Ten Little Indians

TCM has a half-night programming block of movies with Christopher Reeve tonight. That means they've got some overnight hours to fill up. The overnight ends with the 1960s adaptation of the Agatha Christie story Ten Little Indians, early tomorrow at 5:00 AM.

This film moves the action from an island to the top of a mountain in the Austrian Alps. The opening shows people arriving in one of those ski-resort villages, each of them getting onto a cable car that takes them to the top of a mountain otherwise only accessible by a dangerously steep trail. (This should make you wonder who wanted to build up here and how they were able to get the building materials here as well as getting a cable car for only one purpose built. But don't think about a plot hole like that.) At the large house where these people are going to be staying for the weekend, they're greeted by the house's two servants, Herr and Frau Grohmann.

As the invited guests meet in the parlour, the introduce themselves to one another as none of them have had a proper British introduction. Indeed, most of the guests are British, except for American pop singer Mike Raven (Fabian) and civil engineer Hugh Lombard (Hugh O'Brian). The others include a secretary, Ann Clyde (Shirley Eaton); acress Ilona Bergen (Daliah Lavi); a doctor, Armstrong (Dennis Price); general Sir John Mandrake (Leo Genn); judge Cannon (Wilfrid Hyde White); and a detective, Blore (Stanley Holloway). They talk and find that they've all been invited by a man named U.N. Owen, but that none of them have ever met this Mr. Owen. Three of them (the Grohmanns and Clyde) were at least hired by Owen, albeit through an agency, while the others you wonder why they showed up.

And then, after dinner, the fun begins. A reel-to-reel tape begins to play with the voice of Mr. Owen, giving some, but not complete, details of how each of the invited guests is guilty of causing the death of one or more people and that they need to pay for this. So all of them are going to pay over the course of the weekend. Not only that, but there's a copy of the old rhyme "Ten Little Indians" in each of the bedrooms and a centerpiece with ten little Indians on the dining room table. Everybody is horrified but also thinks this is nonsense. Mike admits that he is in fact guilty of having driven drunk and killing two people in a hit and run, but that he was already punished by having his driver's license revoked. He then takes a drink, and promptly chokes and dies. That choking is important because it's what the nursery rhyme says happens to the first little Indian.

From there, other characters start dying, which leads the survivors to realize that there really is a crazy Mr. Owen, and eventually reach the conclusion that one of the survivors must be Mr. Owen. But who? And how are the survivors going to figure it out when they're no longer able to trust each other?

Now, if you've read the original Agatha Christie story, you'll know that the story here, as well is in the previous film version from 1945, change the ending. I don't think the Hollywood Production Code would have allowed Christie's original ending. The story here works well enough, although the acting and photography aren't the best. Still, the story makes Ten Little Indians worth a watch.

One note: TCM has put this in a 90-minute slot, with the following movie starting at 6:30 AM. IMDb lists it as 91 minutes, the TCM schedule says 92, while timing it out on my DVR has the running time as about 89:40, although that doesn't include the TCM bumpers before and after the movie. So if you plan to record this you may want to add some padding especially at the ending.