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Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

jmurf1111 I offer an odd review because I don't care much about the plot while awarding 8-Stars to this movie. I enjoyed Tony Randall and Robert Morley's interactions, as well as what I detected as ad libs each threw in that appeared to spontaneously amuse each other. I like to rewind and slo-mo through funny exchanges, not only watching the speaker but, more so, the recipient of the remark to see the surprised reaction that must be controlled as the camera continues to 'roll'. --I rewind and slo-mo through many, many TCM movies to critique scenes & players.Aside: (Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant often made each other lose control and laugh in scenes…sometimes using one's hand/hat to hide the face and sometimes backing out of camera frame to hide the spontaneous laughter from ad-libs. His Girl Friday movie has hilarious examples throughout. -- Also, watch background actors react to their ad-libs repeatedly.)Back to "ABC" -- Tony's comedic facial expressions and gestures throughout this film are FREE LESSONS on HOW TO for any young actor/actress who likely pays for such classes and improv. How clever he many times uses his eyes without moving his head….as well as using his eyes by closing them or looking up as he thinks etc….all kinds of smart, funny looks as he detects and deduces….sometimes w/o words and sometimes talking through. The thrown-in hand gestures and body language besides --- I'm telling you up and comers or just us folks who like to entertain when we're out goofing around, tips for 'acting' funny are right there to see. CAMERA DIRECTION AND ANGLES: Pay attention to how clever the Director used objects to make cool visuals…1) camera looks through jail cell window & other creative views to show characters .. 2) camera catches creative lighting shots of the character and his shadow on a wall or in a mirror, etc. .. 3) in the fancy club scene, the cameras are all over the place catching close-ups and characters from all sorts of directions and angles…even upside down.RECAP: I was amused throughout and the plot itself really had little to do with it. (Aside: Tony Randall was fabulously funny as sidekick in the DorisDay/RockHudson flick "Lover Come Back".

jmkeating I watched all the way through, partially because Tony Randall's 'Hercule Poirot' was so different from others I've seen; Hastings played by Robert Morley too was not the 'standard character' for the role. Many times he mentioned his 'little grey cells' but didn't seem to be using them until... The whole of the film contained the odd 'funny bit' that took away the idea that it was a serious investigation. On the other hand there were not enough to keep the spectator laughing throughout. At one point there is a 'gun waving moment' where the way the gun's used doesn't really provide protection. So it was fun to watch but perhaps not for serious Hercule Poirot fans.

mama-sylvia I don't know why the producers purchased the book rights; other than a few character names, there is NO resemblance to Agatha Christie's taut suspense story. Hercule Poirot, famous for exercising only his little grey cells, leaps about and crawls under barriers. His faithful sidekick Hastings has become an inept security agent, from whom Poirot continually escapes. Poirot actually meets the intended victims except for the first one. Tony Randall does a rather good job playing this miserable excuse for Poirot, which isn't necessarily a compliment. The story and resolution are completely changed, and not for the better. If you're an Agatha Christie fan, pass this one by.

tedg I'm quirky about Christie mysteries, so take this comment with caution. Most viewers seem to think this a failed comedy, a poor "Pink Panther," and I liked it.First, the form of the thing: in key plot elements, it is a rather close adaptation of a Christie book where a murderer "tells a story" in his murders in order to throw the police off. So it begins by being a story about fooling the detective inside another story (the movie) about trying to fool us as detectives.The clue is about words. As a mystery, it is one of the clever explorations that Agatha had, looking at every way she could legally twist the convention of the form.The tone of the thing is what is at issue. Peter Sellers had just had a hit with "Pink Panther" as a bumbling French detective and Poirot inherits some of this. Christie intended for him to be comic in a pompous way, and to varying degrees played with the tension between his genteel buffoonery and his sharp mechanical mind. It was not a simple joke, because her goal in part was to both describe and comment on how such an interesting mind would work.She explored this indirectly by describing his manner, his minor superstitions, his attention to domestic ritual, the vanity of the perfect phrase, whether as a thought or a courtesy. She couldn't do that with Marple, who was as sharp but whose mind and manner was crass and impolite.So part of the game for me in watching film versions is in how the adapter treats the relationship with the viewer so far as the mystery proper. There are all sorts of narrative mechanics that are involved there than aren't worth mentioning now. The other part is in how the mind of the detective is portrayed, and since we can only see the mind through the story (as I just said) and in the person's manner, that manner is key.I think I liked this Poirot better than any of the others. They're all comic in one way or another, and this one seems further in tone from what was written. It is, but it may be closer in intent even though its in a context of Jerry Lewis slapstick.Consider this: in mystery your mind and the detective's are supposed to parallel each other in important ways. In creating a version of the story -- the truth -- despite attempts to force it others wise, you both do this. So in fact, you create the world itself in a way. Some of the basic mechanics are frozen in life as in the genre, but others are completely open for you both to make: matters of how clever fate is, how comic are the wheels of nature, how inevitable is justice, what justice means, how conscience and consequence matter.If the filmmaker can harmonize the tone of what you as viewer see and create in your own mind of the world, with what your surrogate the detective does, then he has succeeded and you can enter the movie whole.This movie seems trivial. I think it is all but impossible to see. But it succeeds with its Poirot where no other attempt does.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.