TEN LITTLE INDIANS: Blu-ray (Cannon Films, 1989) Kino Lorber

The least successful of, to date, five adaptations of Agatha Christie’s enduring masterwork, director, Alan Birkinshaw’s Ten Little Indians (1989, a.k.a. Ten Little Niggers, a.k.a. And Then There Were None) weirdly lacks both the impulsion and edginess of its previous big screen incarnations – three, produced by Harry Alan Towers, who seems to have merely dusted off the same screenplay (not really) first employed to create movie magic in 1965, though arguably, never to rival Rene Clair’s superior offering from 1945, only to muddle this latest effort with an inferior cast and a general absence of chills. Without a doubt, the blame here is squarely to rest on Birkinshaw’s inability to find something – anything – that will click with Christie’s devilishly undiluted ‘locked room’ scenario, culling together a small group of disparate men and women, all of whom share one thing in common, and are about to pay for their sins with their lives. I have always enjoyed the diabolically delicious plot of Christie’s classic. So, it is saying much that I found this incarnation of Ten Little Indians to be featureless and foolhardy, in spots, suffering from heavily scripted ennui – the players, especially, Frank Stallone (yes, the younger brother of Sly), as Capt. Philip Lombard, and, Sarah Maur Thorp, as Vera Claythorne, amateurishly wooden, weary and just plain vanilla dull when compared to the players who have otherwise embodied the spirit and sensuality of these fictional alter egos in previous and subsequent versions. While Clair’s original retained Christie’s capricious air for a good solid whodunit, Peter Collinson’s 1974 remake (also produced by Towers) went for a decidedly more sinister approach – relocated to pre-revolution Iran, and, in Technicolor, to show off the blood.

Evidently, Collinson also assessed that the ‘murders’ needed a little ‘freshening up’, and so, primal deviations from Christie’s authorship ensued. Actually, I have great respect for the ’74 version. It’s hardly a bona fide classic, to be sure, but it does augment Christie’s craftsmanship with vintage grit, shock and revile for which the seventies excelled. And despite shortcomings in its casting too, the story is good enough to cling together, despite some oddly situated performances and total lack of romantic chemistry between the two principles, played then, by Oliver Reed and Elke Sommer. Like most of Christie’s authorship, Ten Little Indians begins with a stock, and seemingly straight forward premise, the mysterious coming together of a group of strangers, seemingly invited to posh – if remote – digs for a pleasurable weekend, only to discover they have been hand-selected for their own pubic execution and are then, rather unceremoniously picked off one at a time in the most ingenious ways by an omnipotent puppet master, hell-bent on revenge for their past indiscretions. The template is sound, and easily malleable, as each of the five film adaptations thus far have been slightly tweaked or completely reinvented to suit the times in which they appear.  Again, with a nod to Clair, the first director to alter Christie’s dour finale, as it is bleak to say the least, Birkinshaw’s re-remake uses the tendrils of Christie’s genesis as mere starting point, from which he sincerely bungles the black mass quality at least a half dozen times, in favor of some curiously vacuous exoticism.

In many ways, this Ten Little Indians is a desperate production, compounded by the fact its distributor, Cannon Films was nearing the unholy end of its own very bumpy run as a Hollywood indie, with Towers drawing on his alumni, Stallone, Brenda Vaccaro (as Marion Marshall), Herbert Lom (who played Edward Armstrong in Towers’ ’74 remake, now cast as General Branko Romensky), Donald Pleasance (as Justice Lawrence Wargrave), Paul L. Smith (as Elmo Rogers), and, David Heavener (as William Henry Blore) for inspiration. We trade in the isolated isle of death in Christie’s original, reconstituted as Egypt in ’74, this time around, for the distant campgrounds of an African safari, with Stallone’s ex-military, Lombard (vaguely reminiscent of a cross between Indiana Jones and Jack Colton, the fortune hunter from 1984’s Romancing the Stone, albeit with none of Harrison Ford or Michael Douglas’ finesse) as our guide. The arduous journey is made, first by train, then on foot (all except for the hoity-toity Marion, who insists on being carried by servants), then, cable car. The loyalists decamp, however, and mostly out of fear – leaving the principles to fend for themselves in this remote and inhospitable locale. And, it is about to get a lot uglier and perilous momentarily.  

