The Alphabet Murders (1966)

That was an excellent one.

Absolutely Brilliant!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Tony Randall has played so many uptight neighbors or dryly acerbic sidekicks that it takes a few moments for him and director Frank Tashlin to suspend our disbelief at the prospect of Tony playing master detective Hercule Poirot! Randall certainly gives the role a good try, but the improbability of his casting--coupled with a dissatisfying screenplay, from Agatha Christie's book "The A.B.C. Murders"--makes the film a forgettable experience. The Belgian sleuth investigates a baffling serial murder case in London, surrounded by peculiar characters. Fine supporting cast including Robert Morley, Anita Ekberg and, in a bit, Margaret Rutherford helps, and the production is stylish, but the mystery plot isn't absorbing. Curiosity item is mostly a misfire. ** from ****

"The alphabet murders" (1965) directed by Frank Tashlin as comedy from a novel of Aghata Christie is also with a comic style of marching on the streets from the main character, who accompanied the Londonian adventure and in an ironic scene for instance the Turkish baths are epicenter of a plot to kill Poirot by a nymph. In which the dramatic situation inside remembers a slapstick of incapacity for the potential capability of the plot, as ugly made in it. Another scene also gave us Miss Marple for a momentous short while, apparently in a wrongly entry at the police station, when just in this moment detective Poirot is just crossing ways with her own path, but coming out without a too much kind of such usual turn back and traditional good acquaintance. Only in a static and phlegmatic way of suspicious neutrality and her quite mistrusting this coincidence as also concurrence in a given troubled lady vanishing fake affair, the nymph of the bath, as she snubbing him on the entry stairs at metropolitan police.Tashlin made almost a mechanical option of the small things and tricks of everyday, on a daily chronicle of domestic and urban high criminality, with some private and public jokes in an old and innovative style of comic direction, near the satyr of academic's policy and concerning protection for such an imperial civility before stupidity of that time. The edited way of these small episodes and sketches in this story of the movie is of a great liability as well as its decoration mainly in interiors by night, namely in the party where hooliganism before the letter and embarrassment for such a luxury and eroticism as smell of the status there.

I agree that this movie is NOT to be taken seriously! But it is well worth the time if you like over the top characters. I enjoyed the movie BECAUSE you weren't supposed to take it seriously. Tony Randall does a wonderful job being so fussy. I enjoy Dame Agatha and I feel that she MADE the detective an over the top character. He had SO many faults! He was vain, fussy, a slave to his stomach, and generally very much more than he is ever portrayed in the movies. I love David Suchet in the role, but I do feel that Tony Randall tried to do something with the role that no one else has and that is to try to give him the eccentricities that Dame Agatha gave him. I know that this bothers many, but it is truer to the actual character that he was created with in the books. But I feel that the books themselves are meant to be taken lightheartedly.

I have enjoyed David Suchet and Peter Ustinov playing Poirot among other interpretations of the detective, but Randall's turn is equally enjoyable. Randall is not a great actor but a fine comedian. Director Frank Tashlin should know a good comedian when he casts them--he had worked with Danny Kaye and Jerry Lewis to name just two.The film begins with Randall introducing himself as Poirot with a twinkle in his eye. The director is clear from the first scene--comedy first, mystery next.Robert Morley is fun, but Randall is even better--the bowling alley, the restaurant gags, the telephone calls--all scenes filled with visual, good humor rather than slapstick. Morley depends on the typical British attitudes, e.g., snapping fingers down the pecking order, jumping queues and not knowing one's shoe size all depicting arrogance of society and wealth. Director Tashlin dishes out a comedy with considerable social comment--Brits who cannot differentiate the French from the Belgian French and are in the police force!The most intriguing bit was to introduce Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple and Stringer Davis as Mr Stringer of the Miss Marple films bump into Randall's Poirot briefly. Surely this was a gem of an idea from Tashlin.The film cannot be easily trashed--it offers comedy and entertainment, nearly 40 years after it was made. It is definitely not the definitive Poirot but an interesting interpretation of Poirot. It is probably one of the best Randall films ranking alongside "The Seven Faces of Dr Lao."