Teresa Reviews “The Underdog” (1993)

Teresa reviews “The Underdog” (1993) and thought it relied on Poirot’s grey cells too much.

Fidelity to text: 3 blunt objects
The basic plot remains, but characters and setting changed from a little to a lot.

Quality of movie on its own: 3 blunt objects

It’s flawed, but I accepted it until the ending when Poirot pulled his solution out of his boutonnière vase. How did he know?

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

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

The original short story “The Under Dog” (using two words) was published in 1926. Agatha was making forays into longer stories, giving her more room to set up characters and motives. As usual, every character could have offed Sir Reuben Astwell, and the murderer seemed to me to be the least likely suspect. The backstory concerned African gold mine swindles.

The film changes that hoary old chestnut into something more interesting, more modern, more in keeping with the mid-1930s setting, and provides a much better motive.

It’s chemical warfare! Specifically, the development and subsequent theft of a marvelous new synthetic rubber, astroprene, with more useful properties than real rubber. Synthetic rubber means less reliance on rubber plantations in Malaysia. That’s both useful and strategic. It’s always a very bad idea — as any wargamer or supply officer can tell you — to depend on your enemy to produce vital materials for your own industry. Your enemy can cut you off without a second thought and you suddenly can’t replace tires, fanbelts, or anything else that needs rubber.

Astroprene is a wonderful plot point. It’s realistic, everyone was afraid of the looming war, rubber is vital to the economy, and there were tons of money to be made. Which was why Sir Reuben planned to license the patent to IG Farben, a major German chemical firm. This horrified Horatio Trefusis, head chemist. Because of the looming war? No, it’s because if Sir Reuben manufactured the Astroprene, he’d pay Trefusis a big bonus with each ton produced. If Sir Reuben farms out the production of Astroprene, he cheats Trefusis of a big payout.

This is perfectly in keeping with Sir Reuben’s nature. He’s a bully, a jerk, a swindler, and a cheat. Not that Horace Trefusis was overly concerned with how Sir Reuben acquired the Astroprene formula in the first place. Sir Reuben stole it from an outsider, Humphrey Naylor, and Trefusis, as the head chemist, helped Sir Reuben make the formula work.

We even meet Humphrey Naylor very briefly. He’s rifling through Trefusis’s files, looking for proof of the theft. Trefusis catches him in the act, a fire starts accidentally, and he flees, disappearing from the film until the climax.
This is despite Trefusis seeing him and reporting his presence to Sir Reuben. Naylor’s accidental arson wasn’t followed up in the film for no reason I could tell. We didn’t get to watch Sir Reuben tell Trefusis to keep it quiet since they couldn’t afford bad publicity. It should have been mentioned.

Another problem here was that the actors playing Humphrey Naylor (boy scientist) and Charles Leverson (ne’er-do-well nephew) looked so much alike that I thought Charles was rifling through Trefusis’s files. It took me most of the episode to realize my mistake. This is why casting matters so much: the audience needs to distinguish one character from another. It’s vitally important when there’s not much time to develop characters and you’ve got seven or eight people running around onscreen.

Poirot and Hastings are conveniently on the scene. Hastings, who’s got friends everywhere, is friends with Charles Leverson, ne’er-do-well nephew and wannabe golf pro. He’s participating in a golf tournament (check out his plus-fours!) with Leverson and staying at the Astwell’s Art Deco mansion. Poirot is along for the ride because Sir Reuben has a spectacular collection of Belgian miniature bronzes. Sir Reuben does not appreciate his bronzes like Poirot does, another fine example of why everyone around him wants him dead.

Very oddly, the person who is not on the scene is Inspector Japp. Since there’s murder afoot and Japp’s jurisdiction seems to encompass all of England, you’d expect him to show up. The only plausible reason is the investigation by the local police of Sir Reuben’s murder. He’s coshed in the head with a Belgian miniature bronze and — utterly unbelievable since Japp wouldn’t have made this mistake and it’s 1936 — no one checks the Belgian miniature for fingerprints. No one. Of course, if the local bobby had, then we wouldn’t have a mystery. But still.

Sir Reuben’s brother, Victor, gets remade from the short story as his junior partner in the chemical business. He doesn’t like his brother, he disapproves of selling Astroprene to IG Farben because of the looming war and not because Trefusis gets cheated, he doesn’t seem to disapprove of cheating Humphrey Naylor out of his rights, and he’s carrying on an emotional affair with Sir Reuben’s wife, Lady Astwell. He also inherits half the business if Sir Reuben dies. Lady Astwell gets the other half so he’ll end up with it all. He’s an ideal candidate for murder.

Lady Astwell remains much the same. She was an actress in her youth, she’s devoted to her young companion, Lily Margrave, and she’s convinced that ne’er-do-well nephew Charles couldn’t have coshed Sir Reuben because her intuition tells her so. She and Sir Reuben argue over Lily Margrave rifling through his papers. Say what you will about Sir Reuben’s ethics, companions rifling through secret papers should get fired on the spot.

Lily Margrave is apparently carrying a torch for Charles (and not Victor as in the short story but then Victor’s canoodling with Lady Astwell so he’s busy). Or is she? This was one of those plot threads that got set up and then ignored. It seemed to me that you could make a very good case that Lily Margrave was toying with Charles’ affections to conceal her own interests in spying on Sir Reuben’s chemical contracts. Yet by the end of the episode, the plot thread vanished as if it had never existed.

I did not like the ending. Enough of the short story got rewritten that Poirot could have given a better explanation of the motive and means other than “the little gray cells tell me so.” That’s right up there with Lady Astwell’s intuition; interesting and a possible lead but not admissible in court. The police have standards. Proof must be provided because without proof, anyone could be convicted of anything when someone more important says their intuition tells them who’s guilty.

But here, Poirot magically pulls the solution from his boutonnière vase. Somewhere offscreen, he read Trefusis’s correspondence (in German!) and worked out the motive. Means and opportunity were provided by process of elimination, despite the entire house being a seething mass of people who hated Sir Reuben and had good reason to murder him.

Still, watch the episode. There’s lots to like, such as the period golf tournament and bloodhounds pursuing a fleeing suspect.

Miss Lemon even gets a rare chance to shine. In addition to her other spiritualism pursuits, Miss Lemon is a budding hypnotist. She can’t hypnotize Poirot but she easily mesmerizes Lady Astwell.

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