User Reviews

The adaptation is fairly good and mostly faithful to the book, but for some reason the resolution part is way too condensed and unsatisfactory. It leaves many questions unanswered and make them seem like "loop- holes", as some reviewers here called them. The book, however, gives most of the answers to these questions. Some answers make more sense than others, but they're still there, and I feel obliged to at least mention some of them here for those who watched this episode without having read the book.

If you haven't watched the episode yet, this article is naturally not for you.

SPOILERS START HERE:

1) The cousin that was invited upon the insistence of Poirot - This bit has been altered a bit from the actual occurrences and timings mentioned in the book. In the book Nick writes a letter to Maggie after Poirot suggests it, and Maggie arrives a day before the fireworks party. We later learn though that Maggie was supposed to come to End House for the party ANYWAY, and after Poirot's suggestion, Nick's devilish lying mind quickly uses this remark for her benefit. She says she'll arrange for her cousin to come and stay with her, and then goes and writes Maggie asking her to come a day earlier. We learn this when Maggie's parents show Poirot a letter they got from Maggie upon her arrival to End House where she states she still doesn't know why she had to come earlier. This action by Nick goes hand-in-hand with the idea that Nick is liar of big calibre, perhaps a pathological one. She is fast to think of a lie that would benefit her plan perfectly, when opportunity knocks. In the adaptation Maggie gets there the day of the party (if I recall correctly). By the logic of the book, I would assume Maggie was supposed to come to the party anyway, and Nick simply lies to Poirot about her writing to Maggie upon his request, as saying she'll invite Maggie benefits her immensely and make her seem even less guilty and renders the whole murder as a sure-fluke.

2) The bullet - Well, there was obviously no bullet shot. I'm not sure the explanation given in the book makes PERFECT sense, but there is still an answer. We have to start with a fact which is not mentioned in the adaptation - Nick knew very well who Hercule Poirot was and he was a part of her plan all the while. It's not by chance that she ends up sitting on that terrace with him. She needs him to watch her little performance. There is already a prearranged hole in the hat when she sits next to Poirot and Hastings (I don't remember exactly how she pulls this one off - but I would assume the hole is in the back of the hat, where it can't really be witnessed). She waits for an opportunity when a plane passes by (or any other thing that would make a noise), gets the used Mauser bullet she conceals in her pocket and throws it behind her while mentioning a bee passing by. She then takes off her hat and put it on the table for Poirot to see the hole. She leaves the terrace, but leave the hat with Poirot. Now, I'm not sure whether Poirot is supposed to be witnessing the bullet fly off as she throws it, or hear the clanking sound of its falling to the ground (both variations are a bit iffy), but, well, at least there is some attempt to explain it.

3) The poisoned chocolate - That's quite simple. Nick has the Cocaine with her (in her watch). She calls Freddie, alters her voice just a bit (so later she can claim she wasn't the one calling) and asks her for a box of chocolates. She gets the box, and when she's alone she puts the Cocaine in the chocolates (not enough for her to die, of course). That way it seems someone is still trying to kill her, proving that without a doubt, she was the one who was the target when Maggie died. The second box is brought by Lazarus and has no part in her plan or real significance to the story (other than to complicate things a bit more).

I also saw a question about the love letters and how Poirot realized they weren't meant for Nick. This one does gets answered in the adaptation though - The pilot wrote a letter a day after Nick's big surgery, and yet he doesn't mention it. Moreover, in the book it is mentioned that by the dates on the letters, and their contents, it is quite clear these aren't the entire bunch of letters, which makes Poirot think why would a girl choose to keep just a small selection of the love letters written by her fiancé.

I will disclose that this is definitely not one of my favorite Poirot books, but still I felt it deserves to be explained. Hope this helps to clarify things a bit.

So it was a put up job from the off, however where the bullet, which the annoying diva of a detective promptly finds, came from is never explained in the dénouement! Plus, disappointing poirot let the selfish, manipulative murderer go out on her own terms by overdose rather than face the hangman's noose!

David Suchet as Poirot, and Hugh Frazer as Captain Hastings, take a vacation at a resort in Cornwall, where they meet Magdalena "Nick" Buckley, the beautiful young woman with the startling gray eyes (Polly Walker) who lives in the mansion called End House next door. The three are having tea al fresco when Nick, waving her fingers, complains about the bees that fly right in front of your face. She seems to be having a run of bad luck lately because she's barely escaped two accidents (runaway car, falling boulder) that would have been fatal.

