The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)

That was an excellent one.

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

American director John Huston had a long as well as illustrious career as an intelligent filmmaker.If film critics were to draft a list of his important films then nobody would doubt that 'The List of Adrian Messenger' would easily find a place on that list.Although it boasts of some important names of Hollywood,The list of Adrian Messenger is able to surprise us all with its focus on suspense.This is one reason why this film's suspense elements appear to be more enjoyable than mere presence of big stars such as Burt Lancaster,Kirk Douglas,Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra.For a film which flirts effortlessly between different genres namely suspense and thriller,The list of Adrian Messenger throws its biggest surprise when it embraces comedy with natural ease.The pace of the film is fast with no scope for any type of dull moments.The end result is an important film which would be an inspiration for other thrillers.

John Huston's "The List of Adrian Messenger" has a quirky charm and an interesting story, but is derailed by a badly executed gimmick. The film is an oddity amongst Huston's films and was made after the heavy-going "Freud". This film is as light as a soufflé in comparison; "The List of Adrian Messenger" is Huston on holidays.Top-billed Kirk Douglas plays George Brougham, distant heir to the Bruttenholme estate in England who eliminates a list of people who know a secret that would prevent him claiming his inheritance. He also attempts to eliminate the members of his family who are next in line for the estate including his young nephew.George C. Scott is Anthony Gethryn, a policeman who solves the crime with the help of Raoul Le Berg played by Jacques Roux, a survivor of a plane crash caused by Brougham.Gethryn and Le Berg are virtually Huston's take on Holmes and Watson; together they track down the clues and the suspects. Although "The List of Adrian Messenger" is set in 1963 – when it was made – the whole production has a decidedly Victorian flavour.Scott turns in an engaging performance despite the odd slip with his otherwise passable British accent. Although Gethryn, like Sherlock Holmes seems a confirmed bachelor , Le Berg on the other hand begins an affair with the recently widowed wife of Adrian Messenger, played by the gorgeous Dana Wynter. However, "List" has a gimmick, central to the plot that does not come off. A number of well-known actors play characters in heavy disguise. Although Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum and Tony Curtis play cameos, it is Kirk Douglas who occupies a large amount of screen time in a number of disguises. Unfortunately, their features are rendered so immobile they look like victims of excessive botoxing. The makeup was designed by Bud Westmore who had once worked on the makeup for "Bud Abbott and Lou Costello meet Frankenstein" with the results in "The List of Adrian Messenger" not much above that level. The actors are unrecognisable – except for Kirk Douglas whose distinctive chin and jaw were impossible to disguise no matter the amount of putty employed. Likewise for Mitchum's voice. John Huston lived on a country estate in Ireland when he made this movie, and his love for fox hunting inspired the final scenes of the film with the countryside of Ireland beautifully photographed. Also a big plus for the film was Jerry Goldsmith's offbeat but jaunty score that announces the light nature of the film from the opening bars."The List of Adrian Messenger" did well at the box office despite being out-of-step with the more "modern" movies of the early 1960's. With its black and white photography and studio-bound depictions of London, the film had a certain quality that almost, but not quite, overcame the self-conscious gimmick.

After his bitter disappointment with The Red Badge Of Courage Huston began to lose interest in directing though he still, of course, needed to pay the rent which explains some of the assignments he accepted. In this case a re-jigging of Kind Hearts And Coronets in which Kirk Douglas like Richard the Third and Alec Guiness before him, systematically eliminates the line of succession standing between himself and an estate and title. In an effort to sweeten the air around this stale plot the film employs the gimmick of having four 'stars' in cameo roles but as each is heavily - and ridiculously - made up it could be - and probably was - anyone under the masks. No one from lead George C. Scott on down, seems remotely interested in the plot and I can't really blame them. To say ho hum is to give it the benefit of the doubt.

(There are Spoilers) Visiting his good friend novelist Adrian Messanger, John Merivale, former WWII British intelligence officer and member of the secretive MI5 agency Anthony Gerthryn, George C. Scott, is puzzled by Messengers' somewhat cryptic sheet of paper that he gave him to investigate. The paper has ten names on it all seemingly having nothing to do with each other.It's not long afterword that when Messenger goes on a business flight to Canada that things begin to get a bit clearer for Gerthryn when the plane that Messenger is on suddenly explodes, from a time bomb that was secretly placed on it, in mid-air over the Atlantic Ocean. It just happened that Messenger survived the airplane crash by shearing a raft with another passenger of the doomed flight WWII ace French intelligence man Raoul La Borg, Jacques Roux. La Borg who took down, in his photographic mind, the dying mans last words that reveal, if deciphered, the truth about his list and the person who's not only responsible for his impending death but the deaths of all the persons, some who at the time were still alive, on it!Despite its novelty of guessing just who are the actors, Burt Lancaster Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis etc. etc., playing in the movie with them having very obvious disguises. It's only Kirk Douglas as George Brougham, together with some half dozen other disguises, and Robert Mitchum as James Slattery who had any real role in the movies plot line. Instead of just showing up in the end and, when the film was finally over, taking off their disguise revealing to the startled viewers just who they were playing.Gethryn and Borg who both worked together in WWII against the Nazis team up to get to the bottom of what the late Adrian Messenger meant in his list of names and as the two check out the names one at a time.It turns out that all of them, with he exception of James Slattery, died mysteriously over the last five years. Trying to get to Slattery before the killer did the nutty and paranoid rummy gave the two the run around. Claiming that he's James brother Joe, who doesn't exist not who he really is James. Which in the end, with Gethryn & Borg giving up on him, lead to his death when the killer pushed him, wheelchair and all, off the docks and into the bay where he drowned.The killer***SPOILERS***finally reveals himself at a fox-hunt at the estate of the Marquis of Gleneyre, Clive Brook, as his long dead brothers son George Brougham. And gaining his confidence and being excepted by the Marquis as a member of the family he then manically plans to do him in on the next fox-hunt. Where Brougham sets a trap for the old man, who's expected to be riding on the lead, at the end of hunt. It now becomes crystal clear that the reason that the murderous George Brougham had murdered all the people on Messengers' list, as well as Messenger himself. In that they all knew about Bougham's treachery toward his fellow POW's whom they all happened to be. The one thing that all the men on Messengers' list had in common in being POW's in a brutal Japanese prison camp in Burma during WWII. With having them gotten out of the way Bougham is now trying to murder the Maquis of Gleneyer and make it look like an accident so he, as his nephew, can inherited his estate and all the riches and royalties that goes along with it. But there's one or two things that he never figured on and thats Gethryn & Borg and that in the end would be his undoing.