Evil Under the Sun (1982)

 

Evil Under the Sun (1982)

6/10

Starring

Peter Ustinov

Jane Birkin

Colin Blakely

Nicholas Clay

Directed by Guy Hamilton

Evil Under the Sun is not as cool and good as the movie Death on the Nile (1978), which also starred Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. The movie had a real problem, it took almost an hour for the murder to happen, which are not the most entertaining minutes. But then when the murder does happen we are thrown into the mix as we always are with Christie’s work. After the murder the movie does pick up and gets very very interesting, because you really want to know who has just helped rid the world of an awful person.

Here is a character which was so well placed in a situation that to be honest her death seemed like a relief to even you the viewer. Her personality was very annoying and her total disregard for her step-daughter made me dislike her more than I should.

The movie is based on the 1941 Agatha Christie’s book of the same name. The plot seems like every where Poirot goes, there is a character who is disliked by everybody and dies with everyone around them being a suspect. The movie also has Maggie Smith in another role. Smith played one of the suspects in the 1978 movie Death on the Nile with Peter Ustinov.

It starts with Hercule Poirot heading to take a holiday, but before then he meets a wealthy man who had just been scammed by a woman off a very expensive jewel. Poirot on this vacation meets the woman in question. She is a very flirtatious, young looking and attractive lady who seems hell bent on making a mockery of everyone and glorifying herself above others. So it is of no surprise that this woman is not liked by all, and her murder puts everyone on the top spot of the suspect list.

Poirot is drawn into investigating and solving a murder, which everyone has an alibi which seems to be confirmed by another party.

The movie has some serious issues, which I am not able to figure out. How did Patrick get Myra to accompany him. He seemed to want to deter her and she showed up from no where to ask to join him. Poirot did not explain that and the movie did not either.

The movie has a lot of name shuffling, and notable changes in comparison to the book. Which I feel did not make this movie just as good thanks to those changes.

What I liked the most about this movie when it finally takes off is the complexity of how every suspect seems to have an alibi, which was corroborated by someone else. Most of the times the person who corroborated their alibi has no idea that they have. The movie tries like the book, to make you a very inquisitive person to be searching through the incidents around. Think deep to see which thread to pull next to see whose alibi is not clean.

Nice movie to see, and I will advise you see if you can, taking the time to understand that you have to wait for almost an hour to get going.