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AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
Rating: 
UK. 1974.
Director – Peter Collinson, Screenplay – Peter Welbeck [Harry Alan Towers], Based on the Novel and Play Ten Little Niggers/Indians by Agatha Christie, Producer – Harry Alan Towers, Photography – Fernando Arribas, Music – Bruno Nicolai. Production Company – Filibuster Films.
Cast:
Oliver Reed (Hugh Lombard), Elke Sommer (Vera Clyde), Richard Attenborough (Judge Cannon), Gert Froebe (Wilhelm Blore), Stephane Audran (Ilona Morgan), Herbert Lom (Dr Edward Armstrong), Charles Aznavour (Michel Raven), Alberto de Mendoza (Martino), Adolfo Celi (General Andre Salve), Maria Rohm (Elsa Martino), Orson Welles (Voice of U.N. Owen)
Plot: A group of ten people are brought to a remote, unoccupied hotel in the middle of the Iranian desert by the mysterious Mr U.N. Owen whom none of them have ever met. Once there, a tape-recording left by Owen is played informing them that each of them is guilty of a murder but has managed to get away with it. In every room is a copy of the song ‘Ten Little Indians’ and as the evening begins, one by one members of the group are killed off, just as in the song. They make the gradual realization that Mr Owen must be one of their number.
And Then There Were None is adapted from popular British murder mystery writer Agatha Christie’s novel Ten Little Niggers (1939). Ten Little Niggers was made into a play in 1943 and is usually given the more Politically Correctly retitling Ten Little Indians these days. This adaptation of Ten Little Niggers/Indians came out very quickly on the tails of Murder on the Orient Express (1974), a lavish star-studded period adaptation of Christie’s novel, which brought about a vogue for such whodunits in the late 1970s. And Then There Were None taps into the formula of Orient Express and offers a similar lineup of star names. Unlike Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None isn’t set period, but take away the helicopter at the start and the costumes, the setting and characters would have no problem slotting into the Edwardian period setting favoured by most other Agatha Christie adaptations.
And Then There Were None is included here because the play is a proto-slasher story – indeed it may well have been the first thriller to use an isolated setting – a remote island lodge in the book/play, a seemingly abandoned Iranian hotel here – with an unseen killer in the group’s midst bumping members of the party off. The Italian giallo thriller has most definitely borrowed the model of this story – see in particular Mario Bava’s Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) and Twitch of the Death Nerve/Bloodbath (1971).
Harry Alan Towers is a low-budget exploitation producer best known for his Fu Manchu adaptations [see The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)], his Jesus Franco collaborations and numerous horror/sexploitation films. And Then There Were None is really one of Harry Alan Towers’ B-movies with an A cast list. The film’s one novelty was its being able to go on location in pre-Revolution Iran and shoot in the huge Shah Abbas Hotel in Isfahan. Being the only Western film ever shot in Iran gives the film a certain novelty value – but in all other respects And Then There Were None is drearily dull. There’s lots of skulking around the hotel but it is rather sloppily directed by Peter Collinson. Crucially the film never engages in any of the adroit, sharp-witted suspense for which Agatha Christie is renowned and the film’s only interest is in waiting to find out the identity of the killer.
Other film adaptations of the story include And Then There Were None/Ten Little Indians (1945), Ten Little Indians (1965) and Ten Little Indians (1989), a later Harry Alan Towers remake that was also entitled Death on Safari, which definitely moves over into horror territory.
Copyright Richard Scheib 2002
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