Teresa Reviews The Alphabet Murders (1965): Rated XYZ

Fidelity to text: 1/2 poisoned dart

The underlying plot of The A.B.C. Murders exists, but nothing else remains. Even Hastings got a major rewrite, turning him into a bungling Robert Morley.

Quality of movie on its own: 1 poisoned dart

Dreadful but not as bad as Innocent Lies (1995), which was deliberately offensive, obscure, and icky. Suffer through this, and you’ll understand why Agatha refused to license film rights for years.

Dear Reader, Bill and I took one for the team, sitting through this turkey so you won’t have to endure it.

I wasn’t expecting anything stellar like Witness for the Prosecution (1957), but I did expect to be entertained. Maybe even laugh. Tony Randall can act, so can Robert Morley, and both of them have impeccable comic timing. Their talent wasn’t on display here.

There’s also the director of this travesty, Frank Tashlin. He’s one of those Renaissance men: capable of animating and directing Looney Tunes cartoons as well as writing and direction live-action movies. He made several well-regarded comedies, including six movies with Jerry Lewis. Where was that talent? Not here. I’m not sure who thought Tashlin was a good choice for directing a mystery since that’s not the kind of movie he made.

Although … oh dear God. The light dawneth. Somebody wanted to turn Hercule Poirot into Inspector Clouseau. One is Belgian, one is French, but both cultures eat horsemeat so they’re the same, right? That’s an actual joke in the film, by the way. Just in case you were still planning on ignoring my rating and seeing for yourself.

That explains so much! Such as why the film opens with Tony Randall talking directly to the audience as himself on a movie studio’s backlot and then turning into Hercule Poirot. If you’re going to break the fourth wall so brazenly, daring the audience, the movie had better be funny. Which this one is not.

It also explains why Randall keeps telling everyone the mysterious blonde is six feet tall. That would be Anita Ekberg. She plays Amanda Beatrice Cross (get it? Huh? Huh?), woman of mystery. She’s also five foot seven. Since she regularly wears flats in the movie (the better to run away from the terrible dialog she’s forced to recite) it’s impossible for me to accept that Randall misjudges her height so badly when otherwise, he’s the person most likely to know what’s going on. Other actors literally tower over Anita, including her shrink, Duncan Doncaster (Guy Rolfe, six foot four) and paramour, Franklin Clarke (James Villiers, also six foot four). Tony Randall is five foot eight so she’s not towering over him.

But if Randall is playing Poirot as a version of Clouseau — shudder — then his inability to estimate height should come as no surprise.

Except that Poirot is frequently the most competent person in the room. Watch him in the bowling alley throwing strike after strike (you didn’t know that Hercule Poirot bowled, did you? Or that he wore casual, long-sleeved pullovers?). Then, after being dared by another bowler, he throws two strikes simultaneously in adjacent lanes!

So why does he keep getting Anita Ekberg’s height wrong? Because the script made him stupid when necessary for the plot.

Robert Morley is in a similar fix. He plays Captain Hastings. He’s never met Poirot before. Instead, his Hastings is an incompetent member of some vague British secret service, trying to get Poirot out of Britain and back to Belgium. The reasoning was illogical, he’s an ineffectual buffoon, and his antics are supposed to be funny. Is it funny to watch Robert Morley run outside, wearing only a towel, and meet a marching band playing “Rule, Britannia?” I didn’t think so yet I could see how the scene should have worked. The audience should have been rolling on the floor instead of rooting around in their popcorn. Bob Hope would have managed. So would Jerry Lewis, who was never above making a fool of himself to get a laugh.

Robert Morley, on the other hand, is better served by comedies of the absurd. He’s not a slapstick comedian which this movie called for.

Their miscasting was made even more obvious by everyone else. The film is loaded with longtime character actors, all of whom performed much better than the stars. Notice in particular Austin Trevor as Judson, Sir Carmichael Clarke’s butler. Austin Trevor played Hercule Poirot in three early films: Alibi (1931), Black Coffee (1931), and Lord Edgeware Dies (1934). The first two are lost, but the third remains and you can see that, like Tony Randall, Austin Trevor was woefully miscast as Poirot. The Alphabet Murders was his last film. As an imperturbable butler coping with craziness, though, he’s spot-on.

There’s also the leering. Yes, there’s male nudity. Both Poirot and Hastings get seen wearing nothing more than a towel. They both should wear more. But that’s not where the camera lingers. No, it pans slowly across every female bosom within eye shot, whether needed for the plot or not.

Is some dame showing her decolletage? The cameraman dives in. Is a lady wearing a tight sweater? The camera lingers. As an added bonus, all the art on the sets is of nude women, mostly nude women, or statues of nude women. Because it’s culture, it’s okay to pan across the nipples. Bill didn’t seem to have an issue with this artistic choice, but I did. It wasn’t necessary! Plus, it made the plot drag even more.

This is a 90-minute film and you’ll count every one of them as they go lurching past. If the talented people who made this movie had done a good job, at least 20 minutes of what’s onscreen would have been replaced with actual, you know, plot. With explanatory dialog so the audience isn’t left guessing why characters show up apparently at random. Maybe they’re the producers’ friends and needed the money.

I will admit that the camera work is astonishing. One amazingly framed shot after another. Terrific, atmospheric lighting that made the most of the settings. Very dramatic. But I shouldn’t be noticing the cinematography! That’s not why I go to the movies. I go to be entertained, not ooh and aah over the mise-en-scène. I also shouldn’t be paying attention to a bright, bouncy score that made sure — wink, wink, nudge, nudge — I knew when to laugh or gasp. On its own, as background music, I’d enjoy the score. Here? Not so much. It was yet another irritation.

Thank God Miss Marple and Mr. Stringer showed up. Yep, this film put Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot together, although only for a few minutes. Say what you will about Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, she’s a much better fit with Agatha than Tony Randall is. She wouldn’t have taken nearly as long to solve the murder but then, her scriptwriters didn’t make her stupid.

There is only one reason to sit through this film and that’s for the sake of completeness. Or you could take your cue from Agatha herself on the subject:

“The ABC Murders I was not allowed to see. My friends and publishers told me the agony would be too great.”