Evil Under The Sun (1982)
"You see, it is folly to try and trick Hercule Poirot... even in a dead language."
Daphne Castle: Arlena and I were in the chorus of a show together, not that I could ever compete. Even in those days, she could always throw her legs up in the air higher than any of us... and wider.
Anthony Shaffer, Evil Under The Sun (1982)
I'm trying to work out how many Agatha Christies have made it to the Silver Screen. I'm not entirely sure. There have been so many. There's Witness for the Prosecution (1945). There’s And Then There Were None (1945) and the 1970s and 80s All-Star blockbusters— Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express (1974), John Guillermin's Death on the Nile (1978), Guy Hamilton's The Mirror Crack'd (1980) and Michael Winner's Appointment with Death (1988)— plus the various television adaptations, the excellent Joan Hickson in the BBC's Miss Marple series (1984-1992) and, of course, David Suchet’s Poirot in LWT/Granada's Agatha Christie's Poirot, which ran between 1989-2013. And relatively recently, there's been Mister Mumble himself— Rufus Sewell— in an underwhelming adaptation of The Pale Horse (2020), Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express (2017), with its dreaded CGI, which, in my opinion, ain't a patch, on the version of '74— and Branagh's Death on the Nile (2022), which I have yet to see.
Which takes us to Guy Hamilton's Evil Under The Sun (1982), a personal favourite amongst the Agatha Christie adaptations I've seen so far— a witty, bitchy catfight with the sparkle of the 30s, set to the music of Cole Porter and perhaps, owing more to the urbane— and sometimes caustic— pen of Anthony Shaffer (and Guy Hamilton's slick direction) then, perhaps Dame Agatha herself. I'm one ginormous, slathering, uncompromising fan of Anthony Shaffer, the brother of Sir Peter (The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Black Comedy, Equus and Amadeus)— the genius (script-wise) behind Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972), The Wicker Man (1973), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Death on the Nile (1978) and, of course, my number-one-favourite-film-of-all-time, Sleuth (1972), starring Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier.
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