Interestingly, everyone in this version is obtusely naïve – choosing to regard their predicament as something of an adventure – at first, indulging in contrived repartee and cocktails to pass the time. Eventually, the troop begin to surmise they have all arrived at their present misfortune under the auspices of a ‘Mr. Owen’ who, as their benefactor, has yet to materialize. With nothing left to do, these intrepid stragglers gather after dinner to play a record from their host and are shocked when the thoroughly haunting voice emanating back at them accuses everyone of having indulged in a crime for which they, having escaped legal justice, are now, nevertheless, going to pay – with their lives. Wargrave is charged with sentencing an innocent man, Edward Seton, to death by hanging. Lombard is indicted for the demise of twenty-one members of an East Indian tribe. Vera is accused of drowning her young charge, Cyril Ogilvie Hamilton. Marion is blamed for the death of a fellow actress, Miss Beatrice Taylor. Romensky gets pegged for intentionally sending his wife's lover, Heinrich Domaratsky on a suicide mission during WWI. William Henry Blore (Warren Berlinger) is exposed for giving false testimony, sending the innocent, Stephen Joseph Landor to prison where he eventually died. Dr. Hans Yokem Werner (Yehuda Efroni) is revealed to have operated on a woman, Ursula Margaret Lismann while intoxicated, botching the surgery that inadvertently led to her hemorrhaging to death. Rodgers is inveigled in the murder of his wealthy, but invalid employer, Miss Jennifer Brady, ably assisted by his wife, Ethel Mae (Moira Lister). Finally, Anthony James Marston (Neil McCarthy) is indicted for the vehicular manslaughter of John and Lucy Combes, having run them down on a deserted street while bombed out of his mind.

The chief impediment with this Ten Little Indians, unlike the others, in one form or another, to have confined its principles to close quarters inside a lavishly appointed estate, herein, the spreading out of actors, each in their own ‘tent’, diffuses, not only the eventual discovery of their fates, but more importantly, the big ‘build-up’ to their vengefully executed murders. So, we are left with the thirty-second shock and surprise - just another body to be thrown on this pyre of revenge. Between these moments, we get a lot of exposition, Stallone and Thorp’s burgeoning ‘romance’ the most leaden and loose of all the ‘filler’ and ‘fodder’ that follows. We begin with the arrival of these ill-fated ten on safari, presumably hosted by Mr. Owen, who has assigned Philip Lombard as the group’s guide. The travelers are joined by Marston who makes an unnecessarily dramatic debut in his plane. Alas, the weekend will not be an enjoyable one. The bearers, superstitious to a fault, run away, while restless natives in the foothills severe a rope bridge strung across a steep ravine, thereby permanently confining everyone to base camp. Anxiety mounts when the gathering realizes their host, Mr. Owen, has failed to materialize. Again, none of these ill-omened foretastes appear to unsettle this troop. It takes a gramophone recording to do the trick, the bizarre voice charging each with a crime of murder for which they will now be made to pay the ultimate restitution.

