Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery (1981)

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Absolutely the worst movie.

A Masterpiece!

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This rather long adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel (which I haven't read) is pretty highly stylized -- one or two steps removed from Monty Python's sketch, "Race of the Upper-Class Twits." Not that there's anything stupid about these characters, except a few eccentricities. It's just that it's so awfully easy to imagine that the twits came from the kind of milieu we see here.Nine young people, just past college age, are spending a weekend at a country estate belonging to John Gielgud, in a hilarious performance as a doddering and superior Feudal Lord. The murder of one of the guests upsets him. "A stranger! One expects family to die at one's home, but a complete STRANGER?" Another guest is later shot. "You don't just go about shooting people. They don't LIKE it." Before dying, the young man mutters something about the "seven dials" and one or two other clues. After this, the plot becomes a little tangled. The Seven Dials turns out to be some secret society, but I won't go into it because medical discretion and a lack of comprehension forbids it.The location shooting and photography are superb, reminiscent of series like Sherlock Holmes and David Suchet's Poirot. The cars are spiffy antiques and so is the garb. Cheryl Campbell, as "Bundle", becomes one of those recreational detectives impelled by arrogance and curiosity. She overacts triumphantly in a perky, pop-eyes, open-mouthed way that's not at all offensive once you get used to it. Gielgud and Harry Andrews, though present, don't have that much screen time.I want to note, somewhere along the line, the disdain with which the servants treat their masters. It's all delicately expressed -- an upturned nose, a question with the contours of total disbelief, a certain quiet joy in disturbing the master in some minor way while going about their business.

All the acting, all story, aside - I found this movie technically annoying to watch and admittedly I may be the only person who has viewed this "movie" that thinks so. I abhor the mixing of two different art forms into one production. Video tape is one form of artistic expression and celluloid film is another. The playback look is obviously different for each and I can spot the difference in an instant. This movie mixes video taped interiors with filmed exteriors. Video tape and live theater are too in-your-face real and take away from the escapism of film.That said, I enjoyed Cheryl Campbell's acting, as always, and vote the acting ensemble a 10. The fast-passed dialog made it difficult to comprehend each word uttered by the actors at the beginning with their bantering back and forth before placing the clocks under the bed but again I blame the use of video tape for that problem. There could be a faint echo in the studio that accounts for this.

Long, slow running "New Romantic" adaption of an early Agatha Christie novel written by Pat Sandy and made for "ITV on the week end" to tie with a series concurrently shown. James "anyone for tennis ?" Warwick and a group of bright (silly) young things are up in the country at a manor when they put eight clocks in a friends room so they can get him up early. He is found dead the next morning. A confederate called "The Seven Dials" is eventually suspected. A formula is attempted to be stolen – why didn't they just copy it ? Sir John Gielgud in a few scenes shows up the mediocrity of the rest of the strictly made for TV cast.The early novel was fairly ordinary and the script sticks strictly to that. The early parts of the film (which remind me of that Monty Python sketch a bit) are quite jolly but then it drags quite a bit later on.

Not the best Agatha Christie adaptation, but one of the better ones. The direction could've been more taut at times, but this is a treasure for any Agatha Christie fan(I have been for almost 9 years). It is beautifully made, handsomely shot with splendid locations/settings and evocative period detail, particularly those cars. If you haven't seen the film yet and are wondering about faithfulness or lack of it, Seven Dials Mystery is very faithful(with one or two subtle changes), like the Russian version of And Then There Were None it is like the pages of the book and prose come to life. And to me it doesn't suffer from being too faithful. Seven Dials Mystery is slow in pace, but considering that Christie's mysteries take time to unfold this approach was appropriate. The length I also thought was fine. The dialogue is very good if talky, true in detail and spirit to Christie's style, and the story even with the pacing and that the second half is more suspenseful than the first is engrossing and keeps us guessing until the ending, which is a surprise. Of the acting, John Gielgud steals the show and Harry Andrews is similarly terrific. James Warrick and Cheryl Campbell(though I can see her character is going to divide viewers) bring great humour and charm to their characters. All in all, a classic Agatha Christie mystery. 9/10 Bethany Cox