The Alphabet Murders

Agatha Christie's character Hercule Poirot has always been difficult for filmmakers to cast.  The caliber and type of actor playing the part has varied greatly over the years --- Peter Ustinov, Ian Holm, Albert Finney, Alfred Molina, and David Suchet have all worn the funny mustache --- but the general attitude toward the character has remained fairly static.  Hercule Poirot is a brilliant amateur detective that earns the respect of Scotland Yard, despite his overblown vanity regarding his appearance.  The Alphabet Murders decides to try something different.  What if this was a mystery with a bumbling detective?  And Poirot was played for laughs?  Wouldn't that appeal to everybody absolutely no one?

The Alphabet Murders is based on Agatha Christie's whodunnit, The ABC Murders, minus only the plot and most of the details.  The film opens with Tony Randall, as himself, addressing the camera and explaining that he will be playing the part of the great Hercule Poirot. 

Subtly, no doubt

If nothing else, I have to admit that was an unexpected choice.  Randall then transforms into Poirot and, after a few gags involving him breaking the fourth wall, the plot is afoot.  Almost.  It seems that Hercule Poirot is not held in high esteem by the British police, even as they find themselves in the middle of a murder spree.  Instead of consulting with Poirot, Soctland Yard sends Hastings (Robert Morley) to guide Poirot safely out of London and on a plane to his homeland of Belgium.  How well does that work?  Let me put it to you this way: when Hastings is onscreen, his movements are accompanied by a tuba on the soundtrack.

Bum-ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum-dum-dum...

The reason Poirot doesn't oblige the Brits is because he was approached by an Amazon a desperate woman (Anita Ekberg); Poirot begins the case out of idle curiosity, but it becomes something more when he accidentally meets her on the street and she claims to not know him.

It's not surprising that he would remember her, though.  Low-key outfit, lady.

Why would anyone ask for Poirot's help and then claim not to know who he is?  What does this mystery woman have to do with the murder of a clown?  Wait...what?  A clown?  Let me check my notes...well, I guess that's right.  Clown murder.  ***sigh***

"Is that really any more ridiculous than anything else here?"

How was the acting in The Alphabet Murders?  Universally overdone.  However, the script did call for broad physical comedy, so I can't fault the actors for playing to the script.  Having said that, Tony Randall was dreadful as Hercule Poirot.  Imagine an actor from the 60s doing an exaggerated impression of a gay Frenchman and you will have the general idea of Randall's performance. 

Don't give me that look.  You're the one mugging the camera for laughs.

Robert Morley played his bumbling supporting role adeptly, although he failed to provide any laughs.  Morley is just very believable when he plays characters who inevitably get locked inside closets.  If his character was suicidal after as a result of his own incompetence, I might say Morley did a fantastic job, but the character sadly is oblivious to failure and embarrassment.  Anita Ekberg was fairly blank as the mystery woman, and the plot gives a reason for that blankness, so...I guess she was adequate?  The rest of the cast is pretty unmemorable and inconsequential to the larger story, although I did recognize a young Julian Glover in a small role and Margaret Rutherford (who played Agatha Christie's other prize character, Miss Marple) had a cameo.

When I look at director Frank Tashlin's body of work, it's not surprising that he made a murder mystery into a farce.  This is a guy whose biggest movies involved Jerry Lewis, so of course he spends a lot of time on "jokes" that no one could enjoy. 

Get it?  The mirror shows the wrong person talking!

Still, The Alphabet Murders could have been a much better movie and a lot of the blame lies on Tashlin.  If his direction had actually led me to laugh, or even smirk, I would cut him some slack.  Instead, he just had two funny-looking men stumble across the screen for the better part of 90 minutes without anything to show for it.  The acting was insultingly broad, the editing was not crisp enough for the gags the script provided, and the mystery is just confusing instead of suspenseful.  I will give credit where it is due --- there are about fifteen minutes in the final act of the movie where this mystery gets interesting.  Not coincidentally, they are the fifteen minutes free of gags.

In all fairness, I should point out that The Alphabet Murders was given the comedic treatment after Margaret Rutherford starred in four semi-comedic movies based on other Agatha Christie works.  It appears that this movie went a bit too far, though. 

Tony Randall was never meant to be a sex symbol

It would be almost a decade before another film was made using the character of Hercule Poirot; after that, he was primarily relegated to public television made-for-TV movies.  I still can't wrap my head around how awful this movie is.  I've recently started to wonder if there have been any good Agatha Christie movies made, but this weak attempt left me depressed.  It's one thing to make a mystery devoid of sense and suspense.  It's another to do that and undercut everything with humor that makes Nancy look like a comic genius by comparison. 

The African Queen

Looking at this movie poster, you might think that this is a film about a dashing leading man who rescues a beautiful woman from dangerous...hippos?  Um...and there's an explosion in the corner.  While there is some truth to this poster --- the leads are in a boat, and there is an explosion --- it's not a very accurate representation of the film.  That's okay, though.  If you're lured in by the poster, you might not see the movie you thought you wanted to watch, but you will still catch a classic.

