Death on the Nile

Buy This Item Death on the Nile by Starz / Anchor Bay  Available from Amazon  $9.98  on 11-14-2008     Peter Ustinov makes his debut as Agatha Christie's brilliant Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, in this lavish and star-studded follow-up to MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. <P>As Poirot enjoys a luxurious cruise down the Nile, a newlywed heiress is found murdered on board and every elegant passenger becomes a prime suspect. Can Poirot identify the killer and motive before the ship of clues reaches the end of its murderous journey? <P>Bette Davis, David Niven, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith, Mia Farrow, George Kennedy, Olivia Hussey, Simon MacCorkindale, Jane Birkin, Jack Warden, and Lois Chiles co-star in this sumptuous Oscar-winning classic, adapted by Anthony Shaffer (SLEUTH) and filmed on location throughout exotic Egypt. Reader Reviews Meant to match the success of the 1974 MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, this all-star 1978 film is much more mobile but doesn't quite carry the haunting sense of evil of the other film (thanks to that film's famously disturbing pre-credit sequence). Here the only thing that matches the majesty of the great Nino Rota score (which brilliantly evokes a Nile steamboat, the location for much of this film's action is Mia Farrow's performance as Jackie. This was probably the best role Farrow got in the Seventies, and while it allows her to do her specialty in evoking hysteria it also allows her the rare opportunity to play a really intelligent character. Her scenes menacing her ex-lover and best friend (who have married one another behind her back) by turning up at Egyptian tourist sites and reciting statistics about the sites to them are memorably strange. Peter Ustinov makes a fine Poirot, and Angela Lansbury is a lot of fun as a Marie Corelli-like hack novelist, and Simon MacCorkindale is suitably dreamy as Farrow's ex-lover, but no one else is up to the scale the production seems to demand. Several actors seem terribly underused (particular Olivia Hussey and Maggie Smith), and Bette Davis as a Washington grande dame looks like a walking mummy (which should be suitable to the theme but instead is rather creepy). Very few of the characters have plausible motives for murder, so the time spent discussing whether or not they committed the central crime seems pretty tedious.

Death on the Nile Available from Amazon Price: $9.98 Updated on 11-14-2008.

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