Agatha Christie Classic Mystery Collection (Murder Is Easy/Caribbean Mystery/Murder with Mirrors/Thirteen for Dinner/Dead Man's Folly/Murder in Three Acts/Sparkling Cyanide/The Man in the Brown Suit)
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Actor: Bette Davis, Bill Bixby, Helen Hayes, Olivia de Havilland, Peter UstinovBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); Korean (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 757 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-09-12
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Agatha Christie Classic Mystery Collection (Murder Is Easy/Caribbean Mystery/Murder with Mirrors/Thirteen for Dinner/Dead Man's Folly/Murder in Three Acts/Sparkling Cyanide/The Man in the Brown Suit)
DVD Review: A mixed bag
Summary: 4 Stars
This collection includes eight made-for-TV movies from the 1980s. Not all of these movies are keepers, but the good outweighs the bad. Ranking them from (in my opinion) best to worst, they are:
Murder with Mirrors - Miss Marple visits an old friend whose husband runs a reformatory for juvenile delinquents. What ensues is a nice cozy mystery with a bit of gentle humor. This is probably the most faithful adaptation in the bunch, and it's one of the best. Bette Davis is great as Carrie Louise, and a young Tim Roth costars as one of the delinquents.
Thirteen for Dinner - American actress Jane Wilkinson announces her intention to murder her husband, and two days later he's dead. Coincidence? Faye Dunaway's performance as Jane makes this one worth watching. There are a few attempts to modernize the story; some are bad (Poirot on a talk show?), and some actually work (the ridiculous action movie Jane is filming). Plus, David Suchet costars as Inspector Japp!
A Caribbean Mystery - Miss Marple visits a vacation resort with a surprisingly high mortality rate. This is a pretty faithful adaptation; it's a little dull, honestly, but then so was the book. Bernard Hughes is fun as the cranky Mr. Rafiel, and Brock Peters appears in a small role.
Murder in Three Acts - Poirot attends a dinner party thrown by famous actor Charles Cartwright, and one of the guests is killed by a poisoned cocktail. A lot of details have been changed from the book - the house party is in Mexico, Hastings replaces Mr. Satterthwaite - and most changes are not for the better. Poirot's humor is too broad, and there's absolutely no suspense. Still, Tony Curtis is fun as Charles. Besides, the adaptation with David Suchet has the British ending (yes, there are actually two different endings to this book), so this might be your only chance to see a movie with the American ending.
Murder Is Easy - A visitor to a small English village gets caught up in multiple murders. This movie has aged the worst of the lot, because someone had the brilliant idea of replacing Luke Fitzwilliam, ex-policeman, with Luke Williams, American computer programmer and probability theorist. What ensues is a lot of ridiculousness and early eighties computer tech, including a hilarious computer program designed to catch the murderer after about five keystrokes. (What, no punch cards?) Bill Bixby and Lesley-Anne Down have an almost aggressive lack of chemistry as the "romantic" leads, and Jonathan Pryce and Freddie Jones randomly pop up as creepy and/or cranky villagers. This is not a good movie by any means, but the sheer silliness of it is amusing.
Sparkling Cyanide - A woman dies at a dinner party, and her sister must figure out which of their dinner companions killed her. If you ever thought that Agatha Christie's novel needed a good water-skiing sequence, then this is the movie for you. Otherwise, this is a fairly dull (but largely faithful) version, with Anthony Andrews and Deborah Raffin as the bland detectives. This one mostly annoys me because every single woman in the movie has poofy, feathered blond hair, so it's sometimes hard to keep track of who's who. Harry Morgan pops up as the police detective, which is odd but fun.
Dead Man's Folly - Mystery writer Ariadne Oliver enlists Poirot's help when the murder game that she's planning turns all too real. This movie suffers from a number of bad decisions, including hiring Jean Stapleton to play Mrs. Oliver. Yes, really: Edith Bunker is playing Agatha Christie's alter ego. Other than that, this movie telegraphs its solution way too soon, and the twinkly, "sweet" music that plays every time we see Hattie is beyond annoying. Hastings is in this one, too, for absolutely no reason at all.
The Man in the Brown Suit - Anne Beddingfeld stumbles across an international crime syndicate and falls for the lead suspect in a murder. This is by far the weakest movie of the lot; the casting is just terrible (except for Edward Woodward, who's fun as Sir Eustace), and everyone seems to think that they're far cuter than they actually are. The novel featured a character who's a master of disguise; I realize that it's hard to pull that off on film, but they could have started by not hiring Tony Randall. Seriously, he's the worst master of disguise ever, because he always looks like Tony Randall, and Anne is a massive idiot for not figuring that out.
More Agatha Christie Classic Mystery Collection (Murder Is Easy/Caribbean Mystery/Murder with Mirrors/Thirteen for Dinner/Dead Man's Folly/Murder in Three Acts/Sparkling Cyanide/The Man in the Brown Suit) reviews:
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Description of Agatha Christie Classic Mystery Collection (Murder Is Easy/Caribbean Mystery/Murder with Mirrors/Thirteen for Dinner/Dead Man's Folly/Murder in Three Acts/Sparkling Cyanide/The Man in the Brown Suit)
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