You must admire the audacity of filmmakers who try to remake classic films – after all, it takes a lot of guts to attempt a production that exists solely to one-up its heralded predecessor. But that’s not to say that it cannot be done – after all, William Wyler’s “Ben-Hur” and Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” were remakes that won the Best Picture Oscar, while John Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon” and “Moby Dick” and Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” were superior to earlier film adaptations of those beloved works.
But for every “Ben-Hur,” there are hundreds of remakes that fall far short of their celebrated originals. One of the most egregious is the dreary 1965 “Ten Little Indians,” which followed in the footsteps of the classic 1945 “And Then There Were None,” where 10 people are invited to an island off the English coast and are systematically murder in keeping with the rhymes of a grisly poem.
“Ten Little Indians” was designed to profit from the renewed popularity of Agatha Christie’s mysteries generated by a series of jolly feature films starring Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple – even to the point of recruiting George Pollock, the director of the Rutherford outings.
In fairness, “Ten Little Indians” attempted to distance itself from “And Then There Were None” by switching its setting to a creepy chalet atop an Alpine peak. It also jazzed up the story by turning two characters into show business types – Fabian’s pop singer and Daliah Lavi’s movie starlet were decorative distractions, even though neither were very good actors.
Alas, Pollock’s directing skills – which resulted in crisp and sparkling Miss Marple romps – were absent in “Ten Little Indians,” resulting in a slow-moving mystery that starts to wear out its welcome before the culprit is revealed. Even worse, “Ten Little Indians” was shot in unimaginative black-and-white styling that exacerbates its dullness while giving the film a cheap B-movie look.
While some fun can be plumbed from veteran British actors Wilfrid Hyde-White, Stanley Holloway and Dennis Price trying to one-up their castmates with their genial hamming, romantic leads Hugh O’Brian and Shirley Eaton have no chemistry and barely carry the film through its twisty ending. Even more curious, the film has a William Castle-style gimmick called a “Whodunit Break” that pauses the story for a minute to enable audiences to discuss the possible identity of the killer.
At least one person was enthralled with “Ten Little Indians” – producer Harry Alan Towers secured the rights to the Christie property and remade it twice, in 1974 (with the setting moved to a hotel in the Iranian desert) and in 1989 (with the action taking place on an African safari). Those two versions emphasized campiness and were entertaining, albeit for the wrong reasons, while this 1965 trifle was a mild bore.