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Great Film overall

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

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

Hercule Poirot is investigating a murder and a fake diamond. His investigations take him to a holiday resort on an island in the Adriatic Sea. While he is there Arlena Marshall turns up dead, murdered. Plenty of suspects - she appeared to be universally hated - but everyone has a perfect alibi. Superb adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic novel. Clever plot with a wonderful, classic, old-worldy feeling to proceedings. Peter Ustinov is great as Poirot, but that's a given.Classic murder-drama.

If the aim of the script was to turn Agatha Christie's "Poirot" potboiler into an elegant comedy of manners (and that is a fair assumption) and almost as it were to spoof the very stuff of which her mysteries are made, Shaffer has only partly succeeded in that laudable aim. He is let down partly by his cast, partly by his director but mostly by himself. The dialogue except for one or two instances (notably Mason's delightful speech about not having an alibi) is just not sufficiently witty (though Maggie Smith has a game try at making her lines ring with the requisite offhanded venom) and even descends at the climax into the standard detective novel ploy of an extremely long, extraordinarily tedious explanatory speech (lightened though it is by flashbacks to incidents we have not previously been shown! — talk about cheating!). Blakely's bombast is also a distinct handicap and Saran Miles is far too strident. Fortunately their roles are comparatively small. Mr. Clay is a bit too insipid to inspire confidence and Ustinov's accent is as faulty as an amateur stage Frenchman's; but Jane Birkin, the ever-reliable Roddy McDowall and James Mason, Diana Rigg and Emily Hone are well worth supporting. Sets and costumes are inspired. Locations, color photography look all that escapist hearts could desire. And there's a Cole Porter score including a delightful rendition of "You're the Top" by Diana Rigg. (Available on a very good quality, but rather sparse on extras, Optimum DVD).

Big-name cast as suspects of a murder committed in a luxurious touristic place and Ustinov trying to unravel the killer . Suspense and intrigue with Poirot on holidays in Albania . This whodunit deals with Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) as the Belgian sleuth man in he case of killing a rich , unpopular actress in an island during a luxury vacations . It is set in the kingdom of Tyrania , but it is a fictional land which was based on the country of Albania , the isle setting of Daphne's Island was also fictional . As trying to find how a millionaire (Colin Blakely) wound up with a phony diamond brings Hercule Poirot to an exclusive island resort frequented by the rich and famous . When a murder is committed, everyone has an alibi . He investigates the tourists and numerous suspects , all support cast (Jane Birkin , Nicholas Clay , Maggie Smith , Roddy McDowall , Sylvia Miles , James Mason , Denis Quilley , Diana Rigg) . Who is the killer? , can he find the guilty ? . After the clues have been shown we will get a chance to give the answer with Poirot finding out about the culprit at a twisted finale with outstanding surprises but are taken the murders from different viewpoints of everyone which it makes a little bit boring, pedestrian , endless and overlong.The film is a detective story in which you are the detective . In the picture there is mystery , emotion , suspense , actors's interpretation are first-rate and wonderful outdoors from Majorca , Spain and the rout on the cruise ship . Interesting plot by screenwriter Anthony Shaffer , he once said of this : "The location is important , the island should be a star , just as the Nile steamer Death on the Nile (1978) and the Orient Express in the Murder on the Orient Express (1974) were stars" . Being second of three produced screenplays from novels by Agatha Christie written by Anthony Shaffer , the others were Death on the Nile (1978) and Appointment with death (1988) . At one point this movie was mooted as being the follow-up Agatha Christie film to Murder on Orient Express but the picture eventually arrived fourth in the Brabourne-Goodwin series after Death on the Nile (1978) and The crack mirror (1980) . The film relocates the provincial North Devon, England setting on Smuggler's Island off the Devonshire Coast from the Agatha Christie source 'Evil Under the Sun' novel to an island in the Adriatic Sea "somewhere west of Suez", a setting played by the exotic Spanish island location of Majorca . This location also was at the time the home of the film's director Guy Hamilton . The movie gets a lush costume design by Anthony Powell and adequate production design by Elliot Scott . Colorful and sunny cinematography by excellent cameraman Christopher Challis . Sensitive and atmospheric musical score by the classical Cole Porter . Magnificent performances from all-star-cast , a number of the cast had appeared in the earlier'producers Brabourne-Goodwin Agatha Christie movies . And Peter Ustinov acting is similar to Albert Finney (Murder on the Orient Express) . Ustinov starred various Hercule Poirot films such as : ¨Death on the Nile¨(John Guillermin) , this ¨Evil under the sun¨ (Guy Hamilton), ¨Appointment with death¨ (Michael Winner) and for TV in low budget as : ¨Murder in three acts¨,¨Dead man's folly¨ and ¨Thirteen at dinner ¨; but the best considered is Death on the Nile . ¨Evil under the sun¨ was made and released about forty-one years after Agatha Christie's source novel of the same name was first published in 1941 , being selected to be the 1982 Royal Film Performance ; this movie was the first ever filmed version of this story, it being remade with Poirot: Evil Under the Sun (2001) with David Suchet . This film was professionally directed by Guy Hamilton though contains some flaws , poor edition and sometimes results to be slow moving. Being second and final Agatha Christie adaptation directed by Guy Hamilton , his first was The crack mirror (1980) . Rating : passable and acceptable , well worth watching . The flick will appeal to suspense lovers and Agatha Christie-Poirot novels buffs .

The fourth in the series of Brabourne/ Goodwin produced adaptations of Christie that began with MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974). This one, set on an island in the Mediterranean (actually filmed in Majorca) has Peter Ustinov in his second outing as Poirot investigating the murder of a self-interested actor (Diana Rigg), with a gang of suspects including hotel-keeper Maggie Smith, cuckolded husband Denis Quilley, camp journalist Roddy McDowall, theatrical producer James Mason and his domineering wife Sylvia Miles, and would-be gigolo Nicholas Clay and his mousy spouse Jane Birkin. Anthony Shaffer's script gives plenty of opportunity for humorous sequences, especially the cat-fights between Smith and Rigg, and the scene where Poirot, clad in a bathing-dress, attempts to have a morning swim. Whereas David Suchet in the television version tended to be low-key in his characterization, referring to his "little gray cells" and how they solved cases on more than one occasion, Ustinov turns in a flamboyant performance, full of little details: the sequence where he overhears Clay and Birkin arguing in their hotel room ends with a shot of Poirot twitching his mustache, as if he doesn't quite believe what they are saying (he is eventually proved right). The score has rightly been praised: John Lanchbery's arrangements of Cole Porter standards are both florid yet particularly appropriate for the film's bourgeois ambiance: the characters' entire lives are dedicated to pleasure rather than work. As Poirot observes, somewhat cynically, they resemble slabs of meat laid out in the sun to brown. Guy Hamilton's direction is both slick and very clear: unusually for most Christie adaptations, EVIL UNDER THE SUN ties up every single strand of its complicated plot, leaving viewers without too many questions to ask as to whodunit and why. Definitely one of the better versions of the great detective novelist's work, even if it departs quite significantly from the source-text.