Watch Agatha Christie's The Pale Horse For Free

Fantastic!

Excellent but underrated film

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

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.

This would have been better without some completely pointless changes brought in to the plot. At the start there is a completely implausible attempt to suggest that Mark is suspected of being the killer. Nothing in the show suggests the police would suspect him in this way and the plot line dies quietly, having wasted a fair amount of time. Most of the performances are adequate at worst but the dialogue is often poor. One of the things which made the book successful was the way it at least played with the idea of the supernatural. No one could be fooled by the witches here. Agatha Christie was usually luckier than this in her adaptors for the screen.

Taken from the 1961 novel of the same name, this Anglia TV rendition of The Pale Horse was filmed in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Oxon, and London. Notable differences from the novel are the absence of Ariadne Oliver and some of the other characters from the book.The story concerns young sculptor Mark Easterbrook (Colin Buchanan) who discovers a priest dying from a head wound-the man gives Mark a list of names before he dies. The police don't exactly believe Mark's story, even to the point where they suspect him in the priest's death, but Mark determines to follow up the list-which leads to other murders before he finally solves it with the aid of Kate Mercer (Jayne Ashbourne), a friend of one of the victims.The Pale Horse is nothing superlative, rather more like average, and the two young leads are somewhat bland. The good things about this production are the photography, and very fine performances from Sir Leslie Phillips and Michael Byrne-that alone makes it worth watching. Martin Kennedy is also quite good in the small part of Tate, a tough henchman. Jean Marsh plays one of the three witches who reside at the house known as The Pale Horse.

We rented this expecting to have a cozy evening at home. I came away very disappointed. Most Agatha Christie adaptations are very good, and I was not familiar with this particular story. The first 15 minutes promise an entertaining experience, but then it more or less runs off the tracks.The writing is pretty poor and should have provided additional exposition. Watching this was like reading a novel and skipping the even numbered chapters. I had only a faint clue as what was going on and could not figure out why the characters were doing or why they were doing it, mostly the latter.In the future, I will stick to the Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple stories. With them, you know what you are getting and won't be disappointed.

Agatha Christie's "The Pale Horse" is not one of my favorite Christie books. There is no Poirot or Miss Marple to liven things up, and the witchcraft motif seems contrived.The film of the same name is a 1997 British TV production, loosely based on Christie's novel. I wasn't expecting much from this film, and not much was what I got. The film's confusing plot meanders around, seemingly without direction. There are too few suspects. And the ending is a letdown, and potentially unclear for anyone not familiar with the book.On the other hand, the acting is OK, though a bit hammy at times. And the film has good production design.Overall, this film is not terribly bad. But it's not particularly good either. There are other Agatha Christie movies out there that are so much better. If these films were in competition with each other, most of them would leave "The Pale Horse" at the starting gate.