I'm pretty darn sure I had seen And Then There Were None before but it's not on my Watched Movies List so it must have happened before 1989. That's when I started the list. Twenty six plus years seems like a good time to forget who the murderer was so I watched it again. It's one of the movies that got posted to the Internet Archive when it shouldn't have been. It's gone now but you can see the movie at YouTube in the link above.
It's written by Dudley Nichols who adapted Agatha Christie's novel of the same name. Dudley is an accomplished screenwriter writing many movies I've seen. Here's a few I'm bettin' that you've heard of: Bringing Up Baby (1938), Stagecoach (1939), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Scarlet Street (1945), and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). Rene Clair is the director and producer. Most of his work was done in his native France and I'd only seen one other of his few American films, I Married A Witch.
Several people get invited to a big house on a lonely island. That's the place above with C Aubrey Smith and June Duprez on the rocky shore. Besides those there are 6 more people, Judith Anderson, Walter Huston, Mischa Auer, Barry Fitzgerald, Roland Young and Louis Hayward, on the invite list. A couple, Richard Haydn and Queenie Leonard, has been hired as butler and cook.
At 9 PM a record is played telling them all they are murderers who have escaped the law and they've been selected by the killer for their punishment. One by one they get picked off. Who will survive, who is the murderer? That's what I asked myself and luckily I couldn't remember. It was fun enough to watch and there was a fair mystery. I didn't guess who done it before it was made known. Have it a look, see if you like it.
Comments