Teresa Reviews “The Man in the Mist” (1983)

Fidelity to text: 2 1/2 blunt objects

A vastly improved ending, a police interrogation, and a total personality makeover for Bulger are just the start.

Quality of film on its own: 4 1/2 blunt objects

There’s plenty going on in this atmospheric and funny episode.

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

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Envision the joke’s setup: Tommy and Tuppence, failed detectives, licking their wounds and imbibing cocktails in the hotel bar in Adlington. They completely botched their last case. Priceless pearls went missing at the local lord’s estate, and they chased after implausible but exciting suspects. The local constables pinned the crime on the second footman, well-known for his thieving background. Even admitted it, too.

Keep in mind that nothing happens in Adlington. Everyone will tell you that.

Now, dress Tommy in a very traditional cassock and broad-brimmed hat, despite the fact that he hasn’t become a Roman Catholic priest. Tuppence remains stylish as always. Portraying a fallen woman who needs spiritual uplifting? She certainly doesn’t dress like a devout churchgoer.

They discuss the case and drown their sorrows when into the bar walks Mervyn Estcourt (known to his friends as Bulger), a famous actress, and a fiery but pacifistic poet. The actress’s future husband, the famous mountain-climbing Lord Leconbury, follows quickly afterwards, possibly to keep tabs on his famous, hot fiancée.

She’s Gilda Glen, and she gets around.

Was she once Bulger’s lover? Seems that way! How about the pacifist poet? Yep, him too. But lovers don’t count in the marriage sweepstakes, not when she’s got her eye on a rich peer. Too bad Gilda can’t marry a title until after she gets rid of her inconvenient husband, with whom she eloped at age seventeen.

So what’s Gilda Glen doing in Adlington where nothing ever happens? Tracking down her erstwhile husband whom she hasn’t seen in twenty years but is still legally bound to, naturally. Who can help her? Why, perhaps that kind priest sitting at the bar with the fallen woman. He’ll understand.

Gilda may be beautiful, but she’s got the brains of a rabbit.

So does Bulger, who acquires (via the scriptwriter) a wife, a cement factory, and a roving eye, fully exposed when he hits on Tuppence. He knew Tommy back in the Great War. He didn’t know Tommy became a priest ministering to fallen women because what else could that hot brunette be? Tommy wasn’t the marrying kind.

Tuppence fends him off gracefully and Bulger leaves, ostensibly to play golf before meeting his wife for dinner.

The fiery but pacifistic poet ranting about strangling women while loving peace is also handled gracefully. Does James Reilly hate women in general, despite his peace-loving, poetical nature? Yes, but mainly Gilda Glen, because if he can’t have her then no one can.

Then it’s off to meet Gilda. According to her note, she needs Tommy’s fatherly advice. She’s staying with a local resident, Mrs. Honeycott, in a fog-shrouded house on mist-drenched Morgan’s Avenue, next to the shadowy cemetery with a sinister reputation. According to Bulger, a constable who met a gruesome end still walks his ghostly beat down that misty lane. Do Tommy and Tuppence hear footsteps in the fog, from some mysterious presence? Of course they do.

In front of them? Could be. In back of them? Sounds like it.

A constable — a live one! — looms out of the mist. Reilly races past them in a tearing hurry and vanishes into the house.

After the constable disappears into the mists, Tommy and Tuppence approach the house. They hear a scream, and Reilly charges out of the house and past them.

Inside, they meet Ellen the housemaid. She’s right out of central casting and might share the same Irish county of origin as James Reilly, ranting poet. She’s upset because Reilly charged into the house and right back out. She’s sure she heard a muffled scream.

Mrs. Honeycott enters the room and it’s clear she is upset for other reasons. She’s suddenly got a Roman Catholic priest and a fallen woman invading her home and, as the daughter of an Anglican minister, she doesn’t hold with popery or harlots. She already has one in residence. Gilda Glen, actress with a past, is her much younger sister. Worse, not only has Gilda returned to Adlington, she wants her devout, churchgoing sister help her get a divorce so she can marry again. If only her sister can remember hubby’s last name.

Remember, nothing ever happens in Adlington.

Tommy and Tuppence sense danger, and they persuade Mrs. Honeycott to take them upstairs to Gilda. They discover she no longer needs to divorce her husband. She’s dead, coshed in the head.

Who could have done it? Reilly the ranting poet is the obvious suspect. But wait! Bulger, Gilda’s former lover, admits he had not gone golfing in the mist. He’d climbed up the drainpipe to the second-floor window to see Gilda and plead his case. Not marriage, naturally, as he already had a wife, two children, and a cement factory, but perhaps a fond farewell for old times’ sake.

Reilly gets found, arrested, and grilled by the local bobbies. Bulger also ends up in the local jail and begs Tommy and Tuppence for help. His wife wouldn’t understand. Actually, she probably understands all too well, but we don’t meet her so we don’t get her interpretation of the facts. The constable puts his own spin on events. He’s doubtful that Tommy and Tuppence can shed light on the crime, considering how badly they handled the jewel theft that brought them to Adlington in the first place.

The ending was vastly improved over the barebones text. Tommy spends some time discussing reality versus imagination. That is, what actually happens instead of what people interpret is happening because they don’t witness it with their own eyes.

He arranges for most of the principals to reassemble at Mrs. Honeycott’s house, other than Reilly and Bulger who are cooling their heels in jail.

With Ellen and Mrs. Honeycott’s able assistance, he restages what did happen. Certain sounds were heard. Footsteps on stairs. Pauses. Doors opening. Doors closing. Resetting late clocks. Pork chops for Monday’s dinner instead of dodgy fish caught days ago.

Step by step, Tommy, just like Father Brown whom he’s emulating, reenacts the scene of the crime, searching for what is real. He arrives at certain conclusions, one of them being that the scream, based on the timing, might not have been Gilda’s. It might have been someone else. Perhaps someone who discovered her body. Someone who was so horrified at seeing — up-close and personal — a real woman’s death with real blood and real brains splattered across the room, he screamed like a little girl.

Who could have murdered Gilda? Who would be the most likely suspect with evil in his heart, like all of us have? Not her sister. Despite disapproving of Gilda’s immoral life choices, Mrs. Honeycott let her return to the family home. Bulger wasn’t the type. Reilly had his stomach turned when faced with real violence as opposed to sanitary words on white paper.

Who was it? Why the most usual suspect of all, as Agatha and Father Brown would tell you. Gilda’s long-ago husband.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be, because sometimes, things happen in Adlington.

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