And Then There Were None (1974 Peter Collinson)

Well, this is a badly directed film, even by Collinson's standards (he's let the zoom lens go, at least). He seems to show most of the film in really uninteresting wide shots, not just keeping the actors at arm's length, but everything - suspense, plot. All we're left with is a good impression of the space of the Shah Abbas Hotel, Iran.

And that's not all. We suspect we might be in trouble when Charles Aznavour sings us a little ditty on a handy grand piano, but he's immediately joined by drums and bass that aren't there. Then, when the 'host' reads out (on tape) all the charges against them, it's accompanied by the worst light easy listening type music which just does not go with the scene at all. (Bruno Nicolai is the credited composer. His music is awful.)

Other things to cherish - when Elke Sommer and other guests step outside the hotel, supposedly at night - it's daylight. (And she even says something like 'This place looks so different at night'.) The funniest scene is where we see a dead body and Oliver Reed starts hitting something furiously on the floor (out of sight) and then picks up a dead rubber snake.

Everybody acts so stupidly they deserve to die. Excuse me, I should introduce the other guests. Richard Attenborough, two Bond villains in the shape of Gert Frobe and Adolfo Celi, Stephane Audran, Herbert Lom, Maria Rohm, Alberto de Mendoza, Orson Welles (voice of host).

The lighting is also terrible. When the power goes out, Attenborough and Lom are together in the billiard room, and they light matches to see each other. But there's enough light to see without them, and the matches don't make any difference to the light in the room (this happens also in The Fall of the House of Usher (1960)).

You don't think the corridor behind them should be dark or anything?

Far too much of the film is in this shot size

The cameraman responsible is someone called Fernando Aribas, and that's part of the problem. Who made this film, and why? It's produced by Harry Alan Towers, normally responsible for horror films like dodgy Fu Manchu films (well, OK, not horror - rubbish) and he's also written it pseudonymously under the name Peter Welbeck. (I see he made another stab at Agatha Christie's story in 1965 with people like Fabian, Stanley Holloway, Wilfred Hyde-White and Dennis Price - what's wrong with the man? I subsequently learned he made a third version, set on an African safari, that is allegedly even worse!) IMDB supplies the tidbit that the film was withdrawn after one week having grossed £1000. 

I sense something to do with tax breaks all over this film. So what's the real story? Let's investigate. The production companies were Filibuster Films (London), COMECI (French), Coralta Cinematografica (Italian), Corona Film Produktion (French, I think), Oceania Produzioni Internazionali Cinematografiche (Italian), Talia Films (Spanish). With American money having been pulled away from the UK, international co-productions were not at all unusual. This then explains the French, Italian and Spanish names in the crew.

I'd hoped F Maurice Speed's 'Film Review 1974-5' might shine a light, but although I did briefly buy that book back in 2016, I see there was some problem with it and it was returned. Time Out called it a 'Glossy tax shelter film', and Halliwell chipped in with 'so inept you could scream'. ('Glossy'?)

Perhaps best to leave it there. One of those films that's so bad it's enjoyable.