suitable only for mountain goats, those flights of stairs, that ladder stretching down the side of another cliff, that hotel with still more stairs, the sail around the island to get to the isolated cove at just the right time, and, and, and. You get the picture.

Words can disguise the actual running around that has to take place for the plot to work. The more running around needed — with split-second timing — the more chances for the plot to fail. By its very nature, a movie is a visual medium. It shows the running around and split-second timing, as the characters race about like gazelles with cheetahs on their heels. It has to look plausible for the audience to accept it. If the scheme looks like it depends on Olympic-level athleticism to pull off and those are normal people and not superheroes racing about, then — in movie terms — it fails. It’s not believable.

This inability to suspend disbelief is not a fault of the director or the cast. They had to work within the constraints of the plot as set out by Agatha when she wrote the novel. Some of the changes actually made the plot more plausible than the novel (Christine waving over the cliff instead of Christine prancing across a narrow suspension bridge and Christine tossing the bottle into the sea instead of into the garden).

But other than that, I loved this movie. Everything worked for me from the opening murder on the moors to the dénouement when the murderers are hauled off to jail. This film even supplied a joke reused in the David Suchet Poirot episode The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim. Very early on, Poirot arrives at the insurance company to report that they must pay the death benefits to the husband of the murdered woman found on the moors. He’s announced by the secretary as Hercules Parrot.