Endless Night - 1972 film review

Endless Night is one of the very best books that Agatha Christie wrote in the last fifteen years of her life. I think it's under-rated, perhaps because it re-uses one of her earlier ideas for a plot twist. But it does so in a very pleasing way. Not an easy book to adapt for the big screen, though, and the 1972 film version is not, I think, widely admired.

But when I saw it as a student, I enjoyed it, and when I watched it again the other night, I enjoyed it all over again. This was the last film directed by Sidney Gilliat, a talented director whose previous work included the film of Green for Danger, and a writing credit for The Lady Vanishes. He does a fairly good job of handling the plot twists, though of necessity he has to make various changes to the story structure. One or two scenes are a little clumsy, but overall I think it works.

Gilliat had the benefit of an excellent cast. Hywel Bennett, who plays Mike Rogers, a drifter who marries a rich woman, is excellent. At around this time, Bennett was a bankable actor. He was charismatic, and very good at playing ambivalent characters. He'd have been superb as one of Ruth Rendell's amiable sociopaths - what a shame this never happened. And he was very good as the homicidal doctor in the 70s TV version of Malice Aforethought.

Two contrastingly beautiful women, Hayley Mills and Britt Ekland, play crucial roles in the story, while George Sanders is suitably suave as the family lawyer, and Peter Bowles plays the likeable cad with his customary gusto. This is an eerie mystery, about an apparent curse, a magnificent house, and a diabolical murder scheme, and it all makes for good entertainment.

The Kennel Murder Case

S.S. Van Dine was an American Golden Age detective novelist whose elaborate mysteries featuring amateur sleuth and know-all Philo Vance were hugely successful for a few years. I’ve only read one of them so far, although I’d like to take a look at some of the others. Van Dine is, though, an acquired taste, and Ogden Nash wrote a derisive rhyme about Vance, who needed “a kick in the pance.”

Vance – played by William Powell- is the hero of The Kennel Murder Case, which is easily available on DVD, and I rather enjoyed watching it – a guilty pleasure, perhaps. The story starts, to my mind, unpromisingly, with a dog show (Vance’s dog isn’t successful) but we are introduced to Archer Coe, and soon learn that he is the sort of chap who is crying out to be murdered, given the number of people who have good reason to hate him.

Sure enough, Archer is found dead by his butler the following day – in a locked room! The hopeless police (and medic) at first leap to the conclusion that it is a case of suicide, but Vance – who has abandoned a trip to Europe to help out the authorities – soon demonstrates that this is a murder case. The plot thickens when Brisbane Coe, Archer’s brother, is also found dead.

The plot is satisfactorily convoluted, and although the characterisation is not exactly sophisticated, the story moves at a decent pace. Turning a Golden Age murder mystery into a good film is a real challenge – Hitchcock himself admitted defeat in the end, after a few unsatisfactory attempts. My own favourite remains Green for Danger, but The Kennel Murder Case is decent light entertainment and a pleasing period piece.