The African Queen is adapted from the novel of the same name, which tells the story of how a religious old maid and a drunken river rat decided to help Great Britain fight the Germans in World War I.  The story opens with Rose (Katherine Hepburn) and her brother (Robert Morley) in a missionary church, doing their best to instill Christianity to their non-English speaking African flock.  Their best isn't terribly impressive.  Charlie (Humphrey Bogart), the dirty and bearded owner of a small steam boat (The African Queen), shows up from time to time to deliver mail to the mission.  This time, though, he also brings news of a war between England and Germany.  That's bad news for these British missionaries, because their mission is in German East Africa.  The siblings naively believe that they have nothing to fear and Charlie leaves.  Soon after, Germans enter the mission, round up the locals (for unknown reasons) and beat Rose's brother; he survives the attack, but falls ill and dies soon after.  Charlie stops by a few days later and finds Rose numb with grief.  He helps her bury her brother, and the pair take the African Queen to safety.

Or do they?  It turns out that Charlie doesn't get a chance to talk to English-speaking people much, and he fills awkward silences with one-sided conversation.  Charlie reveals that he is a machinist, and that he can make just about anything, given the right parts.  He could even make torpedoes from the material on his boat.  Charlie also let it slip that the Germans have a huge gunship in a lake downriver that effectively keeps the British forces at bay.  Rose puts these two thoughts together and decides that she and Charlie should sink the German gunship by ramming a torpedo-wielding African Queen into it.  Of course, that is assuming they can navigate the treacherous river together, avoiding its natural and man-made dangers all the while.  As you might surmise from my brief character descriptions, Charlie and Rose are not very similar and much of the story is devoted to their relationship.  Predictably, they start out fairly frosty toward each other, but eventually warm up and fall in love.  The film is basically their love story, with the attack on the Germans serving as their zero hour. 

I hadn't seen this film in at least ten years before this viewing, so I went in with somewhat fond recollections.  I wasn't terribly impressed with the first act of the movie this time around, though.  Sure, I appreciated the amount of scenes that were clearly filmed in Africa (which was a hassle in 1951 with their enormous cameras) and liked the subtle jab at the futile efforts of "converting" third world people to Christianity.  I've got no problem with missionaries converting people, but to presume that you can create spiritual and moral understanding without having a language in common is just silly.  Oh, Colonialism, you are the prankster of all -isms.  But I digress.  Charlie and Rose's characters are well-established in these early scenes, but something about them bothers me.  I don't think they are very likable characters when the movie begins.  I understand that their stereotypical presentations are just to establish a quick understanding between the filmmakers and the audience, but these scenes are awkward, both purposefully and accidentally.  I see this serving a purpose in their relationship, but the pace is slow enough for this part of the film to seriously drag.

That doesn't last long, though. Once the film establishes its direction with the let's-sink-the-Krauts idea, the main characters loosen up and become very entertaining.  This isn't a typical Bogart role; his character has more flaws than most of his memorable characters and fewer obvious strengths.  This isn't your normal, debonair romantic Bogart, either.  Charlie is dirty and uncouth.  This might be the happiest Bogart character I have seen, though, and when Charlie is enjoying himself the movie flies by.  Bogart won the Best Actor Oscar for this role, and it is a fine performance, although it might have been one of those we-can't-believe-you-haven't-won-yet awards, since he beat out Marlon Brando's work in A Streetcar Named Desire.  Katherine Hepburn is no slouch, either, of course.  I'm not usually a huge Hepburn fan (mostly because of her voice), but she does a good job here, showing a very plausible transition from prim and proper lady to a woman discovering love for the first time.  Plus, it's Katherine Hepburn...the woman's whole career was Oscar nominated, so you can bet she doesn't mail her performance in here.  Together, Bogart and Hepburn are delightful to watch and their romance manages to remain fun and never gets too cloying.

There really aren't many other actors in this film.  After Robert Morley's character dies, the next important character is the German captain, played by Peter Bull.  They're serviceable, but that because that's all they need to be.  This is not an ensemble movie.  That means that the director, frequent Bogart collaborator John Huston, spent almost his entire focus on the film's romance, and it pays off in spades.  The cinematography is pretty good, although the occasional African animals that receive a quick cut were clearly never near the stars.  Huston is a great director, and while this movie is more light-hearted than most of his classic works, he is still able to make an entertaining film with two great lead performances.

John Huston also co-wrote the screenplay, which is substantially less great than his direction.  It's not a bad script, by any means, but a lot of the dialogue has become dated in a way that his other screenwriting credits have not.  There is also the completely valid complaint that the plot of this movie is implausible as all hell.  I don't really mind that so much, since the main characters are so much fun to watch, but it would be a huge problem if the lead actors were, say, Ashton Kutcher and Tara Reid.

The absolute worst thing about this film, though, is the soundtrack.  There are long periods where the only background noise comes from nature, and that fits this film's tone perfectly.  Every so often, though, Allan Gray's score pops up.  I don't have any musical education, so it's hard for me to put those sounds into words.  I guess the best I can do is have you picture Denzel Washington, after several tense minutes, breaking into a smile to charm his woman, even in a bad situation...and then the Popeye theme music comes in, not as a joke or an homage, but because they felt that that type of music with those instruments fit that moment just right.  Awful, right?  Well, it's a little worse in The African Queen.  It's so bad that the score should end each of its pieces with a "wah-waaaaah" noise to at least sympathize with the audience that has to listen to it.

To summarize: Bogart and Hepburn are great, and so is Huston's direction.  The writing is a little hokey, but the score is distractingly bad (when it appears).