EVIL UNDER THE SUN film: Pounce!

Campy, witty, delicious Agatha Christie film with the great bitchy chemistry of Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith. Peter Ustinov, James Mason, and Sylvia Miles {!} are along for the ride in this 1982 flick filled with Cole Porter tunes and the late Nicholas Clay in black speedos. Who could ask for anything more?

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The Diana Rigg/Maggie Smith chemistry is fantasic ("She could always throw her legs in the air higher than anyone (pause) and wider"), but for me the Maggie Smith/Bette Davis pairing in "Death on the Nile" is the best of any Christie film.

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"Odell!, If you were a man I'd divorce you."
-Myra Gardener

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Lansbury deserved an oscar nom for ...Nile.

Love these films.

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I found the "Nile" and "Sun" to be a bit too campy, too. Anthony Shaffer could lay it on a bit thick, at times. And, being the Agatha Christie fan, I thought that there was no need to tart up "Sun". The book takes place at a beach hotel in Cornwall, the movie on the French Riveria.

And I wondered if back in the 30s/40s, even men who looked like Nicholas Clay, wore swimtrunks that brief.

Though, now, I realize that, regarding Nicholas Clay in those swimtrunks, my feelings were best expressed by the character Sabina in Thornton Wilder's "Skin of Our Teeth" when she said "Don't ask about the ice cream on your plate, just enjoy..."

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Murder on the Orient Express is the best of all the Christie adaptations, for sure. But the acting in Evil and Nile is just too delicious.

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