Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery

1981 "A tale of international intrigue, romance and murder"
6.6| 2h13m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 08 March 1981 Released
Producted By: LWT
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

When two mysterious deaths mar an otherwise pleasant weekend in the English countryside, unflappable flapper Lady Eileen Brent teams up with the dashing Jimmy Thesinger to solve the dastardly deeds. Their sleuthing leads them into a world of espionage and international intrigue as they discover a secret society known as "The Seven Dials" and the attempted theft of top-secret government documents.

... View More
Stream Online

Stream with Britbox

Director

Producted By

LWT

AD
AD

Watch Free for 30 Days

All Prime Video Movies and TV Shows. Cancel anytime. Watch Now

Trailers & Images

Reviews

Karry Best movie of this year hands down!
ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
Usamah Harvey The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Andrew Goss Since this TV movie was made every story Christie ever wrote has been reworked into a Marple story, with only the plot, characters, and setting altered. What this Seven Dials Mystery has going for it is that it sticks quite closely to the original novel. Alas, that is about all that can be said in its favour. The old quip, "less than the sum of its parts" sums up the effect of a good cast, excellent locations, some really classic 30's cars, feeble script, evident lack of rehearsal, "don't follow me I'm lost" direction, and clumsy editing aimed more at fitting in the commercial breaks than generating a sense of drama.John Gielgud gives us a splendidly vague yet canny Marquis of Caterhan, while the acclaimed Cheryl Campbell does her best to interpret Lady Eileen 'Bundle' Brent, with little help from the script and presumably none from the director, as the character never really emerges. Stalwarts Harry Andrews, Leslie Sands, and Terence Alexander have easy two dimensional characters to work with and need no direction to be convincing. James Warwick's Jimmy Thesiger bears a disturbing resemblance to a Michael Palin Monty Python character.The standout for me was Lucy Gutteridge, who made Lorraine Wade the only character who I cared about.Checking out the future careers of the actors was far more fun than watching the film itself. Some of the names you only see on the Full Cast and Crew page, such as Roger Sloman, ended up with bigger careers than some of the principals.
qasdfghj The movie gets off to a great start but later the depictions of the secret societies are remarkably silly and cheesy so it lost steam for me. However, the plot twists and surprises are aplenty... the novel was well written! It also is refreshing to see a Christie that isn't Poirot or Miss Marple.Even so, I thought the James Warwick was better suited for his role in "Why didn't they ask Evans" which I gave a 10/10. If you watch only one of the two, I'd choose the latter.Also, I wish Ronny stuck around for longer... I really liked his character!
tedg I have an all-encompassing quest to experience films in a lucid, coherent way. Within that are several little projects that have become hypnotic vortices of their own. One of these, in a sort of self-referential way is the quest for the best film of a Christie novel.This comes close in terms of Christiness. That's because it is a pretty faithful rendering of the book. As such, it follows her nice form of introductions. In these novels, it is all a game of defining people that sew into each other. The people come first and we find of course that by the end we have sewn them together incorrectly because of the simple order in which they were introduced.Christie (and others, Sayers) have this game of limited watching. Everything we see is true, but we don't see everything we need to in order to weave a coherent narrative until the end. That's when we revisit many scenes, which we "see again." Its all about seeing, really. And that's especially so when she writes book without her regular detectives. With the detectives, there is some internal sight, some mental perspectives, but with these it is purely about what is seen physically.Here's the interesting part. Movies, and especially these puzzle movies are also about what we see and what we don't. That's the root of the cinematic experience. But Christie didn't write with a cinematic imagination. So the two conventions of visual trickery are close but not the same.That's why I'm so fascinated by films of Christie stories. It is a wonderful cinematic challenge for the filmmaker, and in a way — because all this is collaborative construction — one for the viewer as well.This adventure plays with secrets in three ways (signage, association and "state" secrets) and allows us to confuse them by natural assumptions that prove false. It is clever. As a book it is clever, I mean.As a film, it goes on too long and asks us to accept some rather extreme portrayals. Even with its length and observance of the story, there is a pretty jarring discontinuity between the first part of a large group of young, silly people. We need this large number to justify the eight clocks. But managing so many red herrings in a movie isn't feasible so all the girls are dropped.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
grybop Even hardcore Whodunnit fans will probably be disappointed in this one, a slow, confusing and badly directed tv film, based on an Agatha Christie novel. Cheryl Campbell is sometimes irritating as Lady Brent, while James Warwick is adequately convincing as Jimmy Thesinger. The story is dated and lacks credibility, but this is probably due to the aforementioned poor direction; more interest was shown in recreating the late 30s era (which was achieved, by the way), which resulted in nervous editing and bad acting. Only to pass the time.3