Review: Ten Little Indians (1965)

Ten Little Indians

Rating

Director

George Pollock

Screenplay

Peter Yeldham, Peter Welbeck (Novel: Agatha Christie)

Length

1h 31m

Starring

Hugh O’Brian, Shirley Eaton, Fabian, Leo Genn, Stanley Holloway, Hilfrid Hyde White, Daliah Lavi, Dennis Price, Marianne Hoppe, Mario Adorf

MPAA Rating

Not Rated

Review

For fans of Agatha Christie, it’s sometimes difficult to find adaptations of people’s favorite books. With And Then There Were None, her most popular, there is no shortage of adaptations. The 1965 English-language version of Ten Little Indians moved the action, but improved the tension.

Many have considered René Clair’s 1945 adaptation to be the best for any number of reasons, but there’s something about this rendition that resonates more strongly than the aforementioned effort. Shifting the action from a remote, inaccessible island off the coast of Devon, to a remote, inaccessible chalet high in the mountains, the action follows the book fairly closely with a few deaths effectively relocated to take advantage of the setting’s snowing climes.

While the names of most of the characters are changed in this rendition, their crimes and punishments are not terribly far off. The cast is considerably less starry than the prior outing with the likes of Hugh O’Brian, Fabian, Sterling Holloway, and Wilfrid Hyde-White as the most recognizable. Still, the cast is aces with these four plus Leo Genn, Shirley Eaton, Daliah Lavi, Dennis Price, Marianne Hoppe, and Mario Adorf delivering superb performances as the ten escapees of justice brought in for death.

The last of the black-and-white adaptations of the film, Ten Little Indians uses those shadows to great effect as the film feels more terrifying and claustrophobic than its predecessor. Ernest Steward’s cinematography is solid, but director George Pollock’s Christie experience helps the events in the film go down more smoothly and excitingly than before. Pollock helmed all four of the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple films, so he has plenty of experience with the style and feel of her work even if those films weren’t the closest in terms of themes and techniques. In this outing, he manages to smooth out some of the unevenness of Peter Yeldham and Peter Welbeck’s (pseudonym for producer Harry Alan Towers) screenplay.

For fans of Christie’s novels who can tolerate a bit of alteration, Ten Little Indians remains a solid evocation of her book even if it differs in quite a few details. It might not have the limited faithfulness of its predecessor nor all but two of the subsequent adaptations, but it’s no less ingenuous and inventive. It’s a delight in many ways. It’s a crisp, engaging mystery thriller that uses the “happy” ending rather than the book ending, but that’s hardly a reason to hate it or any of its subsequent efforts. It’s just mildly annoying.