Ten Little Indians (1965)
Directed by George Pollock

Film Review

With four popular Agatha Christie adaptations already under his belt George Pollock was well placed to direct a fifth, based on the crime writer's most frequently plagiarised novel, Ten Little Indians.  This was the second screen adaptation of the novel - René Clair had previously directed a superlative version, And Then There Were None (1945).  Clair's film provided a high benchmark for all subsequent adaptations and right from the start it is clear that Pollock's humdrum little film isn't going to make the grade, despite the presence of some very capable actors in the cast and some superior production values.

The tone of the film is very different from Pollock's previous Agatha Christie films, all of which featured the incomparable (no other adjective will do) Margaret Rutherford as spinster sleuth extraordinaire Miss Marple.  The humour that made these previous films so enjoyable is singularly lacking in Pollock's Ten Little Indians and this is a sorry omission.  Attempts to sex up Christie's novel with some half-hearted action interludes and a dash of suggestive eroticism (hence the casting of recent Bond girl Shirley Eaton in the female lead) generally fall flat and the gimmicky "Whodunit break", where the narrative is suspended for a full minute just before the denouement to give the audience time to take stock and solve the mystery, is as ludicrously cheesy as it sounds.

After a torturously slow beginning things begin to pick up around the film's midpoint, once the acting lightweights have all been culled (and not before time).  Stanley Holloway, Dennis Price and Wilfrid Hyde-White are equally plausible suspects (some atmospheric lighting helps to make each of them chillingly sinister) and their combined efforts are more than a match for the lacklustre writing and direction, not to mention the soppy (and not very convincing) romance between Eaton and Hugh O'Brian.  This being the swinging sixties no producer was going to subject the audience to the grimly nihilistic ending of Christie's original novel, so we have to make do with the inferior alternative that Christie concocted for her stage play.  It's a feeble conclusion to a film that has moments of brilliance scattered too thinly to make it remotely memorable.

Film Synopsis

Eight complete strangers arrive at an isolated mansion situated high up in the snow-capped mountains.  They include a singer, an actress, a judge, a private detective, a doctor, a general, a secretary and a man posing as another man who recently killed himself.  They are greeted by two domestics, the Grohmanns, but their mysterious host, Mr Owen, is curiously absent.  After dinner, the assembled party listen to a recorded message from their host accusing each of them of having committed a crime for which he or she will soon be punished.  Any thought that they are being subjected to a macabre practical joke is dispelled when, one by one, the guests are murdered.  The odd thing is that the manner of their deaths appears to match a nursery rhyme about ten little Indians...