And Then There Were None * (1974, Oliver Reed, Richard Attenborough, Elke Sommer, Herbert Lom, Gert Fröbe, Stéphane Audran, Charles Aznavour, Adolfo Celi) – Classic Movie Review 3263

Oliver Reed stars in the 1974 mystery thriller film And Then There Were None, a strongly cast remake of Agatha Christie’s ingenious 1939 classic novel, the world’s best-selling mystery with more than 100 million sales.

Director Peter Collinson’s 1974 mystery thriller film And Then There Were None is a strongly cast but fairly dismal remake of Agatha Christie’s ingenious 1939 classic mystery novel and play (originally titled Ten Little Niggers). It was released as And Then There Were None in the UK by EMI Films and in the US as Ten Little Indians by Avco Embassy Pictures.

This time the ten people lured to a remote, isolated location to be bumped off find themselves in an isolated Iranian desert hotel near the ruins of Persepolis, instead of on the small island off the coast of Devon, England, as in the original.

The ten strangers find their host is mysteriously absent. They notice a display of the Ten Little Indians figurines while at dinner, and are accused via a tape recording by U.N. Owen (Unknown), the host they have never met, of having escaped justice for committing murders or causing deaths. Then, one by one, the guests start to die.

There is virtually no tension and there are few scares anywhere throughout the entire movie and the cast of Euro worthies looks a bit embarrassed. Oliver Reed is top billed and looks as though he wishes his agent had picked a different film for him, but that is pretty much the same for Richard Attenborough, Elke Sommer, Herbert Lom, Gert Fröbe, Stéphane Audran, Charles Aznavour and Adolfo Celi. However, it certainly is a visually stylish movie thanks to the location filming in pre-revolution Iran and in Almería in Andalucía, Spain, for the desert exteriors.

It is a remake of 1945 film And Then There Were None, directed by René Clair, and released in the UK as Ten Little Indians, and of the 1965 version Ten Little Indians.

Producer and co-writer Harry Alan Towers’s second filming of the Agatha Christie whodunit, this is the third version of the yarn and by far the weakest, at least until it was remade again in 1989 (as Ten Little Indians). The 1965 version of Ten Little Indians was also written by Towers. There is also a videotaped made-for-TV version broadcast in 1959 and a 1987 Russian version called Desyat Negrityat (1987). Only the Russian film and a 2015 BBC One version keep to the novel’s ending.

And Then There Were None follows the script of the 1965 version Ten Little Indians, bizarrely including calling Reed’s character Hugh, changed from Phillip to accommodate Hugh O’Brian. Reed is so not a Hugh!

Set in an abandoned massive, fictional hotel in the Iranian desert, And Then There Were None was shot in the Shah Abbas Hotel (now the Abbasi Hotel) in Isfahan in Iran during pre-revolution days. Interior scenes are filmed at the Shah Abbas Hotel, and the Shah Mosque near by stands in as the hotel’s exterior and main entrance. Effects shots of the hotel, next to the ruins, combine photography of the mosque and the ruins. Parts of the film were shot in the ruins of Persepolis, while the terrace of the Ālī Qāpū palace, in Isfahan, is made to appear to be part of the ruins. The Bam Citadel is the location for one of the deaths in the desert.

Towers set his 1965 version at a snowed-in mountain chalet and his 1989 one in the African savanna. Lom, who plays Dr Armstrong, also stars in the 1989 version Ten Little Indians as the General. Towers writes the screenplay as Peter Welbeck, along with Enrique Llovet and Erich Kröhnke.

A pre-credit sequence showing the guests arriving by plane at an airport in Iran to be transported to the hotel was cut from the US release, which was renamed Ten Little Indians.

Orson Welles provides the Voice on the Tape as the host, ‘U.N. Owen’.

The cast are entertainer Charles Aznavour as Michel Raven, Stéphane Audran as actress Ilona Morgan, Elke Sommer as secretary Vera Clyde, Gert Fröbe as police official Wilhelm Blore, Herbert Lom as doctor Edward Armstrong, Oliver Reed as businessman Hugh Lombard, Richard Attenborough as judge Arthur Cannon, Maria Rohm as servant Elsa Martino, Alberto de Mendoza as servant Otto Martino, Adolfo Celi as general André Salvé, Orson Welles as the Voice on the Tape ‘U.N. Owen’, and Naser Malek Motiei as Policeman.

And Then There Were None is Christie’s best-selling novel, with more than 100 million sales, making it the world’s best-selling mystery ever and one of the best-selling books of all time. It is the sixth best-selling title of any kind in any language, including reference works.

It was first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 as Ten Little Niggers, after the children’s counting rhyme and minstrel song, a major plot element. Each of the ten victims – eight guests plus the island’s two caretakers – is killed in a way reflecting one of the lines of the rhyme. The US edition was released in January 1940 as And Then There Were None, the rhyme ‘s last five words. American reprints use that title, though Pocket Books paperbacks used Ten Little Indians between 1964 and 1986. UK editions used the original title till 1985.

The current published version of the rhyme starts: ‘Ten little Soldier Boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine.’ and ends ‘One little Soldier Boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.’

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3263

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