The title appealed to me and I was expecting a fine spy thriller, alas The List of Adrian Messenger is nothing but an old-fashioned whodunit. It very precisely includes a (repeated) reference to Agatha Christie's Ten Little Ni99ers ('and then there were none...') but the tag-line stated it precisely too: we are dared to guess who is the murderer.
John Huston's directing is adequate for a thriller but when the thriller never materialises you get really bored at this dull mystery. Pairing the gigantic George C. Scott with Marcel Dalio works for about 15 minutes then it's a drag as they say. Whodunnits may work for cheap reading, but they render as flat and dumb movies. The idea here was to add some humour and play with the viewer to dare him to spot the cameos... which is utterly counter-productive (and it is the very reason why Hitchcock, who rejected whodunits, ended up making his cameo very early in his movies).
The worst in my opinion are the deceptive credits who clearly bill Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra alongside the actors playing the main characters while they barely are disguised cameos. On the whole you expect something big and they only deliver a cheap little mystery. Forget it and (re)watch 'Kind Hearts and Coronets (qv)' which really knows what kind of a story it is telling.
John Huston's directing is adequate for a thriller but when the thriller never materialises you get really bored at this dull mystery. Pairing the gigantic George C. Scott with Marcel Dalio works for about 15 minutes then it's a drag as they say. Whodunnits may work for cheap reading, but they render as flat and dumb movies. The idea here was to add some humour and play with the viewer to dare him to spot the cameos... which is utterly counter-productive (and it is the very reason why Hitchcock, who rejected whodunits, ended up making his cameo very early in his movies).
The worst in my opinion are the deceptive credits who clearly bill Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra alongside the actors playing the main characters while they barely are disguised cameos. On the whole you expect something big and they only deliver a cheap little mystery. Forget it and (re)watch 'Kind Hearts and Coronets (qv)' which really knows what kind of a story it is telling.