A chuckling and yelling Poirot, an embarrassing Hastings and what can now be described as a very bizarre dress code. Moral: it wouldn’t be bad if the names Poirot and Hastings were taken off and if it presented itself like a comedy-mystery (not that it made me laugh at any point, but at least some things would be more acceptable in a movie marked comedy).
Problem is, this wasn’t Poirot at all. Mostly because of how it was written: joking, raising his voice, laughing, sleeping on the couch, chuckling all the time...
and Hastings... ridicule is what it was, specially when he put that little foulard around his throat.
I don’t know why these characters were written this way, but they were totally different from the real ones (real as in : in the way Christie wrote them of course).
Plot:
Poirot joins Hastings in Acapulco because Hastings insists that he should attend a party at the famous actor Charles Cartwright’s villa. There are other guests of course, and after a toast reverend Babbington suddenly falls down, dead. It looks like a natural death, no poison is found in his glass and Poirot can see no reason for killing a man like him (although he knows very little of the man so how can he really tell and being so sure about it... :-/ )
He goes back to Los Angeles, saying that he will write his memoirs (while in reality he does nothing but sleeping on the couch without his shoes on).
Some time later, two weeks I think, almost everyone present when the reverend died gather at the house of doctor Strange (Wally, not Stephen). There’s another death, this time is the doctor himself, and this time it was poison indeed.
Cartwright appears at Poirot’s hotel room in Los Angeles (it was a hotel right? or was it his place? not sure..) to tell him about the new death.
Poirot investigates. He invites everyone to ask them to tell him whatever they might know about the two deaths, and at that gathering after a toast Cartwright clutches his throat very theatrically and falls down, startling everyone who think he’s dead, but not surprisingly to the viewer he’s not (I mean, it was such a fake-looking death...)
There’s a little thing that didn’t make sense I think, regarding one of the doctor’s patients, a woman in a sort of catatonic state: a telegram arrives to Poirot saying that she knows something about the murders and later on the woman is killed. I thought that Poirot orchestrated the fake telegram, but later on Poirot says that the murderer sent the telegram ( or rather payed a kid to send it) so why would he do that?? Mah.
Anyway: The ending: (so this is your warning: everything will be revealed in the next few lines.
All through the movie many characters show strange expression to make you suspect them, or exchange significant glances between them, I guess with the same purpose of making you suspect them, but nothing of that makes sense.
Anyway, when Egg talks about a dress rehearsal, suddenly Poirot puts everything together and gather all the characters involved to solve the case.
Everybody suspected the butler to have killed the doctor because he disappeared right after, but he actually never existed. It was all a masquerade, the actor playing another role, Cartwright played the butler and that’s why the doctor joked with him that night, he knew about it of course, but what he didn’t know is that he wanted to kill him and he did. Why? Because being his doctor he had diagnosed him with some kind of psychosis that could make him become dangerous to others and to himself - it is revealed that he attempted suicide once and that’s why he has a showy scar on his wrist (that nobody knew about before the end despite him being a famous actor always around).
He killed him because he didn’t want the doc to put him away or something like that, but it is curious that the doctor thought those things of him and yet let him play that farse just for fun...
Anyway, now that all is revealed Cartwright shows his unstable nature playing his defence counsellor and stuff before being taken away by the police.
About the first murder, there was actually no motive at all, it was a random death, anyone could have died, it was just to rehearse the important murder, see that it could be done.
Hastings realise that it could have been him, and Poirot realises something much worse, that it could have been him.
At the end, Poirot asks writer Ms Crisp to write his memoirs together and she accepts.
The girl playing Egg was very pretty, and she looked beautiful in the red dress. I didn’t understand Cartwright’s outfit, maybe designed for the warm weather?? I don’t know, white transparent shirt, white shorts and white socks just below the knee.. oh my.
There’s a scene at the market when there are really big strawberries and it looks like Poirot was about to take one (as in stealing one) before Egg came up to him startling him. :-/
At the beginning, Poirot even inquires if the writer that has a male name but is a woman is one of those people that changed sex, insisting on that point later when he will make the sign of scissors with his hand... Poirot! There can be no comment to this...
Poirot - Peter Ustinov
Hastings - Jonathan Cecil
Cartwright - Tony Curtis
Egg - Emma Samms
Angela Stafford - Diana Muldaur
Janet Crisp - Concetta Tomei
ITA Agatha Christie: delitto in tre atti
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