Ten Little Indians

 Isn't the cover truly atrocious? It's just as bad as the previous one. The movie itself startled me in a couple of different ways.

Firstly, I could have sworn from reading the book as a child that the Indians were supposed to be from India, not Missouri. Well, I can live with that. We Americanized the story like we do everything else.

Secondly, the music was bright and springy. I felt truly disturbed listening, fully expecting an ending with a cast all corpsed. I should have taken the era into account. A noir film may have ended with all ten party members dead, but would it have included Stanley Holloway? Perhaps.

Thirdly, snow. I know, it's not a complete sentence. Eitherhow, I remember the book being set on a small island during a storm. I think that might have been a little more dramatic (and a little more cliched) than a dinner party on top of a snow-sparkling mountaintop. I remember one version, though, set in the middle of a desert. I think I enjoyed that one in my own schadenfreudisch way. I think I fear the desert much more than I fear snow. Snow, like a good concealer, brightens things, covers imperfections, and smooths wrinkles. It may be fake and transitory, but it's pretty.
Maybe snow would have been cooler if there had been more fake blood splashed around. This film is B&W, so Hitchcock's classic chocolate syrup would have done just fine, if they could have gotten it to splatter realistically.

Anyway, the acting lacked depth and subtlety. The kittenish sex-scene was thankfully brief. The characters were classic and stereotypical. It was a great nostalgia piece, but not anything to write home about, cinematically.