Teresa Reviews “Evil Under the Sun” (2001)

Fidelity to text: 3 stranglers

Along with the usual changes, Hastings, Miss Lemon, and Japp show up. Miss Lemon works the best, Japp’s way out of his jurisdiction, and Hastings sort of works.

Quality of movie on its own: 3 stranglers

This dragged. Where was the glamor? The witty repartee? The Cole Porter soundtrack? The great boats? Not here.

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

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This version of Evil was flat. It dragged. It had no sparkle. Am I saying that the Peter Ustinov extravaganza clocking in at one hour and fifty-seven minutes moved faster than this one hour and thirty-eight minutes long flick? Yes, I am. Twenty minutes longer, yet it moved faster and was more engaging. It was funnier, it had singing, it had Cole Porter in the background, and most of all, it had serious star power.

Depending on who the character is supposed to be, star power can matter quite a lot. If your central character is an aging, needy movie star who everyone gazes at in adoration, then having Diana Rigg play that character adds multiple levels of complexity. You stare at Arlena Stuart Marshall — which she craves! You sense that she’s not that bright, although she doesn’t know it. She’s always relied on her looks and sex appeal to get by, but she’s getting older. You gawk at the famous, aging movie star foolishly chasing after a younger, married man; oblivious to the presence of her husband and his wife. Diana Rigg was famous and so it’s easy to believe Arlena Stuart Marshall was famous.

The actress playing Arlena Stuart (Louise Delamere) isn’t famous. She’s pretty enough but she doesn’t carry the cultural baggage that Diana “Emma Peel” Rigg does, nor does she have the wattage to light up the screen. Similarly, when you watch The Mirror Crack’d (which also centers around a famous, aging movie star), you should watch the Angela Lansbury version. Elizabeth Taylor plays the aging movie star in that film and you can absolutely believe that a true fan would get out of her sickbed, slap on makeup, break quarantine, and fangirl all over her idol. The other actresses in the other two adaptations? Well, no, because they’re not Elizabeth Taylor.

But I digress.

This film opens with a cyclist discovering a strangled woman in the woods. While she’s making her gruesome discovery, the camera keeps cutting back to a sweaty vicar intoning about evil Jezebels. Is there a link? Sort of, but it was badly handled, and we don’t find out what until two years later. That’s when the sweaty vicar shows up at the island resort and mutters portentously about evil Jezebels who should get what’s coming to them whenever he sees Arlena. Why does he do this? In a few mumbled sentences he reveals that his wife left him for another man. That colored his views so much that the vicar can’t recognize Arlena’s tragedy. Two years have passed since the body in the woods, yet when Poirot and the plot demands it, the vicar is suddenly able to recognize the villain despite seeing him during meals at the resort ever since arriving and not recognizing him. The vicar never — because of plot requirements — feels any sympathy for Arlena despite her being strangled.

Hollywood hates Christianity. I get that many religious leaders, being human, don’t always live up to what a priest should be. But they are not, by definition, evil and small-minded by virtue of being ministers. Yet here we go again. This was more clumsy writing in a clumsy script. Agatha was never clumsy. Her Rev. Lane showed nuance.

I said two years later? Yep, two years after the body in the woods, Hastings returns to London from Argentina to open a restaurant.

Why would he do that? As an investment? There are no cities in Argentina that can support fine dining? This was a clumsy attempt to bring Hastings back from the ranch, yet not a single mention is made of his wife. I guess she’s running the ranch while Hastings loses their life’s savings. Poirot becomes deathly ill at Hastings’ restaurant and must retire to the island resort to regain his health.

The island resort was far more interesting than the plot. It’s Burgh Island; an unusual piece of real estate since it’s an island at high tide and connected to the mainland by a causeway at low tide. There’s a sea tractor to transport guests past the tides. It’s a bizarre contraption that Wiley E. Coyote would devise. Think of an open-sided wagon on stilts atop enormous wheels. Agatha stayed at the resort and later used the setting for And Then There Were None and Evil Under the Sun. Seeing the resort she used for the novel was a treat.

There are, since it’s an island, a few boats and they play important roles in the story. Horace Blatt has a small sailboat. Sometimes his two sails are red and sometimes white. There are also nice plank-built rowboats, suitable for oars or for an outboard motor.

Poirot and Hastings arrive on the island via the sea tractor and meet the vicar, Arlena Stuart, and the other suspects. Miss Lemon stays behind to catch up on her filing. There are some amusing scenes of Poirot enduring the doctor-ordered health treatments and suffering through dietary restrictions including drinking glasses of pureed grass clippings. He needs something to enliven his days. Fortunately for Poirot (although not for her) Arlena Stuart gets strangled on the beach of the remote and difficult-to-access Pixie Cove.

A reprieve! Poirot springs into action. Japp arrives too, although he must have flown from London since he arrived so quick. During their investigation, Poirot sends Miss Lemon off to do some sleuthing, unearthing valuable information. Those scenes were excellent. Miss Lemon deserved her own series, where she sets up shop as a detective.

Eventually, we reach the explanation of how Arlena was strangled, and it suffers from the same problem as the 1982 film. What’s believable in a book isn’t believable onscreen. The timing has to be split-second. The villains race around the island like Olympic-level athletes, unnoticed by any of the other hotel guests. I couldn’t accept it. It wasn’t physically possible to commit murder this way.

Worse, it’s not possible that there was no evidence for Japp to find. If Poirot found a small section of glass bottle, then where’s the rest of the bottle? If Horace Blatt could leave recognizable footprints in the sand at Pixie Cove, then why didn’t Arlena’s strangulation leave signs of a struggle? Yet apparently, the sand was smooth and undisturbed.

I couldn’t believe it, and the bland characters didn’t get me to care. Stick with the Ustinov film. Despite needing superhero levels of athleticism, it’s more plausible and more fun than this version.