Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Joanna Mccarty Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Bill Slocum Ten people come together at a mountain mansion, guests of a mysterious U. N. Owen who keeps them waiting, and waiting..."I find a singular lapse of manners a house party and the host the last to arrive," huffs Judge Cannon (Wilfred Hyde-White).For Judge Cannon and the other nine, a lapse of manners is just an appetizer for what follows: Accusation, isolation, and eventually, a menu full of murder."Ten Little Indians" is a delightful jaunt of swinging-'60s ambiance that plays a bit with the conventions of a classic Agatha Christie mystery while still delivering the goods. A Mancini-ish jazz score and a cast that features Fabian, Bond girls Shirley Eaton and Daliah Lavi, and slumming luminaries like Hyde-White and Dennis Price keep fun in the foreground.I love Elsa Grohmann (Marianne Hoppe)'s one-word review of Lavi's actress character, Ilona Bergen; and how Fabian's singer character Mike Raven gets on everyone's nerves singing about their "strictly nurseryville" situation. Butler Grohmann (Mario Adorf) even asks, after the guests begin dropping like flies: "How many do you think there will be at dinner tonight?"At the same time, the film works hard building up the classic Christie structure of constant mortal danger, and in places even refining it a little. For example, you wonder how the actress and the general know each other, and if the "dab hand" of detective Blore (Sterling Holloway) has something to do with a sudden power cut. Why does Hugh Lombard (Hugh O'Brian) carry luggage with the initials "C. M."? Why would Ann Clyde (Eaton) take a job as secretary to a man she never met? Yes, it's done with yuks, especially watched a second time when you see the red herrings clearly and the crafty culprit right in front of you, but amid all the frosting there's a wickedly fine cake, dark and deadly and cold as hell.Director George Pollock and producer-writer Harry Alan Towers (writing here as Peter Welbeck) previously developed several successful if slightly irreverent film adaptations of Christie's Miss Marple stories. Here they work that same comic touch into the darker material of "Ten Little Indians." They even pause the action for what they call a "Whodunit break."Of course this shouldn't work, especially with a cast that seems to strain at the self-conscious celebrity of a "Fantasy Island" episode a decade or so later, yet the pieces come together. There's an especially well-delivered twist at the end, as scott-palmer2 points out in his August 2009 review unique to this particular adaptation, which is ironically set up by that most clichéd film convention, a sudden romance involving our sexy leads.One sequence near the end, involving a staircase and a revolver, is played too cute and feels forced. Also, there are some minor contrivances, like when two characters have a fight for no other reason than to give one of them an excuse to make an abrupt exit from the story. You may not like the characters, but empathy is not the object here, no more than it was with Christie's novel. Here, suspense is alleviated by comedy, and while no substitute for reading the disturbing book, what you get is high-class entertainment with a game cast and a crafty script.

secondtake Ten Little Indians (1965)This is a remake of a classic Agatha Christie movie, and it's so closely modeled after the first you don't need to watch them both. I don't think one is very much better than the other, either, depending on your taste (the earlier one is more highly regarded in general).But watch them both I did this last week, and the slightly wry or almost humorous tone to both films is a reminder this is purely light entertainment. I think even Christie's story, which I read ages ago, has more depth (though her novels were always charming along the way, to be sure). The idea of a group of guests invited for a macabre evening as one by one they are murdered is about as gruesome as it gets, so it's natural the movie doesn't really go there.That the movie is black and white in 1965 isn't so unusual, even though color has by this point become mainstream. The old material and the old style of acting (Fabian notwithstanding—he's a great but awkward addition) make the movie feel not much newer than the original, "And Then There Were None" from 1945. That film, directed by Rene Clair, is considered the classic, and it has the advantage of being first. But like this later one, it's filled with stereotypes, and some canned acting clichés (like discovering the dead body right in front of them with a gasp). But I take it too seriously. The whole aura of the book is legendary—including that it is the largest selling mystery novel ever. The original title was pejorative, "Ten Little…" (using the N word, which the Brits seem to make less offensive somehow), but this was changed worldwide to "And Then There Were None." The song that explains how each will die was changed to "Indians' and then more recently to "Soldier Boys," the last apparently fine (until some veterans group raises it's hand).There is a 1974 version I haven't seen, and a 1987 Russian one (which I want to see). But then there are the takeoffs like "Murder by Death" which is a spoof all the way. And there are some twenty others, including television bits. Which means maybe the real movie to see is the first one, which came two years after Christie herself did a stage adaptation (during the war—drawing room murder as a diversion from mass murder).One final word—the book is best. And partly because the ending is best. Christie changed the ending for the stage version (which I can't even hint at of course) and this new ending was used in both the movie adaptations mentioned here. Director George Pollock is a workaday director, and so expect nothing much here. He did adapt some other Christie novels first, so might have a feel for the style, but it strikes me as a fakey 1960s British era that movies like "Alfie" and "Darling" make clear much better.

