The List of Adrian Messenger

Trailer—The List of Adrian Messenger

for the actors in cameo roles. for Kirk Douglas and George Scott. for the story and its old fashion flavor. for the details and for the levels of way to the truth who reflects a manner to build a film noir who could be almost fascinating. a film of keys, crimes and theories. and not only a good script but splendid performances for define events, meetings, plots, errors. the similarities with Sherlock Holmes' stories is one of pillars of this seductive film about a rich family and the danger around it. and it is only the beginning. the mark of John Huston is basis for a dark film who remains memorable for the status of game with masks, for the ambiguity and for the great job of Kirk Douglas .

Liberal John Huston tries very hard to subvert the tenets of a very conservative genre. On the one hand you have the usual - aristocratic setting, fear of outsiders, stiff upper lips, genius detective, plot resolution, restoration of order. On the other hand you have camp vaudeville, disruptions of sombre plot with games and mockery. Five great Hollywood stars in ludicrous makeup - see if you can spot them. Hardly conducive to caring about Agatha Christie style plot, especially when villain is revealed early on. Problem is plot is boring, and play not playful enough.

I don't think there was a moment that my brain wasn't smiling as I watched John Huston's The List of Adrian Messenger. It is an almost perfect piece of mass-murder fluffery. That's a sentence that seems to not work, but if you watch the almost-60 year old story of skullduggery amongst the landed gentry--and occasional commoner--you'll see what I mean. This is just a fun movie, with George C. Scott leading a wonderful cast who are often decked out in cutting-edge latex disguises through a maze of greed, homicide, and fox-hunting. Dana Wynter is a secondary love interest, and the only truly false note in TLoAM is using such an ethereal beauty as window-dressing. Since we're still stuck spending a lot of time trapped in our homes because of the Kung Flu, and you may be getting tired of streaming crappy TV series, try this little gem. See what Hollyweird used to do for a living.

This was an incredibly star-studded film--having one of the most amazing list of actors assembled for one film. However, despite all this amazing talent, the film itself is only ordinary. This also despite the fact that the film is very original. The problem is that the film is sort of a comic-fantasy movie and when it degenerates into comical territory, it loses its steam and becomes a bit ponderous. It's really a shame, as you expect so much with such a star-studded cast. In many ways, this reminds me of THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE--also starring Lancaster and Douglas--made only a few years earlier. Like this film, when the characters act silly, the plot drags.

I wanted to say something in praise of the masked star gimmick - something I haven't seen anyone else mention. Rather than viewing the various "heavily made-up" characters as a spot the star contest, look at it from the other side and, suddenly, the gimmick becomes an ingenious way of covering up the killer - hiding him from the audience. Since the filmmakers knew they couldn't find a way to make a full head latex "invisible" to the audience, (and presumably didn't want to go with a completely other actor) they went the Purloined Letter route and threw in a bunch of such "spottable" characters to keep the audience from guessing which one was the killer. Much like the movie The Spanish Prisoner - where every person seems somehow fakey UNTIL you watch from the viewpoint of "spot the scam" and realize the EVERYONE sounds fake (i.e., like they're scamming someone) so you CAN'T spot the con artists. Brilliant, really. In both cases.

If you include the cameos, the cast in here is tremendously impressive. The first part of the movie also gives one the promise to be a very intriguing story. However, it bogs down in the middle and never really recovers. With the hype of this big-name cast and a great director like John Huston, you'd expect more. Starring are George C. Scott, Clive Brook, Dana Waynter, Herbert Marshall and Kirk Douglas. Cameos (in disguises) are by Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra. It's supposed to be an English film but Scott hardly fits in with his American accent. He made no effort even to fake a British accent, so he sounds out of place. The film isn't bad and really not boring but it should be a lot better. Maybe I just expected too much. Probably the most fun is figuring out who is whom in all those disguises. It's better than the story.

Because of that gimmick with Curtis, Mitchum, Sinatra and Lancaster people seem to regard this film as a sort of spot-the-star contest. But it is much more than that. Excellent acting (especially Douglas in what must be his best role since Paths of Glory), superb music (Jerry Goldsmith) and brilliant direction of John Huston more than make up for occasional lapses in the story. The story is quite simple, but the less said the better. The 'list' in question is a list of 10 names of people from all over the UK, who seem to have nothing in common except...well just see the movie. And spotting the stars is quite fun too.

This is the first murder mystery, to my knowledge, where the malefactor has already killed many victims by the time the film starts and most of the rest (including scores of innocent people via an airplane bomb) early in the film. The mass murderer in question's evil goes back to his days in an Allied POW camp in Japan during World War II (important plot narrative not to be overlooked) where he sabotaged his fellow inmates' escape attempts in his function as a mole at the camp, earning the others brutal payback from their Japanese overseers. Chilling at moments as the murderer just goes along killing in nefarious and creepy disguises. Well worth seeing without commercial interruptions, especially in the post-show credits during which guest stars who had appeared in disguise mug for the camera.

Stunningly original. It's great fun sitting with people seeing the film for the first time and telling them all the big stars who are in it! "OK," they finally say, "I've seen George Scott and I've finally seen Kirk Douglas; where's everybody else?" Once you experience this classic, you'll know what I mean. Scott (one of the few Americans who can sustain a British accent) is wonderful as the sleuth. Houston's slight-of-hand direction is bang on. Goldsmith's wicked little theme and moody score need to finally be released on CD (Varese? Silva?).