Henry Kujawa
Some years back I was astonished to learn, decades after-the-fact, that THE ALPHABET MURDERS was actually my first introduction to Agatha Christie. I had no idea. I'd seen it on the network (one of their weekend movies, I forget which day). The only parts I could actually remember was the murder in the swimming pool, and the climb on that precarious crane. Everything else, a complete blank. I suppose that says a lot. (My first "real" Christie was DEATH ON THE NILE, which I enjoyed so much, I saw it TWICE in 2 weeks. Again, no clue, no connection that I'd ever seen "Hercule Poirot" before.) Somewhere in the mid-90's, I taped this film off TNT, and could not believe what I was seeing. There's been a lot of really wild, "crazy" films made in the mid-late 60's, in the wake of THE PINK PANTHER and A SHOT IN THE DARK, and I'd say this definitely fits in that category. The odd thing is it being in B&W. Most of those "insane" films that tended to break all the rules of storytelling were in bold Technicolor.Inspired by the reviews right here at the IMDb, and already engaged in re-watching my AC collection in its entirety, I decided to watch this again (3rd time or 4th, not quite sure). Armed with the rather surprising knowledge that this was directed by Frank Tashlin, who not only did Jerry Lewis movies but (more importantly!) BUGS BUNNY and other WB cartoons, I figured I'd give this another shot with a more open mind.Well, there's good and bad. LOTS of bad (which many others have pointed out), so let me start with that. Tony Randall is all wrong for the part, he's too tall and thin, and he's doing a French accent, not Belgian (which suggests he watched Peter Sellers for research). Ron Goodwin's "French" music is repetitive to the point of annoyance, which is a shame, considering how much I enjoyed his work in the 4 MISS MARPLE movies (all of which I just finished watching again, and all of which have GOTTEN BETTER on repeat viewings). Something no one else has mentioned, it makes NO SENSE for Hastings to be working for the British Secret Service, OR be concerned with "protecting" Poirot and wanting to keep him safe by getting him out of the country and back to Belgium, by force if necessary. This was the kind of "joke" they used to do in McCLOUD stories when he was out of his territory. But Poirot LIVES in England, not Belgium! This entire "subplot" distracts terribly from the plot, and help to make a confusing story almost impossible to follow. The whole sense of wild, crazy, frenetic storytelling, because of an INEPT script, makes trying to follow the plot a waste of time. But worse, I could easily accept a POIROT film played for laughs. IF it was funny. This ISN'T. I often say, the worst "crime" of a comedy is to NOT be funny. There are a FEW laughs here-- but only a few.The best moment in the entire film is when Miss Marple & Jim Stringer cross paths with Poirot & Hastings. Not only is she commenting on how "anyone with half a brain could figure it out", when she looks at Poirot as they pass, her SILENT glare says it all without words. An unspoken, "My God, what a BLITHERING IDIOT you are!" Perhaps that goes for the screenwriter.The look of the film is fine, the camera-work well-done and interesting. But for me, the highlight is the cast, so many wonderful characters actors I recognize from other things. Robert Morley (MURDER AT THE GALLOP-- perhaps HE should have played Poirot???), James Villiers (FOR YOUR EYES ONLY's snobbish "Chief of Staff", NO WAY I could ever believe that was Bond's "best friend" from the books), John Bennett (THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD and DOCTOR WHO's "The Talons Of Weng-Chiang"), Cyril Luckham (DOCTOR WHO's "White Guardian"), Maurice Denham (DOCTOR WHO's "The Twin Dilemma"), Julian Glover (my 2nd-favorite Bond villain in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, DOCTOR WHO's "City Of Death" and countless other English TV shows), Clive Morton (DOCTOR WHO's "The Sea Devils"), Patrick Newell ("Mother" on THE AVENGERS and DOCTOR WHO's "The Android Invasion") and even Windsor Davies (FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, UFO and the voice of "Sergeant-Major Zero" on TERRAHAWKS!).So, yes, so much talent, but so much lacking in the script department-- the single MOST important element, which needs to be there before anything else is ever considered. It's possible George Pollock may have done better, but it would all depend if he had a say in the writing or not. Again, I'd be very interested in seeing someone actually do a comedy POIROT, if they could do it right. MURDER BY DEATH wasn't it-- and neither is this. Ah well.Oh yes-- the MOST clever part of the story (which I'm SURE was not in the novel), came up at the climax of the film-- when it was revealed that an apparent suicide WASN'T-- and, that it tied neatly in with the very BEGINNING of the film. Moments like that had me feeling the film ALMOST could have worked as a straight mystery. OR, a comedy. Instead of neither. (Just a year later, one of my favorite TV series of the 60's-- BATMAN-- often suffered from the SAME problem.)
