Appointment With Death(1988)
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Appointment with Death is a 1988 American mystery film and sequel produced and directed by Michael Winner. Made by Golan-Globus Productions, the film is an adaptation of the 1938 Agatha Christie novel Appointment with Death featuring the detective Hercule Poirot. The screenplay was written by Winner as well as Peter Buckman and Anthony Shaffer.
The film stars Peter Ustinov as Poirot, along with Lauren Bacall, Carrie Fisher, John Gielgud, Piper Laurie, Hayley Mills, Jenny Seagrove and David Soul. It is a follow-up to numerous other theatrical and made-for-television adaptions starring Ustinov, as well as 1974's Murder On The Orient-Express.
She takes the stepchildren and Nadine, her daughter-in-law serving as a nurse, on holiday to Europe. In Trieste, the great detective Hercule Poirot runs into an old friend, Dr. Sarah King. Sarah soon falls in love with Raymond Boynton, to Emily's disapproval.
The Boynton family are surprised to see Cope on board the ship. The adult step-children discover the existence of a second will since their father told Lennox before he died but no one can prove this. Emily continues to bully her step-children. Cope is flirting with Nadine who overtly accepts his courting. He also resists Emily's demand that he stay away from them. Emily poisons Cope's wine, but this is spilt when Nadine's husband thumps Cope, having found an engraved cigarette case given to Nadine by Cope. Poirot observes a fly drinking from the spill and dying, and keeps a close eye on the family when they disembark.
At the archaeological dig, Cope, Nadine, Lennox, Carol, Raymond and Dr King go for a walk, but Lennox turns back, upset by his wife's preference for Cope. Later the others return one by one. Dr King notices an Arab man hovering over Emily. When she goes over, she finds Emily dead. Dr King thinks Emily died of a heart attack but Poirot points out it is wise to be suspicious when there is a death of someone who is widely hated. He asks Dr King to check her medical bag and she finds it disordered, with an empty bottle of digitalis and there is a missing syringe.
Poirot deduces that Mrs. Boynton was injected with a lethal dose of digitalis, corresponding to a medicine she took that was usually administered by Nadine, in order that her death appear to be by natural causes. Since the family could have altered her medication without needing an additional syringe, he suspects an outsider.
There is an altercation in the street, a gun is fired and an Arab boy is killed. Dr King is accused, but Poirot has her released so she can travel with him to meet the others for a 'picnic' where he plans to reveal what happened. Having suggested that all the step-children lied about seeing their step-mother alive when she was dead (thinking one of them may have done it and wishing to delay or protect them against discovery), he reveals the truth: Lady Westholme is the murderer. She was once in prison and Emily had recognised her from her time as a prison warden. To keep her quiet and maintain her status, Lady Westholme had resorted to murder.
The film received a mixed reception. Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times that the film "is not up to the stylish standard of the earlier all-star, Hercule Poirot mysteries, especially Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express. The pleasures of the form are not inexhaustible, and this time the physical production looks sort of cut-rate."[5] Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times blasted the film as "unsatisfying, even a little soporific [with a] tendency to blame co-writer-producer-director Michael Winner, whose 1978 adaptation of "The Big Sleep" ruined the story by translating its action from Los Angeles in the 1930s to London in the 1970s."[6] Another blasting of the film came from Variety, whose reviewer wrote: "Peter Ustinov hams his way through Appointment with Death one more time as ace Belgian detective 'Hercuool Pwarow,' but neither he nor glitz can lift the pic from an impression of little more than a routine whodunit. Even the normally amusing Ustinov looks a bit jaded in his third big-screen outing as the sleuth, as well as several TV productions. Director Michael Winner has some fine Israeli locations to play with, but his helming is only lackluster, the script and characterizations bland, and there simply are not enough murders to sustain the interest of even the most avid Agatha Christie fan."[7] Critic David Aldridge, from an issue of Film Review magazine dated May 1988, classified the film as "another loser from Winner, though, to give the man some small due, even a more talented director would have floundered forcing freshness in such formularised fare." He also criticized Cannon Films for the production value of a film that ostensibly was shot on an exotic location, with the quote: "But, then, it is a Cannon Film and they're not known for spending a penny when a halfpenny would just about do. Good for TV."
