"Murder in Three Acts" (1986)

(Note: The spoiler tags are grey because I didn't want to have an entirely white post. It was going to look derpy no matter what, so now it just looks... less derpy.)

 

First time I've ever reviewed a movie on here! This may or may not become a thing, but probably won't. The only reason I'm doing this is because I really wanted to read someone's review of this movie, but my mom didn't review it. So I'm writing a review because I want to read a review, if that makes sense?

|Anyway, the movie is a(n?) Hercule Poirot mystery, about which I will spoil... everything. As such, everything is in spoiler tags.|

|Poirot (Peter Ustinov) is invited to a house party or something (I forget how he gets there, I just know it's instigated by his British friend whose name I keep forgetting) and we meet the main cast.|

Speaking of whom, the main cast! 

|Hercule Poirot (still Peter Ustinov) is the main character and a detective.|

|Egg (Emma Samms), whose name is never explained, is... well, I can best describe her as a sassy and energetic girl who's abysmal at driving.|

|The Reverend Babbington (Philip Guilmant) is just a kind of generic clergyman.|

|Dr. Strange (Dana Elcar), about whose name the jokes simply write themselves, is just a kind of generic doctor guy.|

|Charles Cartwright (Tony Curtis), the host of the party, is a great actor, now retired and divorced.|

|Hastings (Jonathan Cecil) is Poirot's aforementioned British friend.|

|Ricardo Montoya (Fernando Allende) is a Socialist. He isn't actually, people just think he is. Poirot doesn't care if he is or not.|

|Freddy Dayton (Nicholas Pryor) is just kind of weird and unstable. Not insane, though.|

|All these characters, plus some other ones who don't play huge roles in the story, go to a dinner/cocktail party. And then... the Reverend Babbington puts his hand to his throat, chokes, and dies. Dr. Strange declares that yup, he's dead.|

|Egg suspects murder. Vehemently. In the face of pretty much everyone else, who is of the opinion that basically "Y'know, the Reverend Babbington was getting old anyway. And there wasn't any poison in his cocktail. And there wasn't really any way to make sure he took that one cup. And who would want to murder an elderly pastor anyway?"|

|Well, obviously, the murderer would. But Poirot doesn't see it that way, so he flies back to the U.S. from... I think this movie is set in South America somewhere. Charles Cartwright also heads back to the States.|

|Then we timeskip, to when Egg and Hastings are calling Poirot on the phone. They notify him that Dr. Strange (not the superhero) is hosting another dinner party, in the same place, with most of the same people.|

|At the dinner party, everything is fine and dandy until Ricardo Montoya randomly shows up, his car having broken down. They let him join the dinner party.|

|Everything continues being fine and dandy until the butler informs Dr. Strange that a Mrs.... Rushbridger has arrived. Dr. Strange takes a drink of his whatever-they-were-drinking, stands up, and walks a few steps.|

|When I was watching this, I had this conversation with myself.|

|Me: He's gonna die.|

|Me, two seconds later: Called it.|

|Yeah, Dr. Strange dies in pretty much exactly the same way as the Reverend Babbington did. Charles Cartwright bursts in on Poirot to inform him of this. Both of them fly out (at different times) back to South America.|

|The autopsy on Dr. Strange reveals that he was poisoned with ben-zo-tine. (Whenever they say "Benzotine" in the movie,  they always pronounce it "ben-zo-tine", with the accent on the last syllable.) And guess what, it just so happens that the late Reverend Babbington's death is also consistent with benzotine poisoning. Egg, naturally, is all like "I told you so."|

|Hercule Poirot sets about investigating, with the help of Hastings and another old acquaintance of his. That's a police guy, Colonel Mateo (Pedro Armandáriz Jr.) who I liked almost immediately. He is, and this is crucial for mystery-genre police, competent. When Poirot's like "We should interrogate the waitstaff," Colonel Mateo's reaction is "Yeah, we did that already." Like I said, Mateo is great.|

|Anyway, Mrs.... Rushbridger ends up being a plot point. Despite the fact that she's also insane and in a mental hospital. (Whenever they mention her name, they do a sort of dramatic pause between "Mrs." and "Rushbridger". At least, someone I know thinks it's for Dramatic Emphasis; I just think it sounds like people are having a hard time pronouncing it. But we never learn her first name, so I just call her "Mrs. Dramatic Pause Rushbridger".)|

|Poirot and Col. Mateo go to visit her, which is an entirely unproductive visit because she's catatonic. So they leave, and some time later, she dies. From eating chocolates. Laced with benzotine. I think we can all see where this is going.|

 

|Charles Cartwright meets up with one of the other random people I didn't bother detailing, and in the course of that, offers her coffee. She freaks out (it might be poisoned) and spills it everywhere, which everyone is very nice about.|

|Poirot hosts another cocktail party in his hotel room. He mixes the drinks himself, so nobody can die of benzotine poisoning. Then Charles Cartwright dies of benzotine poisoning.|

|Except not really. He was just pretending (did I mention he was a great actor?), at Poirot's behest. With the evidence-by-demonstration he gets from this, plus an offhanded comment by Egg, Poirot finally solves the mystery.|

 

|Basically (OK I KNOW THIS ALL IS SPOILER TAGGED BUT THIS IS LITERALLY THE ENDING I'M SPOILING HERE) Charles Cartwright just put poison in a random cup at the first party, and the Reverend Babbington happened to drink it. This was a "dress rehearsal", as it were, for his actual target: Dr. Strange, who knew that Charles Cartwright was kinda insane. Mrs. Dramatic Pause Rushbridger was just killed to make it look like she new too much, thereby throwing people off the trail. Oh, and that coffee I mentioned was actually poisoned.|

|(END ENDING SPOILERS)|

|So yeah, Poirot does the requisite "Explainerate" for a detective finishing up the story, and we get our denouement. I'm not going to bother detailing that because this post is long enough already.|

I give this 4 stars, and it's rated Not Rated as a movie. I'd give it E10+ to T as a videogame.

|(Endnote: While watching this, I started to have a horror of anyone drinking anything. Thankfully that didn't translate to having a horror of me drinking anything, as it might have done in the past. Also, the movie instilled me with a burning desire to listen to Metallica's "Sanitarium".)|