I Watch Films: Ten Little Indians

 

Ten Little Indians

The 1965 film adaption of the Agatha Christie novel, though perhaps more accurately, given the ending, an adaption of Christie’s stage adaption of the novel. Eight people with dubious pasts are invited to a mountaintop retreat by the mysterious U N Owen, only to discover none of them have met him, he’s not there and the only two people are staff hired from an agency who also haven’t met him. That night after dinner a tape of U N Owen (an uncredited Christopher Lee) details all their crimes.

Every room has a creepy children’s rhyme about ten Indian boys and how they die. There are ten statues of Indians on the dinner table. As the characters start to be killed in accordance with the rhyme, a statue is destroyed. There’s a storm the first night and after that one of them is killed when the cable car cable is cut.

As it goes on there is suspicion, confessions, unexpected reveals and a few rather contrived passages which of course is faithful to the book. A workmanlike version rather than an inspired one, but Christie’s ideas are strong enough that it manages perfectly well, even for me who has read the book and seen at least three other adaptions.

Watch This: A cool classic crime film
Don’t Watch This: As I said, better adaptions with more interesting staging, casts and endings exist