There is no Poirot but David Suchet. All others feel slightly wrong, even when they're portrayed by geniuses like Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov. I think it's because these guys stress the humor without really capturing Poirot's self-importance and essential dignity -- Finney's actually a little closer to "correct" for me. (Can you imagine Suchet's Poirot -- or Christie's, for that matter -- trying to entertain a sullen teen girl with a hamfisted magic trick?)

That said, I love love love this movie. The Cole Porter music. The stunning location photography and lavish sets. The gorgeous costumes. The razor sharp wit. (Dame Diana and Dame Maggie trading catty insults is heaven, and Roddy McD weren't no slouch at bitchiness, neither.)…

33 Films x 6 Decades: 1980s

Pairing up Agatha Christie's famed detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) with a director, Guy Hamilton, mostly known for his work on James Bond, Evil Under the Sun is a rather forgotten film. Compared to other Christie adaptations of the era, even Hamilton's own The Mirror Crack'd (though that one had 10x the cast of this film with Angela Lansbury, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, Rock Hudson, and Geraldine Chaplin in that film), Evil Under the Sun has largely fallen out of the spotlight. This is unfortunate considering it finds Ustinov reprising his role as Poirot from Death on the Nile is a far more conventional whodunnit. It still has the exotic locale of…

This was a film I was madly in love with as a child and led me to reading the vast majority of Agatha Christie's work long before my teens, as such on this rewatch - the first in years - I'm naturally predisposed to loving this perhaps a little more than it deserves.

In hindsight of course this is not the greatest Christie adaptation; that belongs to Murder On The Orient Express. But what this is is a delightfully frothy, sparkling and glamourous concoction of high campery and catty witty banter amongst the rich and the beautiful during their stay at a sunkissed Adriatic resort. Oh and there's a murder. But that and its subsequent investigation by Ustinov's Poirot (one…

I have developed quite a soft spot for detective dramas now... With the much anticipated return of Luther at it's halfway point, i have been watching Agatha Christie's jarringly different 'Poirot' mysteries. I must immediately profess that i preferred the flawed, but undeniably riveting 'Death on the Nile', but that doesn't mean that i dislike 'Evil Under the Sun'.

Taking place in another ludicrous situation, Poirot this time has to solve the strangling of a leading lady of the stage and screen. Diana Rigg played this antagonistic and extremely unlikable character, and for the first time, made me lack any empathy for the victim. It's hard to tell whether this was intended or not, but i'll give the film the…