Death on the Nile dvd movie.|
Death on the Nile buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices |
 |
List Price: $9.98 Our Price: $9.98 Features • Anamorphic • Color • DVD-Video • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 06 October, 1978 DVD Release : 27 February, 2001 |
| [ + Zoom ] [ Buy Now ] | DVD : Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
Death on the Nile description Following Albert Finney's quirky and compelling performance as Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, in 1974's Murder on the Orient Express, Peter Ustinov capably took over the role in this 1978 adaptation of Christie's river-bound whodunit. While on a pleasure cruise along the Nile with a taciturn companion (David Niven), Poirot slips into action following the murder of a much-despised heiress (Lois Chiles). There's no shortage of suspects... until, that is, they also start dying off, obfuscating the investigation by suggesting that several killers may be at work. With a disciplined screenplay by Anthony Shaffer, the film is solid enough (certainly better than its 1981 follow-up, Evil Under the Sun) and is graced immeasurably by a glittery cast including Bette Davis, Maggie Smith, Mia Farrow, Olivia Hussey, Jack Warden, and Angela Lansbury. Directed with customary efficiency by John Guillermin (King Kong, The Towering Inferno). --Tom Keogh |
|
|
| ♥♥♥♥♥ | "This certainly takes the camel's hump, oh yes, and no mistake!" |
| Meant to match the success of the 1974 MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, this all-star 1978 film is much more mobile but doesn't quite carry the haunting sense of evil of the other film (thanks to that film's famously disturbing pre-credit sequence). Here the only thing that matches the majesty of the great Nino Rota score (which brilliantly evokes a Nile steamboat, the location for much of this film's action is Mia Farrow's performance as Jackie. This was probably the best role Farrow got in the Seventies, and while it allows her to do her specialty in evoking hysteria it also allows her the rare opportunity to play a really intelligent character. Her scenes menacing her ex-lover and best friend (who have married one another behind her back) by turning up at Egyptian tourist sites and reciting statistics about the sites to them are memorably strange. Peter Ustinov makes a fine Poirot, and Angela Lansbury is a lot of fun as a Marie Corelli-like hack novelist, and Simon MacCorkindale is suitably dreamy as Farrow's ex-lover, but no one else is up to the scale the production seems to demand. Several actors seem terribly underused (particular Olivia Hussey and Maggie Smith), and Bette Davis as a Washington grande dame looks like a walking mummy (which should be suitable to the theme but instead is rather creepy). Very few of the characters have plausible motives for murder, so the time spent discussing whether or not they committed the central crime seems pretty tedious. | |
|