Another adventure in an exotic land, Syria this time, in a search for the buried head of John the Baptist, with noisy third-world riff raff; a tourist's eye view of desert archaeological sites; a magnificently ornate hotel filled with tall archways, decorated like a wedding cake, and no cockroaches; a mean rich old American lady and her smoldering entourage; camels; dusty roads; a Polish nun; and a luscious blond doctor.
The stories often have a doctor tucked away somewhere among the passengers or the visitors. They're needed to establish the time and cause of death, as well as providing another suspect. In this case, the doctor is one of those succulent blonds that the producers happily continue to insert in the cast. I don't know about her acting. Mezza mezza. But her features and figure are flawless in a most conventional way. So are those of Zoe Boyle as Jinny, with her impudent nose. My own doctor is old, ugly, and male. He keeps saying things like, "Don't go squirting anything up there," and his chief function has devolved into teaching me a few words of Hindi. Just in case I wake up one morning and find myself in Bangalore.
What a budget these long episodes must have had. The vista of the flat horizon is almost as handsome as the blond doctor, and there seem to be hundreds of extras in period wardrobe, as well as what looks like a sprawling ancient castle with battlements that Sala'hadin's men might have manned.
The dozen or so characters mill around, gossiping about each other as Poirot watches and listens. The murder victim is the plump American lady, so rich and so well known that no one will criticize her, a monstre sacré, found on her perch overlooking the crowd, found stone dead, a Notre Dame gargoyle.
Ah, but the plot she is full of red herrings -- a whole school of herrings. There is a suicide, an illegitimate birth, an adoption, a burst of motherly love, an attempted abduction by white slavers, a dose of mescaline, another physician-assisted suicide, another plan vanilla suicide. (By the end I was lost.) And that Polish nun? She escapes into the desert and expires of sunstroke, for reasons I can't figure out.
I believe there is a feature film available with the same title, starring Peter Ustinov as Poirot. It's equally confusing and I think I prefer this version.
The stories often have a doctor tucked away somewhere among the passengers or the visitors. They're needed to establish the time and cause of death, as well as providing another suspect. In this case, the doctor is one of those succulent blonds that the producers happily continue to insert in the cast. I don't know about her acting. Mezza mezza. But her features and figure are flawless in a most conventional way. So are those of Zoe Boyle as Jinny, with her impudent nose. My own doctor is old, ugly, and male. He keeps saying things like, "Don't go squirting anything up there," and his chief function has devolved into teaching me a few words of Hindi. Just in case I wake up one morning and find myself in Bangalore.
What a budget these long episodes must have had. The vista of the flat horizon is almost as handsome as the blond doctor, and there seem to be hundreds of extras in period wardrobe, as well as what looks like a sprawling ancient castle with battlements that Sala'hadin's men might have manned.
The dozen or so characters mill around, gossiping about each other as Poirot watches and listens. The murder victim is the plump American lady, so rich and so well known that no one will criticize her, a monstre sacré, found on her perch overlooking the crowd, found stone dead, a Notre Dame gargoyle.
Ah, but the plot she is full of red herrings -- a whole school of herrings. There is a suicide, an illegitimate birth, an adoption, a burst of motherly love, an attempted abduction by white slavers, a dose of mescaline, another physician-assisted suicide, another plan vanilla suicide. (By the end I was lost.) And that Polish nun? She escapes into the desert and expires of sunstroke, for reasons I can't figure out.
I believe there is a feature film available with the same title, starring Peter Ustinov as Poirot. It's equally confusing and I think I prefer this version.