After she leaves, Poirot reveals that he has copped her bonnet. It has a bullet hole through it. It wasn't a pesky bee after all, it was a bullet, and to prove it Poirot produces the bullet, identifying it as having come from a Mauser.

This initiates a quiet investigation by Poirot and his sidekick. Nick had recently written a will before her appendicitis operation. Could the motive be money? Ah, but not. Nick may be living in End House but she is almost penniless and will soon have to move out. Except that her derring-do fiancé now dies in a plane crash and leaves her millions.

At Poirot's urging, Nick invites her cousin Maggie to stay with her in End House, along with a few friends already there. But, helas, Maggie borrows a dress from Nick and is shot one night and killed, evidently by accident.

Then it gets more complicated and I don't want to go on about it. You know how Agatha Christie's plots work -- everybody seems to be a suspect. And, as often happens, there is some subsidiary or embedded criminal activity involved too -- such as forging a will or trafficking in cocaine -- which tends to throw off the pursuit of the murderer.

In the end (and hereabouts there be spoilers), Poirot reveals that both "Nick" and her cousin "Maggie" had the same first names -- Magdalena -- a family tradition. And Poirot reveals that the love letters from the derring-do aviator, as well as his will leaving everything to Magdalena, were intended NOT for "Nick" but for the now defunct cousin "Maggie," whom Nick herself deliberately murdered. The atrociously good-looking Nick sneers, calls everyone stupid, admits the murder, and goes off to snuff herself.

This is one of those stories that has holes you could drive a Peterbilt 18-wheeler through.

Question. Okay, they're sitting outside having tea and a bullet whizzes through Nick's bonnet. Who fired that shot? She's been faking all those attempts on her life, so who shot at her? And how does Poirot, without ever getting out of his chair, produce the pristine Mauser slug that barely missed Mlle. Nick's noggin? Magic? Or magnets.

Question. At the end, Poirot produces the love letters addressed to Magdalena, and the aviator's will leaving everything to Magdalena. How does he know that they were really addressed to the other DEAD Magdalena, the cousin with whom the aviator was in love? Poirot and the police don't have a shred of evidence. (Evidence always comes in "shreds" and is a dichotomous variable -- you either have a shred or, more often, you don't have a shred. Nobody ever has half a shred.) It's all conjectural. Yet, as in a Columbo episode, the real murderer throws up his hands on such flimsy speculation and says, "Okay, you got me."

The location filming is splendid and the acting is professionally competent and Polly Walker is so succulent that she should have done a gratuitous nude scene, but this plot won't hold water. Usually we can ignore holes in the story but in this case they are so in-your-face that they thrust themselves into your awareness. Or maybe not. I don't know. But I don't think of this as one of Dame Agatha's better-built narratives.

"Poirot" was able to do two things simultaneously. It was able to raise some of Christie's lesser and even awful Poirot stories to a high level; and it was able to make a hash out of some of Christie's best Poirot stories (one of the best mystery novels ever, THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD, was really a disgusting effort of trouncing Christie, worse even than any of the later and less careful treatments of Conan Doyle in Jeremy Brett's "Sherlock Holmes" -- a show that was letter perfect when it started but, like "Poirot", really crashed toward the end).

While "Poirot" excelled in dealing with Christie's short stories than her novels occasionally, in some weird synchronicity, Christie's better stories and novels were exceptionally well done by Suchet and crowd.

PERIL AT END HOUSE is one of my favorite Christie books. It's a pleasure to meet and mingle with the world-weary post-World War I characters who might have stepped right out of John Monk Saunders THE SINGLE LADY, Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISES, or Fitzgerald's GREAT GATSBY. But instead of leading pointless, party lives, Christie livens them up by pitching them right into the middle of a mystery.

But this is not your run-of-the-mill Christie. Rather than having a murder at the start and introducing a lot of shady characters with equal motives, this time the mystery is: who is trying to kill the beautiful, but penurious, young owner of End House, Nick Buckley? Poirot is trying to stop a crime before it is committed. But has he arrived on the scene in time to stop a murder?

And is there a crime at all, or is it all in Miss Buckley's vivid imagination? Nick's blase best friend, who always seems on the verge of saying "I'll take vanilla", tells Poirot none of it is really happening, that it's all in her mind. After all, why would anyone want to murder a happy young woman with nothing to her name except a heavily-mortgaged old house?

