The Sun above evil

Another of the subgenres of films of which I've got multiple sitting on my DVR is adaptations of Agatha Christie movies. Murder on the Orient Express, which I think I blogged about ages ago, changed the nature of such adaptations, turning them into all-star movies filmed in semi-exotic locations the way Airport ushered in the all-star disaster movie, in a stark contrast from MGM's Miss Marple films of the early 1960s with Margaret Rutherford. One of those later all-star adaptions is Evil Under the Sun, which gets an airing on TCM this evening at 10:15 PM.

The movie starts off with what seem like two unrelated scenes, although the second one is more in line with the main action of the story. First, somewhere in northern England, a dead body is found. The police are notified and a determination is made as to the time of death of the female victim, who was clearly strangled to death. We then move to London, where we meet Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) when he shows up at an insurance company. He just did one job for them, and is asked to appraise a diamond which its owner, Sir Horace (Colin Blakeley) wants insured for £50,000. Poirot immediately identifies it as paste, but it's not Sir Horace who's trying to fleece the company. He had given a valuable diamond to his old girlfriend Arlena Marshall; when she broke up with him she gave him a replica.

Arlena (played by Diana Rigg) is a retired actress who is going to be staying at a resort in the Balkan seaside nation of Tyrania; the resort is located on an island gifted to the former Queen of Tyrania, Daphne (Maggie Smith). Hercule should go there to meet up with Arlena and hopefully find the diamond.

Somehow, everybody else who shows up at the resort seems to have a connection to Arelna, who is there with her husband and perpetually ticked-off step-daughter, the step-daughter being ticked off because New Mom treats her badly. There's Rex Brewster (Roddy McDowall), who has been writing an unapproved biography of Arlena that he hopes she'll change her mind and let be published. Odell Gardener (James Mason) is a Broadway producer who was burned when Arlena faked illness to get out of a show. He'd like to get her back on stage, and is there with his long-suffering wife Myra (Sylvia Miles). Rounding up the crowd is Patrick Redfern (Nicholas Clay). He's married to Christine (Jane Birkin), but having an affair with Arlena.

So of course everyone bickers, but it takes a surprisingly long time to figure out which one of them is going to wind up dead so that we can have a murder for Hercule Poirot to solve. (At least we can rule out Poirot himself as the victim.) Eventually, the victim is revealed to be Arlena, and when she's found dead, Poirot is asked to investigate since it's the sort of thing Daphne, and Tyrania in general, would like to handle quietly. Poirot investigates, and everybody seems to have a motive for killing Arlena, but an alibi, or at least a series of interlocking alibis, with the exception of Odell, who is proud not to have an alibi. But then things start to fall apart, and Poirot thinks he can solve the case....

Evil Under the Sun is a movie that fits in well with the cycle of Agatha Christie movies that started with Murder on the Orient Express. Like the disaster movie genre, earlier entries are often the best, with later entries decreasing in quality as producers tried to repeat the formula that caught lightning in a bottle; to do so seemed to require more stars and more exotic locations. Evil Under the Sun is certainly not as good as Murder on the Orient Express, but it's entertaining enough, and the sort of thing that's suitable for those times when you want to sit back and watch something that's not overly challenging.