Ten Little Indians (1965)

Agatha Christie's grisly plot is so good, movie adaptations just can not mess it up, and even this prosaic 1965 version, filmed in large and austere, airy sets that undo the plot's claustrophobia, manages to be thrilling - keeping things fresh is the setting of a snowed-in mansion (not an island off the Devon coast), some deaths from great mountain heights, and a hilarious but oddly effective "Whodunnit break" (a one-minute pause with a voice-over that prompts audience members to turn to their neighbour and hazard a guess at whodunnit!)

★★★☆☆

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Ten Little Indians (1989)

Transporting Agatha Christie's classic mystery, an early example of the modern slasher, to an African safari rather than an island off the Devon coast was probably just meant to reduce staging costs to the purchase of a single tent, and it gives the classic story of gathered guests being picked off one by one by a mysterious safari host a distinctly Gilligan's Island-feel as our gathered guests, or doomed victims, including Frank Stallone as Phillip Lombard, take showers behind cane shower screens, traverse ravines in a rickety vine cable car,  and deliver lines of dialogue in the wooden manner of The Skipper.

★★☆☆☆

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And Then There Were None (aka Ten Little Indians) (1945)

Like most other film versions of Agatha Christie's 1939 murder mystery, Rene Clair's 1945 adaptation fudges the book's climax, adhering instead to the more sanitised ending of Christie's 1943 stage play, but otherwise this movie is faithful and the story of characters summoned by a mysterious stranger to a remote island where they are picked off one by one is suitably chilling, creepy, puzzling, and there is also plenty of humour like a wonderful scene of cabin fever paranoia and fear that literally has each character being watched as they in turn watch another.

★★★★☆

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And Then There Were None (2015)

This is a ripper star-studded BBC adaptation of the oft-adapted Agatha Christie serial killer mystery, one made for tv that thankfully sticks to the plot of the book (so many others deviate), and one that looks great, sounds terrific, and even if you are someone who has watched six or seven other iterations and know very well the whos and whats and whys, the three episodes of this series will grip you to the no-longer-surprising but surprisingly unspoilt surprise end!

★★★★☆

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Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians (And Then There Were None) (1974)

An Agatha Christie adaptation, Ten Little Indians (or less controversially, And Then There Were None) has ten individuals including Oliver Reed, Richard Attenborough, and a singing, piano-playing Charles Aznavour gather in a remote Iranian desert mansion (not the book's island off the Devon coast) summoned by a mysterious host and, from their first tension-filled dinner, these guests are picked off one-by-one by a killer whose identity and motives are the surprise revelation at film's end.

★★★★☆

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