By Richard Winters
My Rating: 3 out of 10
4-Word Review: Everybody is getting killed.
Ten strangers get together on an African safari. The group includes: A doctor (Yehuda Efroni), a judge (Donald Pleasance), a captain (Frank Stallone), an actress (Brenda Vaccaro), a General (Herbert Lom), a nanny (Sarah Maur Thorpe), a detective (Warren Berlinger), along with a man named Marston (Neil McCarthy), and a couple with the surname Rodgers (Paul L. Smith, Moira Lister). They’ve been invited by a man named Mr. Owen, but upon their arrival he’s nowhere to be found. Instead they hear his voice that’s been recorded onto a phonograph where he tells them that they’ve been invited because they’ve been accused of committing a crime years ago and gotten away with it, but he intends to put a stop to that by killing them off one-by-one. As each guest gets murdered one of the heads from the ten little Indians statues that sits in the middle of the dining room table goes missing.
The film has the distinction of being the third movie version of the story done by producer Harry Alan Towers as the first one was produced in the 60’s and the second, which also starred Lom, in the 70’s. The story itself is based on the Agatha Christie novel ‘And Then There Were None’ though the ending was changed to replicate the stage play, which was considered more upbeat. While in the novel and play the setting was an island here it’s the desert of South Africa, which I liked as it gives the proceedings a distinct atmosphere. However, there’s an unusual moment at the beginning where the natives help carry the guests’ luggage to the camp site, but then halfway there for no explicit reason they turn on them by clicking their tongues in unison and ultimately abandoning them, which is creepy, but there’s never an explanation for why they do this.
The landscape looks hot and dry though there’s no sweat glistening off the actor’s faces leading me to believe it was shot in the winter time and thus the complaints about the heat, which are casually mentioned are invalid. I did get a kick out of one of the tents, the main one, having an upright piano. Don’t know who in the world would want to painstakingly haul a piano into the desert sands, or essentially the middle of nowhere, but the appearance of it gave me a chuckle. I was also amused by the elevated lift, held together by a frayed rope, that each guest is forced to sit-in as it takes them many feet in the air of a wide gorge, in order for them to get to the campsite. The contraption looks flimsy and it’s rather unnerving seeing them get into it and ride it all the way down.
The acting is entertaining and made-up of many B-stars whose faces you’ll recognize though not necessarily their names. Vaccaro fares best as a bitchy, spoiled, Hollywood star whose career has gone on the decline. Lom is good as an aging man whose memories plays tricks on him, but Stallone, who’s the younger brother of Sylvester and could almost pass of as his twin, has little to add. Berlinger had gained a lot of weight to the point that he’s rounder than a beach ball, is adequate, but the normally reliable Pleasance appears elderly and lacking energy making his presence almost sad. Smith continues in the mold of the jail guard in Midnight Express, a part that made him famous, but his heavy breathing and lurking ways are not interesting and his acting one-note.
The mystery angle doesn’t get played-up too well as the guests get killed-off with a boring regularity making it at times seem almost like a low-grade slasher. The characters don’t respond to their stressful conundrum realistically. For instance one of the guests dies by drinking alcohol that was linked with cyanide, but the rest of them in the ensuing days go on eating and drinking even though you’d think they’d be nervous about ingesting anything for fear that whatever they put in their mouths could also poisoned. They also go back to their tents each night and peacefully sleep despite seeing the other guests get offed by a unseen killer, which would’ve made me, and most others too fearful to get any shut-eye and instead stay wide awake for fear that the killer would attack the minute anyone closed their eyes.
Spoiler Alert!
The tension is nil and there’s really no interest in finding out who the culprit is. In the book everyone dies and the authorities are only able to figure out what happened from a message that they find written by the judge. Here both Stallone and Thorp make it out alive though Thorp lets go of the rope that had been around her neck just as Stallone comes to her rescue making me believe that she would’ve hung herself before he would’ve been able to get her out of the noose. The rescue plane flies over them instead of landing making it unintentionally seem like they had been left stranded and not saved after all. Having everyone die except for Stallone, which is what I thought was going to happen, and then having him arrested for the murders he really didn’t commit would’ve been a much more ironic twist.
My Rating: 3 out of 10
Released: May 17, 1989
Runtime: 1 Hour 38 Minutes
Rated PG
Director: Alan Birkinshaw
Studio: Cannon Films
Available: Blu-ray, Tubi
Scopophilia 