December 20, 2024

Teresa Reviews Puzzle of End House (1989)

Teresa Peschel Agatha Christie Movies, Teresa's Book and Movie Reviews

Teresa Reviews Riddle of End House (1989) and found this a let-down after the faithful Russian adaptations of Ackroyd and And Then There Were None.

Fidelity to text: 4 ½ guns

George Challenger’s drug ring gets downsized to almost nothing, and Freddie’s husband disappears. Everything else remains.

Quality of movie: 3 ½ guns

Bizarre subtitles, non-charismatic actors, and lethargic pacing make this not as good as it should be.

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

You can count on the Russians to make faithful adaptations of Agatha’s novels, and this film is no exception. Sadly, faithful doesn’t mean exciting. Casting still matters as do subplots that make every red herring count so when Poirot reveals the true murderer, you’re all the more surprised.

Reducing George Challenger’s role to not much more than a walk-on removed a great subplot about supplying cocaine to the rich and famous, including Nick Buckley and her dear friend, Freddie Rice. Freddie lost her best line; in the novel, she tells Poirot that Nick lies. Other people in the novel also tell Poirot that Nick shouldn’t be believed. He discounts them as being jealous or having motives to cover up their own crimes. He swiftly concludes that Freddie is a drug addict and so, not reliable when she says Nick lies.

Does this mean Poirot can be swayed by a pretty damsel in distress who needs him to rescue her? That he can accept at face value what the pretty damsel tells him? That he believes Nick luckily escaped death several times despite there being no evidence or witnesses? You bet. Removing those statements removes the pleasure of seeing Poirot fool himself.

Freddie also loses her drug-addled, abusive husband. This removes another red herring — who was that man stalking Freddie and possibly Nick? Who wrote those threatening letters? Who shot at Freddie and Nick and missed, and which woman was the gunman aiming at? Gone.

Ellen, the creepy housekeeper, with her creepy son and odd husband is gone too. She’s the one who tells Poirot how Nick would do anything to keep End House, that the house is evil, and there’s a secret compartment in one of the rooms. Does Nick know about this secret compartment? She claims she doesn’t, but she loves End House, she’s lived there all her life, and her adored grandfather, Old Nick, surely would have shared the secret.

The added complexity matters very much because the core mystery is very basic. A young woman wants to inherit big money. Who is about to become a major heiress? Why, her cousin who is also named Magdala Buckley, even though their nicknames are different. How can she steal the inheritance? By claiming to be the fiancée to famous aviator Michael Seaton instead of her cousin. With his true fiancée safely dead and because the relationship had been carefully concealed since Michael Seaton’s uncle would have cut him off without a penny, no one would notice the substitution. Seaton’s will said Magdala Buckley, but not which Magdala Buckley. There were two, a fact Hastings, all unknowing, made clear to Poirot when he rattled on about nicknames and how many there are for Margaret and how few for Frederica. Instead, this Hastings does nothing but watch Moonraker (1979) on TV. Yes, the film’s a contemporary instead of being set in 1932.

There’s also the added nuance of why Nick becomes jealous of Freddie, why she was jealous of Maggie, why she had more than one reason to murder Maggie and a reason to frame Freddie for Maggie’s murder. Men such as James Lazarus or Michael Seaton would be infatuated with Nick, but as they got to know her better, they walked away. James Lazarus chose Freddie. Michael Seaton chose Maggie. No one chose Nick, other than George who’s too old (nearly 40!), and supports himself by dealing cocaine.

All those details are gone. While they’re minor details, they’re telling details proving even Poirot can be swayed by a pretty face and that a motive for murder can be more than just inheriting great wealth. Nick also got revenge on her cousin who stole her lover and framed her best friend who stole her other lover.

The subtitles proved that you need more than AI to translate. Besides major pronoun trouble, they often followed Russian sentence structure rather than English, which made for weird or confusing reading. If you don’t know the story, the subtitles will confuse or baffle you. I especially noticed the use of the word “expensive” as an endearment. I think the original word in Russian was “precious.”

There’s still a lot to like. The opening scenes set up how everyone at the Cornwall resort knew who Poirot was. He got fan-girled by a visitor. Freddie recognized him, as did George Challenger and James Lazarus. The Crofts know. A big story in the newspaper made a point of saying that with Poirot in town, some criminal elements had left town rather than be caught. This gently leads to a clue: if everyone in Cornwall knows who Poirot is, then how is it that Nick can claim to not really know much about him? Celebrity visitors get gossiped about.

I also wish we’d spent more time with Bert and Millie Croft, the overly-friendly, overly helpful Australians who rent the lodge at End House. Millie Croft is played by Ita Ever, who portrayed Miss Marple in the Russian film Secret of the Blackbirds (1983) (A Pocket Full of Rye) and in 1990, in the Estonian five-episode TV series Miss Marples’ Tales. These friendly lodgers had persuaded Nick to write a will six months before the story opened when she had surgery for her appendix. Do you wonder about that plot point? When Agatha wrote Peril in 1931, surgery of any kind was a major risk. That includes an appendectomy, which is outpatient surgery today. Did the Crofts’ suggestion of a will give Nick the idea later on? It seems likely! They function as comic relief throughout, all bluff heartiness, until you learn that Millie is a master forger. She and Bert are hiding out because of her spinal injury incurred while on the run from the police.

The seance at the climax, when Poirot unmasks the real killer, works, but it could have been better. It needed someone shooting Freddie to add drama and, of course, it really needed Nick slipping the pistol that she used to murder Maggie into Freddie’s coat pocket.

Otherwise, the film is a faithful adaptation. It works, but it could have been better. Bert and Millie Croft were both perfectly cast. So was Charles Vyse, Nicks’s stuffy lawyer cousin who likes her far more than she likes him.

After that, well, casting was adequate. Hastings was a nonentity. So was George Challenger. Nick needed to have more a spooky edge. Maggie got very little screentime but she looked enough like Nick to make the murder plot plausible. And as our Poirot, Anatoliy Ravikovich performed acceptably but like Alfred Molina in Murder on the Orient Express (2001), he wasn’t well served by wardrobe. His Poirot verged on casual, even, dare I say it, sloppy. Poirot is never sloppy. Or casual. David Suchet has no competition to worry about here!