Teresa Reviews “Mystery of End House” (2004)

Teresa reviews “The Mystery of End House” (2004) and finds the animated version of Poirot to be disappointingly thin.

Fidelity to text: 2 1/2 pistols

The plot remains, but greatly shrunken, dumbed down, and with a cute, spunky heroine and her duck added.

Quality of film on its own: 2 pistols

Bottom of the barrel animation liberally festooned with dangling plot threads.

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

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.
Was there anything real here? Besides in some parallel universe where Agatha Christie changed faces every few years?

OLM, Inc. (formerly Oriental Light and Magic) is a Japanese animation and film studio. They’ve made dozens and dozens of animated shows, some lasting only a few seasons and others running for decades. Their anime covers a wide, wide range of subjects, and they’re always looking for new possibilities.

There are many, many Japanese fans of Agatha Christie. Her books are very popular. There’s even an annual literary contest called the Agatha Christie Award, given to the best unpublished mystery. The winner gets published by the Hayakawa Publishing Corporation.

And thus, the stars aligned and here we are. OLM, Inc., decided to capitalize on the fondness for Agatha and make an anime series based on her stories and novels.

It’s called Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot and Marple. The show ran for 39 episodes (2004-2005) and lives on in reruns. Manga versions of those episodes were also published. The 39 episodes ranged from short stories covered in one episode to novels that spanned three or four shows. (You can find them, as of 2022, on YouTube.)

The unifying conceit is Maybelle (sometimes spelled Mabel) West. She’s Raymond West’s daughter. In case you forgot, he’s Jane Marple’s writer nephew. Maybelle wants to be a detective but she’s not content to take lessons from her great aunt, Jane. She apprentices herself to Hercule Poirot.

Yes, Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple live in the same universe, at least in this series. Sometimes Maybelle solves crimes with Poirot and sometimes, when she’s home, she solves them with Miss Marple. Poirot and Miss Marple never meet although it’s a certainty that Maybelle regales her aunt with Poirot stories and vice-versa.

Maybelle does not work alone. She has a duck, Oliver, who while he can’t speak, is the model of cute animal sidekicks. He’s brilliant, devoted, makes friends with everyone, only makes a mess when it’s funny, and brings the detectives’ attention to important clues to further the plot.

This three-episode sequence is based on Peril At End House, retitled for no discernable reason. Captain Hastings, Poirot’s assistant in the novel, gets relegated to the background. Virtually his entire part was handed over either to Maybelle or the duck. Inspector Japp was replaced by Inspector Sharpe (you can guess why) but otherwise remains much as he did in the novel. Miss Lemon stays in the office.

The storyline follows the general outline of the novel, but it is grossly simplified. The Australian lodgers and forgers, Bert and Mildred Croft, disappear entirely which was fine. I’d expect to see them go because there’s only so much time available and this is a series developed for kids. So does Ellen the parlor-maid, who fades into the background and loses her hubby and son.

I wasn’t entirely surprised to see that Frederica Rice’s storyline got simplified; she may still be a cocaine addict but her struggles got lessened. The backstory relating to her abusive ex-husband was reduced to the point where it was never concluded. Her redemption and new love both vanished.

George Challenger, Nick Buckley’s would-be fiancé, is no longer a secret drug-dealer working in cahoots with his Harley Street uncle and supplying cocaine to Frederica. He’s become a naval commander whose sole purpose is to look manly in the background. Likewise, Nick’s cousin and lawyer Charles Vyse becomes a background decoration.

At least Dr. Graham and the nursing staff remain.

The plot revolving around Nick got simplified to the point of incoherence. Nick Buckley had many reasons for murdering her cousin, Maggie. The money to save End House was a major part of it, but she also resented the fact that Michael Seaton, aviation hero, fell in love with her cousin. It was Nick who shot a bullet through her own hat, Nick who sabotaged the picture to make it fall, Nick who sabotaged the stairs to make it look like someone or something was targeting her.

It was Nick who gave her scarlet shawl to Maggie to keep her warm so when Maggie was shot, everyone assumed Nick had been the target all along.

All well and good and all those scenes were set up in the film and then they went nowhere! Oliver the duck delivers the bullet to Poirot and Maybelle (and Hastings).

Poirot confronts Nick about the hole in her hat, she admits to having accidents but denies that anything is wrong. They discuss whether or not ghosts in her ancestral home are to blame and then nothing. Who shot through Nick’s hat? Who caused the huge painting to fall onto her bed? Who loosened the step in the cliff staircase?

You’ll never learn from Poirot.

Similarly, you’ll never learn how much cocaine is floating around or Nick’s complex reasons for choosing Frederica, her best friend, to be her patsy. It wasn’t merely that Frederica was a viable suspect. It was that Frederica could find love and she couldn’t. A point the novel makes is that Nick Buckley, despite her superficial charm and vivacity, couldn’t sustain a relationship. As a man got to know her better, he’d become uneasy and leave. Why? Because, as Ellen her parlor-maid said, there was an evil strain in this branch of the Buckley family and in End House.

The skeleton remains but the heart of the story is gone. Nick’s complexity and tragedy is gone. What’s also gone is that Nick knew who Poirot was. She needed an unimpeachable witness to the murder attempts on her life so the police would believe her story and Poirot was conveniently available. That’s glossed over too.

It’s a strange little movie in strange series. Each episode opens with a romantic song while the camera focuses on Maybelle dancing through a flowery meadow and closes with another romantic ballad.

You’d think you were watching a romance about a budding young girl finding love for the first time except Maybelle looks like she’s thirteen (apparently, she’s sixteen). It was creepy.

The animation is very bad. It’s stiff. Characters don’t react and their mouths barely move. There are long, static pans over watercolor backgrounds. It’s not quite Flintstones level where Maybelle (or the duck) race along in front of a repeating background, but it’s off-putting. Yet at the same time, there are some lovely bits where feathers drift in front of Nick when she’s telling the story of how the painting fell on her or when the fireworks are going off, concealing the sound of gunshots.

The point of watching the series is to introduce kids to Agatha Christie. They won’t see anything in-depth or objectionable and there is a mystery to be solved. For adults, it’s got all the savor of unsalted, boiled rice.