The story is crowded with the usual Christiesque suspects (a lawyer cousin who might be next-of-kin; an overly-cheery Aussie couple; a naval officer with no money -- but an expensive yacht; etc.) but this two-part story really belongs to Polly Walker's blithe young owner of a decrepit mansion who has to be persuaded to beware for her life; and to David Suchet, whose Poirot gets off some of his best quips (and facial expressions). Hugh Fraser's Hastings, usually good for a few laughs or for the incisive ordinary person's view, is particularly dim in this episode.

So one of Christie's better books becomes one of Suchet's better turns as Poirot. Go figure.

Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings (played by David Suchet and Hugh Fraser) are holidaying in St Looe on the Cornish Riviera. Here they come to the aid of the beautiful, young but niave and vulnerable Magdala, commonly known as 'Nick', Buckley (played by Polly Walker), who lives in the beautiful but dilapidated End House on the clifftop. She has had several attempts made upon her life. When her cousin Maggie (played by Elizabeth Downes) is shot dead during a fireworks display, Poirot believes that the murderer mistook her for Nick and vows to protect her and to discover whom the killer is and why they should want her dead. Unfortunately, despite his best efforts, Nick dies after eating chocolates laced with cocaine. It transpires that she had been engaged to a famous aviator called Michael Seaton, who has gone missing and had inherited a substantial fortune from a doting uncle. Poirot believes that in all probability he had made a will leaving everything to her and, therefore, the Seaton fortune was the motive for murder. But whom is the culprit? Nick's closest friends: Freddie Rice (played by Alison Sterling), who it turns out is a cocaine user, Commander Challenger (played by John Harding), or perhaps the seemingly kindly Australian couple, Bert and Milly Croft (played by Jeremy Young and Carol Macready), who help her maintain End House? Is her cousin and solicitor Charles Vyse (played by Christopher Baines) as honest as he seems?

A handsome, engaging and well-dramatized adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel that marks another highlight in this popular series. As always the acting is superb with Suchet still the definitive Poirot as he impeccably portrays the Belgian sleuth's mannerisms and eccentricities. Here we learn that he cannot abide flying while his closest friend, Captain Hastings, once again played with charm by Hugh Fraser, is having the time of his life as they arrive on the Cornish Riviera by sea plane. There is also a delightful scene where Poirot is served two boiled eggs at the lavish five-star Majestic Hotel, which he refuses to eat because they are not the same size thus out of sync with his sense of order and method. We also get a sense of his compassion and feeling as he seeks to protect the vulnerable young Nick Buckley from being murdered and we are invited to wonder if he is actually falling for her. But, later, when it comes to unmasking the killer, we see his tougher side and that he cannot and will not be made a fool of by ruthless criminals. Series regulars Pauline Moran and Philip Jackson provide dependable support as Miss Lemon and Yard man Chief Inspector Japp. There is a funny moment at the denouement where he takes the former completely by surprise by getting her to pretend to be a famous medium at a mock séance as part of his ruse to unmask the guilty party. Polly Walker does fine work as Nick Buckley as does Alison Sterling as Freddie. Jeremy Young and Carol Macready are also noteworthy as the Crofts who you cannot help but think have something to hide behind their supposedly kindly and harmless exterior. Clive Exton's script is very good and he sees to it that the whodunit aspects of the plot hold water and the identity of the killer isn't that easily guessable. There are also some unexpected twists and turns at the climax when Poirot gathers all the suspects together and reveals the truth in his usual style. The film is solidly directed by Renny Rye and there is a strong feeling for place and period too. The locations, set work and costumes are superb accurately recreating a world of cocktails before dinner and ballroom dancing where women wear evening dresses and the men white ties and tails; the backdrop from which the plot unfolds.

The 'Suchet' Poirot series is wildly uneven because they bring in a different creative crew for each one. This time they used Rennie Rye and company and got the best production values of the lot. And they have the striking Polly Walker, someone with amazing film presence, what they used to call glamor. See her in '8 1/2 Women.'

Though they shift the production artists from Poirot to Poirot, they repeatedly use Clive Exton as the adapter. He performs murder on these lovely story-games. He insists on jettisoning all clues so we can play the game. Instead, he follows the 1930's B-movie convention of surprising us at the end. And he has transformed Hastings into the same buffoon the Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series created with the similarly maligned Dr Watson.

Shame. An entire collection of stories ruined, because who will do them again after this? Oh well, you can see our enchanted Polly here and an equally beguiling location.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.