The first to drop is Marston, who is poisoned by his martini. His death mirrors the first verse of the English nursery rhyme ‘Ten Little Indians’- one of the ten dolls on the dining table’s centerpiece, discovered with its head snapped off. Uneasily retiring for the night, the next morning Rodgers prepares breakfast, only to discover his wife, Ethel Mae dead in bed. A posse is formed by Lombard to search for the killer – who is presumed to be Mr. Owen. Alas, Gen. Romansky wisely assesses they are doomed and confides his suspicions to Vera, also, to admit his culpability in the death for which he has been accused. Shortly thereafter, Romansky is pushed off a cliff and the guests, finally sobered up by this latest turn of events, now suspect ‘Mr. Owen’ – apart from being the killer – may also be one of them. Everyone is suspicious of Mr. Rodgers, who defiantly elects to keep watch over the camp by night to prove his innocence. At the break of dawn, he too is discovered, bludgeoned to death with an axe. Fearful and reforming to God, Marion confides in Vera that the actress for who’s death she is being blamed, was, in fact, her lover. Spent of her anxieties, Marion retires to her tent and is promptly murdered with a syringe, casting doubt on Dr. Werner. The remaining ‘guests’ come clean about their crimes. Vera returns to her tent and screams, drawing the others to her aid. Only Wargrave is absent, but soon turns up with a gunshot to the head. Now, Werner vanishes, only to resurface with his throat slit. A panicked Blore attempts to hide, but is later discovered stabbed to death by Lombard and Vera – the only remaining survivors. Vera turns on Lombard, presumably executing him with his own gun. Confident she has beaten the odds, Vera returns to her tent, only to discover Wargrave patiently waiting – alive, and dressed in his official robes and wig, with a noose prepared for her. Wargrave explains how Werner helped fake his death. It was he, Wargrave, who has sought justice by murdering those responsible for the deaths of others – his own experiment in ‘perfect justice’. Now, Wargrave seizes a terrified Vera at gunpoint, placing her head into the noose before pulling the chair out from underneath her. As Vera desperately struggles to avoid strangulation, Wargrave commits suicide by drinking poison – his wish for ‘perfect justice’ seemingly complete. Or is it, as Lombard has survived, and now, arrives in the nick of time to free Vera from the noose. Relieved, the couple depart as a rescue plane appears on the horizon.

Ten Little Indians is an enduring story. Alas, this time out it is stifled by a lot of hammy acting and some exotic scenery that does not augment the story so much as it draws the audience out of the harrowing suspense with its stark plushness. The chief challenge herein, as well as the real/reel hurdle to be overcome, regrettably, is in Christie’s creation of infinitely more compelling secondary characters, all made subservient to the two principles who, in this incarnation, are as dull as watching wet paint cure. There is no spark of romantic chemistry between Stallone’s lumbering adventurer and Thorp’s ingenue. In other versions, the character of Vera Claythorne is played with a mild streak of venom. But Thorp’s interpretation leans too heavily on the doe-eyed ingenue/damsel in distress. The best bits in Birkinshaw’s re-reboot are owed Herbert Lom, wonderful as the bumbling General; Paul Smith, who adds menace to his meddling, and Brenda Vaccaro as the haughty fashion plate, literally steals the show. Donald Pleasance is spookily disturbing as the judge, while Moira Lister vamps it for all its worth.

The grave problem with this Ten Little Indians arises as the mysterious killer begins to ‘thin out the herd’ and we are increasingly left with only Stallone and Thorp as our points of interest. Neither is up to the task of sustaining believability. Stallone reads his lines as though his cue cards are MacTac’ed to his forehead, while Thorp just jiggles her way through a performance that is neither slinky nor sex kittenish. Mangling Christie’s finale to suit the precepts of a ‘happily ever after’ gets further distorted by an end title sequence, set to a barb-laden tune that just reeks of some grotesque and colossal joke played on the audience for shits and giggles – the producers’, not ours. The vastness of these sun-drenched African landscapes dismantles the claustrophobic sense of looming dread, despite some portentous music cues, expertly supplied by composer, George S. Clinton. Bottom line: Christie’s novel is a hallmark of excellence in the mystery/suspense literary genre. A genuine pity, Towers’ third – and final – bite at the same apple is mostly pointless and plodding. Owing to the strengths of Christie’s impenetrable authorship, Tower is incapable of entirely rendering a turkey. But he certainly does his damnedest to try.  

Ten Little Indians arrives on Blu-ray via Kino Lorber on a rare occasion where the 1080p transfer is more compelling than the movie featured. For decades, the only home video release of Birkinshaw’s version was an open matte Laserdisc. We now get the movie as originally intended, in 1.85:1 and, with only an errant speck of dust and occasional variance in film grain. Colors are bold and fully saturated. Black levels are excellent and contrast is very good indeed.  Overall image clarity waffles from scene to scene, but on the whole, one can consider these shortcomings as inherent in the source, rather than digital anomalies plagued in the remastering process. The 2.0 DTS, billed as Ultra-Stereo is fairly impressive, with front channel dialogue rather nicely augmented by Clinton’s cues and SFX spread across the surrounds. The only extra is a theatrical trailer, as well as several others for similarly-themed product Kino is hoping to peddle. Bottom line: disposable fluff you can easily skip and be very glad that you did!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

1.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

0