Teresa Reviews “Ten Little Indians” (1989)

Teresa Reviews “Ten Little Indians” (1989) and discovers the third time is not the charm for this African-set thriller

Fidelity to text: 2 weapons

This is producer Harry Alan Tower’s third try. You’d think by this time he’d get the story right. No such luck.

Quality of film on its own: 2 weapons

What a wasted opportunity. Beautiful, exotic landscapes, dangerous animals, an intriguing setting, a mostly all-star cast, yet the movie flowed like treacle in January.

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

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

Movie producer Harry Alan Towers (1920-2009) lived a colorful and dramatic life. Among other things, as he played fast and loose with contracts and the truth like all good producers do, he acquired the film rights to And Then There Were None. He made the film (retitled Ten Little Indians) in 1965 and set it in an Austrian schloss in the dead of winter. He also hung onto the rights. He filmed it again in 1974, this time setting it at a grand hotel isolated in hundreds of miles of Iranian desert. And he retained the rights.

You would think that by adaptation number three, Towers would know the story backwards and forwards. He was the producer, not the director or the writer, but producers have a lot of power. He should have gotten a much better movie, considering he had Agatha’s story, a mostly all-star cast, and the great idea of filming on location in South Africa.

We’ll start with the script. The hacks writing it didn’t waste time introducing us to the characters. Each of the ten people stranded in the safari camp had a different reason for being there, yet their confessions were either nonexistent or badly truncated. Did they assume we in the audience already knew the story? That’s a terrible assumption because there’s always a new generation who haven’t watched any of the previous versions, seen the play, or read the book.

There’s also the internal inconsistency with Marion Marshall (Brenda Vaccaro). Beginning with the 1965 version, Emily Brent, vindictively religious spinster, has been remade into a famous actress. Okay. Movies update with the times. Except that in both the 1965 and the 1974 versions, the other nine targets of U.N. Owen recognized her.

If Marion Marshall is a famous actress, someone should have said something as soon as they saw her. Nothing, nada, she’s one of the crowd, until she makes her late-in-the-movie confession to Vera about murdering her lesbian lover to protect her budding Hollywood career.

There’s also the little matter of Brenda Vaccaro’s wardrobe, hair, and makeup. She’s a movie star. She’s glamorous. Except she didn’t have enough luggage for the clothes I saw onscreen, nor did she have a lady’s maid along to keep her glamorous and well-groomed at all times. Vera was almost as bad. She also lugged a (smaller) closet with her as did Mrs. Rogers. Maybe they owned interdimensional luggage where a single suitcase holds an entire department store, complete with jewelry counter, makeup bar, and beauty salon.

The setting was moved from a remote, isolated island to a remote, isolated camp in the bush. What a great idea! Cue Tarzan’s yell! Yet the script didn’t do a darned thing with it, other than have a lone lioness and a monkey show up briefly. We got a few mentions of bugs. That was it. Where were the animals? They hadn’t been hunted to extinction in 1935. I expected monkeys, antelopes, lions. George of the Jungle did a better job depicting Africa than this.

Why didn’t U.N. Owen lace the surrounding bush with working traps? Blore found a leg-trap by stepping on it, and then, a miracle! He pried its steel jaws open and walked away. No blood. No gaping tears in his trousers. No agonizing pain. Not even a limp! And he didn’t tell anyone!

There should have been all kinds of Tarzan movie traps to take full advantage of the setting. Where was the quicksand? The venomous snakes? U. N. Owen could have executed his victims in far more interesting fashions and in ways that encouraged them to stick close to the camp and not go off exploring. Nothing. We might as well have been in a hotel in Cape Town.

The script also ignored how the camp was run. Who kept those campfires and torches burning? Who kept the food laying around from being instantly overrun by flies and rodents? Who did the washing up? Who pumped the water for Vera’s gratuitous shower scene? I will admit that we saw a lot less of Vera than I expected. The director showed astonishing self-discipline. Or lethargy, in keeping with how he directed the rest of the film.

The cast did their best but again, the script didn’t give them anything to work with. Frank Stallone played Philip Lombard, great white hunter with a dark past. Previous movie adaptations waved aside Lombard’s guilt by having his friend impersonate him after he committed suicide. We don’t know if that’s the case here, but whether he’s the seasoned African hand or not, he had no charisma and no chemistry with Vera.

Worse, the script demanded that he vacillate between competence (fixing the radio and identifying a lioness by her paw prints) and incompetence (not recognizing blanks, organizing the camp, or figuring out how to lead everyone out of there). He was so passive. If he was filling in for the late Philip Lombard, then we should have gotten scenes showing him out of his depth but gamely trying. Nothing. He was useless, and Vera was right to shoot him.

The soul of the novel, the play, and the film versions is Justice Wargrave. Donald Pleasance played him, and he was … adequate. The director didn’t care so why should he? Dr. Werner (Yehuda Efroni), his dupe, is equally important. We should have seen Justice Wargrave seducing Dr. Werner, playing on his fear of death and desire to stay alive at all costs. But Dr. Werner was a fatalist. A fatalist wouldn’t have fallen in with Justice Wargrave’s plans. He wouldn’t have cared enough. Yet the script said he did and so that’s what happened.

There’s also Justice Wargrave’s death scene. Vera, Lombard, Blore, and Dr. Werner find his body. He’s been shot through the forehead and is hanging upside down from a tent roof (at last! A Tarzan-type scene.) His body lands on the ground. If you know the plot, you know where I’m going with this. How did Justice Wargrave, a sick old man, survive being unceremoniously dropped on his head from a height, slam down onto his back, and then swiftly and secretly recover to continue masterminding the panicked victims? How could he play dead so long and so publicly and no one notice?

Because the plot said so.

One nice touch showed up. When sophisticate Anthony Marston arrived, dropped off by a biplane, we see a teddy bear stuffed into the leg pocket of his flight suit. When he dressed for dinner (Marston also owned interdimensional luggage), the teddy bear disappeared. No one asked why he carried the bear around, another plot mistake because it would have given us a clue to his personality. It could have been a charm warding off death (ironic!), or he brought it at U. N. Owen’s request (setup!). Anything! I wondered how Blore’s murder would be finessed because there are no bears in Africa, and they are mentioned in the poem. Marston’s teddy does the honors.

While there was no literal quicksand in the movie, there was plenty in the pacing. Ten Little Indians was slow and lethargic. No energy. No panic. The most interesting characters (Mrs. Rogers in particular) went first. Clearly the director and the cast were bitten by tsetse flies and got sleeping sickness. By the end of the movie, you’ll feel like you have it as well.

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