bkoganbing
The Alphabet Murders is a tongue in cheek adaption of Agatha Christie's mystery, The A-B-C Murders which featured her famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. There's usually a lot of humor in Christie arising out of her detective characters, but for some reason the story here did not lend itself well to satire. Or maybe it was badly done satire, take your choice.I can hardly believe also that the capable comedy hand of Frank Tashlin seemed to go awry. Tony Randall and Robert Morley would have and should have made a great team as Poirot and his Watson like companion Hastings respectively. This film has Morley being inflicted on Randall because the British government has heard someone's out to get Poirot. Take your choice there for all the criminals he's brought to justice.Anita Ekberg who is as sexy as well as dangerous is a mad woman who is murdering targeted folks in alphabetical order. Folks who really have no connection with each other, ergo it must be the work of a deranged mind. It might be deranged, but as we learn there is an orderly thinking process and of course Poirot figures it all out once the little gray cells go into operation.Maybe another satire on Christie might work, but I'll take those all star productions with Peter Ustinov on the big screen or David Suchet on the small one before this one. I'll have to see how the straight version that Suchet did for BBC plays in comparison one day.
carvalheiro
"The alphabet murders" (1965) directed by Frank Tashlin as comedy from a novel of Aghata Christie is also with a comic style of marching on the streets from the main character, who accompanied the Londonian adventure and in an ironic scene for instance the Turkish baths are epicenter of a plot to kill Poirot by a nymph. In which the dramatic situation inside remembers a slapstick of incapacity for the potential capability of the plot, as ugly made in it. Another scene also gave us Miss Marple for a momentous short while, apparently in a wrongly entry at the police station, when just in this moment detective Poirot is just crossing ways with her own path, but coming out without a too much kind of such usual turn back and traditional good acquaintance. Only in a static and phlegmatic way of suspicious neutrality and her quite mistrusting this coincidence as also concurrence in a given troubled lady vanishing fake affair, the nymph of the bath, as she snubbing him on the entry stairs at metropolitan police.Tashlin made almost a mechanical option of the small things and tricks of everyday, on a daily chronicle of domestic and urban high criminality, with some private and public jokes in an old and innovative style of comic direction, near the satyr of academic's policy and concerning protection for such an imperial civility before stupidity of that time. The edited way of these small episodes and sketches in this story of the movie is of a great liability as well as its decoration mainly in interiors by night, namely in the party where hooliganism before the letter and embarrassment for such a luxury and eroticism as smell of the status there.
filoshagrat
Being one of the more elusive films this side of the pond, The Alphabet Murders delivers no more or less than expected (hence the 5/10). But I think you have to ask yourself why your watching it before you condemn it. Christie purists are up in arms, Randall fans defend him, yadda yadda yadda. Personally, I got it for the all too brief Dame Margaret. That said, there's little else to say about it.Tony Randal is an acquired taste as Poirot, almost getting up your nose with an abysmal accent and acting as if he's the only one with grey cells, and overdoing that. The constant referring of him as a 'short' Belgian is the biggest mystery, as he's taller than most in the film. Poor Robert Morley tries his best, but the tedium of the film mainly comes from the rather repetitive score. Plotwise it doesn't really test the viewer, but enough is happening to keep you guessing. 30 seconds of Margaret Rutherford and spouse puts a much needed grin on the face, but it's not enough by far. Certainly one to add to the collection, but don't rush for it at the garage sale. Overall, a huge waste of talent. Pity.Oh, and a reviewer thinks Finney's Poirot was a masterpiece? Yeah. Right.
