While it’s far from being the best film version of this classic Agatha Christie story, the 1989 film version of Ten Little Indians gives the familiar murder tale a few new wrinkles that are on full display in Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release.
The Production: 2.5/5
Agatha Christie’s brilliant 1939 whodunit And Then There Were None was made into an equally effective 1943 stage play which was then filmed two years later by Rene Clair. After its great success, the screen rights to the property were sold to producer Harry Alan Towers who proceeded to remake the film three times over a quarter-of-a-century time span. While each of the three versions, produced in 1965, 1974, and 1989 and all entitled Ten Little Indians, have their own pluses and minuses, none of them could hold a candle to the masterful original movie. The 1989 version under consideration here, this time entitled Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, is in many ways the least effective of the versions of this famous story, and yet even with its lapses in casting and direction, the movie has moments that are unique to this version of the famous tale of multiple murders being committed by person or persons unknown.
Ten people are invited, tricked, or cajoled into accepting an invitation to an African safari, most of whom are unfamiliar with one another but all of whom are guilty of one or more crimes which, up until now, had been undetected and had gone unpunished. The party’s host U. N. Owen has brought together Dr. Werner (Yehuda Efroni), private detective William Blore (Warren Berlinger), safari leader Hugh Lombard (Frank Stallone), international movie star Marion Marshall (Brenda Vaccaro), Judge Wargrave (Donald Pleasence), reckless playboy Anthony Marston (Neil McCarthy), General Romensky (Herbert Lom), secretary Vera Claythorne (Sarah Maur Thorp), and Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers (Paul L. Smith, Moira Lister) who for some reason have arrived one day before everyone else. One by one, the guests begin dying under mysterious and sometimes rather brutal circumstances until everyone realizes that the deaths are related to a children’s nursery rhyme which had been found in the camp. Eventually, the strangers sense that there is no actual Mr. Owen; one member of the safari is secretly killing each of the guests one by one.
In addition to a change of locale from the original tale (the ten people are here trapped on an African escarpment with no way down and the short wave radio destroyed), the screenplay by Jackson Hunsucker and Gerry O’Hara doesn’t do a very good job introducing our ten victims, the choice to use a rather piecemeal approach to giving us backstories on them makes us realize we know next to nothing about some of them before they meet their maker. The romance between two of the “Indians” is tamped way down in this version, a lesbian angle gets shoehorned into one of the revelations, and the climactic events and the revealing of the murderer is handled especially clumsily and is completely lacking in the irony that makes the conclusions of the three earlier versions so deliciously appropriate. Other moments which served as high suspense sequences in previous versions (the search for “Mr. Owen” as the survivors pair off and are thus separated from one another, the vote between survivors as to the identity of the killer, and the mysterious Indian centerpiece which keeps a running tally of the survivors) are likewise less effectively managed in this version. Director Alan Birkinshaw doesn’t always stage the killings in the most advantageous ways, but he does install a particularly weird vibe early-on with the clacking Africans sinisterly eyeing the strangers and isolating them on the escarpment. He gives Anthony Marston a particularly showy entrance that dwarfs his entry in the other versions, but while he botches some of the stagings of the murders, he does use jump scares three times most effectively in revealing the identities of the latest victims.
While veteran character actors like Herbert Lom, Donald Pleasence, Warren Berlinger, and Brenda Vaccaro do just fine with their paint-by-the-numbers characters (and Lom is the most touching of all the victims this time out as his military man veers into and out of rationality; he ironically played the doctor in the 1974 rendition of the movie), no one is truly dynamic in this version. Certainly lacking in dynamism are Frank Stallone and Sarah Maur Thorp who are meant to have a mutual attraction but who don’t register any combustion at all. Neil McCarthy gets to sing a chorus of Noel Coward’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” (the song serves as the movie’s theme, and we actually hear its creator sing it on an old phonograph record early in the movie and then later over the closing credits) while Yehuda Efroni, Paul L. Smith, and Moira Lister make little thespic impressions.
Video: 4.5/5
3D Rating: NA
After years of having only an open matte laserdisc transfer for consumption, the film’s original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 is a welcome relief, now offered in 1080p resolution using the AVC codec. Apart from a few stray dust specks and some noticeable variance in grain levels and sharpness between scenes throughout the film, the transfer offers very good image quality. Color is rich, and black levels are impressively inky. The movie has been divided into 8 chapters.
Audio: 4.5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo sound mix (called Ultra-Stereo in the liner notes) generally sounds impressively wide with dialogue occupying the center channel and the music by George Clinton and sound effects spread outwards. There are no problems at all with age-related hiss, crackle, pops, or flutter.
Special Features: 1.5/5
Theatrical Trailer (1:28, HD)
Kino Trailers: Witness for the Prosecution, Endless Night, Ordeal by Innocence, Heart of Midnight, River of Death, The Black Windmill, Murder by Decree.
Overall: 2.5/5
While it’s far from being the best film version of this classic Agatha Christie story, the 1989 film version of Ten Little Indians gives the familiar murder tale a few new wrinkles that are on full display in Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release.
Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.
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