Neil Doyle TEN LITTLE INDIANS benefits from making good use of the original Agatha Christie story while making changes that don't detract from one's enjoyment of the puzzling mystery. And the fact that it includes some highly enjoyable performances from WILFRID HYDE-WHITE, DENNIS PRICE and STANLEY HOLLOWAY makes it worth watching for the cast alone.Others in the cast are less noteworthy, including HUGH O'BRIAN in the romantic lead and SHIRLEY EATON, who are somewhat less convincing as the hardiest survivors of a plan to do away with ten people at an isolated mansion where they have gathered for a dinner party.LEO GENN and MARIO ADORF are also well used as unfortunate victims of a wealthy man's determination to get rid of his household guests by murdering them one by one. Since this version concentrates more on the mysterious circumstances of each guest and omits a rampant use of comic touches that filled the Rene Clair version (AND THEN THERE WERE NONE--1945), it stays an absorbing who-dun-it until the final scene.Crisply photographed with some stunning B&W photography of exteriors and interiors, it somehow is not quite as entertaining as the original version starring Louis Hayward and June Duprez with memorable performances from a cast that included Judith Anderson, Walter Huston and Barry Fitzgerald.None of the performances here are memorable, but most of them hit the mark. Mario Adorf makes an interesting butler, his gloomy personality a stark difference to the sort of butler Richard Haydn played in the original. And changing the locale of the story to a mountainous retreat in the dead of winter doesn't affect the story in negative way at all.Summing up: Good, but still not as effective overall as the 1945 version.

ShadeGrenade 'Ten Little Indians' is not the original title of Agatha Christie's famous book, of course. Even in 1965, no-one was brave enough to make a film called 'Ten Little N###ers'. It was also not the first time it had been filmed; Rene Clair's 'And Then There Were None' ( 1945 ) is generally regarded as the definitive version. I do like this remake though, directed by George Pollock ( responsible for the Margaret Rutherford 'Miss Marple' movies ), which updates the story to the then-present, setting it in a house at the top of an Austrian mountain rather than the island described in the book. Eight people, of disparate backgrounds, arrive at the home of one U.N. Owen, whom they have never met. They are American adventurer Hugh Lombard ( Hugh O'Brian ), model Ann Clyde ( Shirley Eaton ), pop star Mike Raven ( Fabian ), film star Ilona Bergen ( Daliah Lavi ), Judge Cannon ( Wilfrid Hyde-White ), General Mandrake ( Leo Genn ), Dr.Armstrong ( Dennis Price ) and private detective William Henry Blore ( Stanley Holloway ). Rounding off the 'ten' are the domestic staff ( Mario Adorf and Marianne Hoppe ). In each of the guests' rooms is a model of ten Indians, and a framed nursery rhyme beginning with the words: 'Ten little Indians came down to dine, one choked his little self, and then there were nine.'. A taped message ( Christopher Lee's voice ) accuses everyone present of murder. Soon the bodies start piling up. With each death one of the ten Indians is broken. First to go is Raven. As they puzzle it out, Dr.Armstrong realises that 'U.N. Owen' stands for 'unknown'. The killer is one of the group, but which one? With the exception of Fabian ( clearly included for the benefit of the American youth market ), this solid adaptation has a very strong cast, in particular Price and Hyde-White. Genn makes a big impression too, especially in the scene where he confesses to losing his nerve whilst under fire, an action resulting in the deaths of five of the men under his command. The killings are more explicit than in the earlier version, and good old Shirley Eaton gets to take her clothes off a few times.Emulating the theatrical gimmicks of William Castle, the picture has a 'Whodunit ( sic ) Break'. Just before the climax, the film is paused as the audience is invited to guess the killer's identity. Of course those who read the book and saw the earlier film knew it beforehand.Shot in sharp black and white, and boasting a nice, jazzy Malcolm Lockyer soundtrack, this is good stuff alright. Producer Harry Alan Towers must have liked the film - he remade it again in 1974, starring Oliver Reed and Elke Sommer, but it was an absolute disaster.