Murder by Decree (1979)

There's only one way the Jack the Ripper mystery can be resolved in a movie without history being completely upended, so don't expect too many surprises here, but expect a gripping mystery drama that has Sherlock Holmes (Christopher Plummer, who bewilders with his simpering, "feely" portrayal of the great detective) investigating the notorious Jack the Ripper murders and, once he's talked to, among others, Donald Sutherland's psychic and John Gielgud's parliamentarian, Holmes arrives at a solution that any audience member even half interested in the grisly episode will have come across before.

★★★★☆

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The Night Has Eyes (aka Moonlight Madness/Terror House) (1942)

In this by-the-numbers thriller released two years after Rebecca, two teachers hike the Yorkshire Moors hoping to learn what became of their missing, presumed dead teacher friend and when they stumble across James Mason's brooding Heathcliff-/Maximilian de Winter-type residing in a lonely mansion, they start to get dangerously close to solving the mystery: there's something loopy about him, he madly fondles a gun at night, and he broods like he is tormented by a boatshed argument with his first wife.

★★★☆☆

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Agatha Christie's Evil Under The Sun (1982)

This is the third Hercule Poirot mystery written for the screen by Anthony Shaffer after his uncredited work on Murder On The Orient Express in 1974 and his screenplay for Death On The Nile in 1979 and Shaffer again does great service to Agatha Christie's plot, injecting the script with enough humour to help break up the long string of detective-suspect interactions that Agatha Christie mysteries essentially are, while terrific use is made of another exotic setting, this time an island resort in the Adriatic Sea where a star-studded cast of whiny British toffs and Peter Ustinov's Hercule Poirot become embroiled in the beachside murder of a movie star.

★★★★☆

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The Verdict (1982)

In the 90s, John Grisham finessed the legal thriller, pitting young, ambitious "David" lawyers against corrupt "Goliath" corporations, ensuring their hardwork and unerring moral compasses were rewarded in the end with rousing courtroom wins, and cramming in a zillion thrilling subplots, but this is 1982, pre-Grisham's first novel, and Paul Newman's silver-fox lawyer is an alcoholic we don't much care about even after hearing a sob story, his hard work is confined to a single night of phone calling which just magically turns up the wee administrative matter upon which the entire court case hinges, the subplots here (a hostile judge, a duplicitous love interest) are momentary scenes abandoned, and while there are plenty of pompous, uncaring Boston stuffed shirts roaming about unfazed by moral injustice and suffering, nothing here constitutes a diabolical "Goliath" organisation that deserves its comeuppance, so all-in-all this courtroom procedural is dry and unfolds at a pace akin to reading a court transcript, not a John Grisham page-turner.

★★☆☆☆

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