Ten people come together at a mountain mansion, guests of a mysterious U. N. Owen who keeps them waiting, and waiting...
"I find a singular lapse of manners a house party and the host the last to arrive," huffs Judge Cannon (Wilfred Hyde-White).
For Judge Cannon and the other nine, a lapse of manners is just an appetizer for what follows: Accusation, isolation, and eventually, a menu full of murder.
"Ten Little Indians" is a delightful jaunt of swinging-'60s ambiance that plays a bit with the conventions of a classic Agatha Christie mystery while still delivering the goods. A Mancini-ish jazz score and a cast that features Fabian, Bond girls Shirley Eaton and Daliah Lavi, and slumming luminaries like Hyde-White and Dennis Price keep fun in the foreground.
I love Elsa Grohmann (Marianne Hoppe)'s one-word review of Lavi's actress character, Ilona Bergen; and how Fabian's singer character Mike Raven gets on everyone's nerves singing about their "strictly nurseryville" situation. Butler Grohmann (Mario Adorf) even asks, after the guests begin dropping like flies: "How many do you think there will be at dinner tonight?"
At the same time, the film works hard building up the classic Christie structure of constant mortal danger, and in places even refining it a little.
For example, you wonder how the actress and the general know each other, and if the "dab hand" of detective Blore (Sterling Holloway) has something to do with a sudden power cut. Why does Hugh Lombard (Hugh O'Brian) carry luggage with the initials "C. M."? Why would Ann Clyde (Eaton) take a job as secretary to a man she never met? Yes, it's done with yuks, especially watched a second time when you see the red herrings clearly and the crafty culprit right in front of you, but amid all the frosting there's a wickedly fine cake, dark and deadly and cold as hell.
Director George Pollock and producer-writer Harry Alan Towers (writing here as Peter Welbeck) previously developed several successful if slightly irreverent film adaptations of Christie's Miss Marple stories. Here they work that same comic touch into the darker material of "Ten Little Indians." They even pause the action for what they call a "Whodunit break."
Of course this shouldn't work, especially with a cast that seems to strain at the self-conscious celebrity of a "Fantasy Island" episode a decade or so later, yet the pieces come together. There's an especially well-delivered twist at the end, as scott-palmer2 points out in his August 2009 review unique to this particular adaptation, which is ironically set up by that most clichéd film convention, a sudden romance involving our sexy leads.
One sequence near the end, involving a staircase and a revolver, is played too cute and feels forced. Also, there are some minor contrivances, like when two characters have a fight for no other reason than to give one of them an excuse to make an abrupt exit from the story.
You may not like the characters, but empathy is not the object here, no more than it was with Christie's novel. Here, suspense is alleviated by comedy, and while no substitute for reading the disturbing book, what you get is high-class entertainment with a game cast and a crafty script.
"I find a singular lapse of manners a house party and the host the last to arrive," huffs Judge Cannon (Wilfred Hyde-White).
For Judge Cannon and the other nine, a lapse of manners is just an appetizer for what follows: Accusation, isolation, and eventually, a menu full of murder.
"Ten Little Indians" is a delightful jaunt of swinging-'60s ambiance that plays a bit with the conventions of a classic Agatha Christie mystery while still delivering the goods. A Mancini-ish jazz score and a cast that features Fabian, Bond girls Shirley Eaton and Daliah Lavi, and slumming luminaries like Hyde-White and Dennis Price keep fun in the foreground.
I love Elsa Grohmann (Marianne Hoppe)'s one-word review of Lavi's actress character, Ilona Bergen; and how Fabian's singer character Mike Raven gets on everyone's nerves singing about their "strictly nurseryville" situation. Butler Grohmann (Mario Adorf) even asks, after the guests begin dropping like flies: "How many do you think there will be at dinner tonight?"
At the same time, the film works hard building up the classic Christie structure of constant mortal danger, and in places even refining it a little.
For example, you wonder how the actress and the general know each other, and if the "dab hand" of detective Blore (Sterling Holloway) has something to do with a sudden power cut. Why does Hugh Lombard (Hugh O'Brian) carry luggage with the initials "C. M."? Why would Ann Clyde (Eaton) take a job as secretary to a man she never met? Yes, it's done with yuks, especially watched a second time when you see the red herrings clearly and the crafty culprit right in front of you, but amid all the frosting there's a wickedly fine cake, dark and deadly and cold as hell.
Director George Pollock and producer-writer Harry Alan Towers (writing here as Peter Welbeck) previously developed several successful if slightly irreverent film adaptations of Christie's Miss Marple stories. Here they work that same comic touch into the darker material of "Ten Little Indians." They even pause the action for what they call a "Whodunit break."
Of course this shouldn't work, especially with a cast that seems to strain at the self-conscious celebrity of a "Fantasy Island" episode a decade or so later, yet the pieces come together. There's an especially well-delivered twist at the end, as scott-palmer2 points out in his August 2009 review unique to this particular adaptation, which is ironically set up by that most clichéd film convention, a sudden romance involving our sexy leads.
One sequence near the end, involving a staircase and a revolver, is played too cute and feels forced. Also, there are some minor contrivances, like when two characters have a fight for no other reason than to give one of them an excuse to make an abrupt exit from the story.
You may not like the characters, but empathy is not the object here, no more than it was with Christie's novel. Here, suspense is alleviated by comedy, and while no substitute for reading the disturbing book, what you get is high-class entertainment with a game cast and a crafty script.