Well, I wasn’t sure how much worse we could get than the Appointment with Death adaptation that John and I watched last week. It turns out things could get much worse indeed. For those who aren’t familiar with it, And Then There Were None is a standalone novel by Agatha Christie and, in my opinion, her creepiest book. (The book goes by a few other names, including Ten Little Indians. If you think that name isn’t PC, you should see the title I didn’t use.) Again, I don’t like to give too much of a book away, but I will give a bare-bones description. A group of people is invited to an island by Mr. Owen. One by one they die. There is no one else on the island and, due to the weather, nobody can get to them. Who is killing them and why?
There have been several adaptations of this story, many of them good. This is not one of the good ones. (Fun fact: the producer of this film had produced two previous adaptations of this book. Is that common? I have no idea.) There were so many changes to the book! (Again, she is the best-selling author in the world! Stop thinking you can “fix” her plots. They don’t need to be fixed! People like them!) First, they move the location to Africa and have everyone on a safari. Unclear why this would be better. They changed the backstory of one the characters. As far as I can tell, they wanted someone to be a lesbian and she was pretty much the only option. Again, it’s unclear what her sexuality has to do with the plot. Maybe because it would have been pretty bold in 1989? I don’t know.
They changed one of the characters completely. I can’t say anything more about that without significantly spoiling things, so I won’t. But it was a big change. The reason for that was pretty clear – they wanted to change the ending and, to do that, they needed to change one of the characters. I still can’t believe they changed the ending. The ending pushes the book from good to great.
I can’t even give you a list of famous actors that were in the movie because there weren’t any. The most famous person in this movie was Frank Stallone. Not to be rude to Frank, but he is probably best known as Sylvester’s brother. In addition to being a mainly unknown cast (there were a few of what John and I call “that guy” types – they play small-medium characters in a lot of movies and so look really familiar. Also known as character actors), the acting quality was not good. It seemed like a strong effort from a community theater. I’m not knocking community theater. I just think professional actors should maybe be able to bring a little bit more to the table.
Again, I am going to say you should just go ahead and read the book. Or listen to the audiobook. Both are really solid choices. If for some reason, you decide to watch this film, it’s streaming for free on Tubi, as is Appointment with Death. Tubi is a treasure trove of not so great adaptations of mystery novels!
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