Atrocious direction from Michael Winner - you can witness the dramatic tension bleed from each scene. One camera setup makes it blindingly obvious who the murderer is. The screenplay, all paper-thin character and laborious exposition, has been co-scripted by Anthony Shaffer (writer of the wonderful Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun) and Winner - so I wonder who got the last say with his fellow producers Golan and Globus?
Take an Agatha Christie novel set in an exotic locale, add a sprinkling of stars and you have an instant hit, right? Well, if the director is Michael Winner, there's more chance that you're onto a loser but this just about keeps its head above water thanks to an always game Peter Ustinov (although his moustache is decidedly droopy) and the talents of acting legends Lauren Bacall and Piper Laurie, vamping up their own storms. A dull script and a completely out of place jaunty score do their best to sink things in what proved to be the last big screen outing for Poirot until his return this year with Kenneth Branagh.
This film adaptation of a book by Agatha Christie about Hercule Poirot, with Peter Ustinov in the lead role, is a lot less good than the earlier Poirot films from the 70s and 80s. Even though there are big names involved, the acting is a bit forced here and there - especially in the smaller roles. If you take a very strict look at this movie, you could give it a maximum of three stars - or less. That would be right too. At the same time, I prefer this film, shot on location and without any weird location, story or character jumps, with a story that connects well to the source material far and wide above what Branagh has made of his Poirot films. Perhaps we should count our blessings. In addition, it's nice to see Bacall and Ustinov in a movie, while Gielgud drops by every now and then. Therefore, half a point extra.
Please arrive fifteen minutes early for your appointment with death and bring your insurance card. Appointment with death cancellations with less than twenty four hours notice will incur a charge on the patient's account.
Okay, now that I've gotten that out of my system, I can get on with trashing this astonishingly misguided film. There are so many things wrong with Appointment with Death that I'll have to pick my battles. I'm not about to waste the whole morning writing a scholarly thesis on a late 1980s Golan-Globus Agatha Christie adaptation.
Having moved the Poirot adaptations from the big screen to the small screen for 3 entries, it now falls into the hands of Messrs Golan and Globus of Cannon Films, which has the benefit of bringing with it an increased budget, locations which are more in keeping with the earlier films, and a more impressive cast list, including Peter Ustinov, Lauren Bacall, Carrie Fisher, John Gielgud, Piper Laurie and Hayley Mills, as well as a script with Anthony Shaffer's name on it.
As with the source novel, this movie evoked Agatha Christie's relationship with archaeological husband Max Mallowan as the desert regions, in which the movie and novel are set, are evocative of archaeological digs. Filming location Qumran in the Dead Sea is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.
In May 1987, John Gielgud wrote to Irene Worth that he was leaving for Israel in June "to do a rather absurd part in an Agatha Christie... Peter Ustinov and Betty Bacall are to be in it and possibly Michael York, so it might be fun, even with that vulgar, but quite funny director, Michael Winner."
Lauren Bacall felt she had been hoodwinked into doing this film. She had previously appeared in another movie based on Hercule Poirot (Murder on the Orient Express (1974)) which was primarily shot in a British film studio with a few exterior shots filmed in Turkey and France. She had enjoyed that experience enormously and the film received good reviews. Bacall and several others in the cast had assumed this would follow a similar formula, especially as Cannon Films had appointed an English director to film it. However the Israeli producers wanted to shoot the majority of the film in Israel as a cost cutting measure. Apart from a few days in Italy and about a week in England the film was shot in Israel during the hot summer. Bacall was not terribly happy with the end result or the experience. Apparently director Michael Winner, who had worked for Cannon films before knew that this was the plan but elected not to say anything too early about the filming schedule for fear of putting off his star names.
At the age of 83, John Gielgud was not interested in travelling to Israel to shoot a film in the stifling heat and turned the part down saying he'd much rather stay in England and do some theatre or a television role. Peter Ustinov (who had previously worked with Gielgud on stage) and Michael Winner took Gielgud out for dinner in a posh London restaurant in an effort to convince him to do it with Ustinov telling Gielgud it was "Easy money for a couple of weeks work" and Winner saying that the role would not be too demanding plus it was in a mainstream film with a guaranteed audience around the world. Despite his reservations about the heat of the shoot or the lack of artistic integrity to the project he finally agreed to do it as a favor to both men. 781b155fdc