mbaugh9170 All the acting, all story, aside - I found this movie technically annoying to watch and admittedly I may be the only person who has viewed this "movie" that thinks so. I abhor the mixing of two different art forms into one production. Video tape is one form of artistic expression and celluloid film is another. The playback look is obviously different for each and I can spot the difference in an instant. This movie mixes video taped interiors with filmed exteriors. Video tape and live theater are too in-your-face real and take away from the escapism of film.That said, I enjoyed Cheryl Campbell's acting, as always, and vote the acting ensemble a 10. The fast-passed dialog made it difficult to comprehend each word uttered by the actors at the beginning with their bantering back and forth before placing the clocks under the bed but again I blame the use of video tape for that problem. There could be a faint echo in the studio that accounts for this.

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.

johnbol I recently saw the DVD of this film and i must say I Loved It ! Campbell and Warwick are great and John Gielgud is funny. The joy of movies like this is that you can actually understand everything that 's been said because they don't use background music as soon as things become more quiet. As i am from The Netherlands and only could get a copy with no subtitles this is a very great plus. If you like the Partners in crime series or the A C TV movies Secret Adversary or Why Didn't They Ask Evans ? Then you'll like this one as well ! Of course it also provides the things we have come to expect from an Agatha Christie movie. There are several twists in the plot that will leave you guessing who the killer is.