Death on the Nile, newly released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, was the second of four elaborate films made from the works of Agatha Christie by the producing team of John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin whose credits ranged from 1968’s Romeo & Juliet to 1984’s A Passage to India.

Home video rights to Murder on the Orient Express, the first and most successful of their Christie adaptations, remain with Paramount, but Kino Lorber has newly released the other three, which also include The Mirror Crack’d and Evil Under the Sun.

Looking and sounding better than it ever has, Kino Lorner’s 2K restoration of 1978’s Death on the Nile followed Murder on the Orient Express by four years. When Albert Finney declined to reprise his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot, Peter Ustinov stepped into the breach.

Ustinov’s interpretation is quite different form Finney’s but works equally well. In fact, Ustinov went on to play Poirot five more times from 1982 to 1989.

The 1978 production was adapted by Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth) and directed by John Guillermin (The Towering Inferno). Joining Ustinov on his voyage that will see three ingeniously committed murders and various other crimes are Jane Birkin, Lois Chiles, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Jon Finch, Olivia Hussey, George Kennedy, Angela Lansbury, Simon MacCorkindale, David Niven, Maggie Smith, and Jack Warden. Anthony Powell’s costume design won an Oscar and a BAFTA. Ustinov, Lansbury, and Smith were also nominated for BAFTAs and Lansbury won the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actress for her deliciously broad portrayal of a second-rate mystery writer.

Blu-ray extras include brand-new audio commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson as well as a documentary on the making of the film and archival interviews with Ustinov and Birkin, imported from the previous DVD release.

Both The Mirror Crack’d and Evil Under the Sun were directed by Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger). The screenplay for The Mirror Crack’d was by Jonathan Hales and Barry Sandler. The screenplay for Evil Under the Sun was by the aforementioned Anthony Shaffer.

1980’s The Mirror Crack’d was the least liked and least successful of the four Brabourne-Goodwin films. It was a departure from the others in that it is a Miss Marple, rather than a Hercule Poirot, mystery. The main problem with the film was that Marple, played by Angela Lansbury, doesn’t interact with three of the film’s big-name stars, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, and Tony Curtis, and is only in one scene with the fourth, Rock Hudson. The plot has Marple sidelined with a sprained ankle for most of the film, receiving information about the case from her detective nephew (Edward Fox).

The offscreen oddity about the film is that it has Lansbury, who was the same age of Hudson and Curtis (54), playing an old lady in a white wig while Hudson and Curtis played men still in their prime. It was a bit disconcerting considering that Lansbury was at the height of her pre-Murder, She Wrote fame, having just starred in and won her fourth Tony Award for Broadway’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Berger, Mitchell, and Thompson again provide new audio commentary on the Blu-ray.

1982’s Evil Under the Sun brought Ustinov back as Poirot, giving him an enticing mystery set in a gorgeous, sunbaked locale populated by an all-star cast that may not have been as glamorous as that of Murder on the Orient Express or even Death on the Nile, but used them more effectively than The Mirror Crack’d. They included Nile’s Birkin, Nicholas Clay, James Mason, Roddy McDowall, Sylvia Miles, Diana Rigg, and Nile’s Smith. Rigg and Smith are particularly delightful in their scenes together.

Blu-ray extras again include a brand-new commentary by Berger, Mitchell, and Thompson, as well as a documentary of the making of the film from the previous DVD release.

Also new to Blu-ray from Kino Lorber are The Raging Moon aka Long Ago Tomorrow and Britannia Hospital both starring Malcolm McDowell in intriguingly different roles.

Kino Lorber’s release of 1971’s The Raging Moon is the original British release version. For its U.S. release, the film’s title was changed to Long Ago Tomorrow and given a catchy title tune by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, made popular by B.J. Thomas whose recording of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid helped propel that song to an Oscar for the composers.

Directed by Bryan Forbes (The Whisperers), who also wrote the screenplay from Peter Marshall’s novel, McDowell’s character in The Raging Moon is a mysteriously paralyzed soccer player who falls in love with a lifelong paraplegic Nanette Newman (Mrs. Forbes) in the care facility to which they are both assigned. Georgia Brown (Broadway’s Oliver!) is the sympathetic nurse who cares for them.

McDowell’s heartbreaking performance was a revelation to audiences who had just seen him as the violent lead in the same year’s A Clockwork Orange. Both performances resulted in a nomination for Best Actor from the National Society of Film Critics. Newman and Brown were both nominated for BAFTAs. The film itself was nominated for Best English Language Foreign Film and Best Song at the Golden Globes.

Extras include a brand-new audio commentary by film historian Daniel Kremer.

1982’s Britannia Hospital was the third film in Lindsay Anderson’s Mick Travis trilogy in which McDowall played the same character he had in 1968’s If… and 1973’s O Lucky Man! The first film was written by David Sherwin, the later two by both Sherwin and McDowall who plays Travis as a student in the first, a coffee salesman in the second, and an investigative reporter in the third.

What Travis is investigating in this very dark comedy is a British hospital getting ready for its 500th anniversary in which the guest will be an unnamed member of the British Royal Family clearly resembling the Queen Mother. Anderson (This Sporting Life)’s film was so reviled at the time that it ended his career in Great Britain, his remaining years having been spent in Hollywood. His last film of note was 1987’s The Whales of August.

The supporting cast includes Graham Crowden, Mark Hamill, Joan Plowright, Vivian Pickles, Jill Bennett, and Alan Bates.

Extras include brand-new commentary by film historian Samm Deighan and two archival interviews with McDowell, one on Anderson.

This week’s new releases include the Blu-ray releases of Brute Force and The Naked City.