Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther comedies were just two years old and as many episodes deep when their bumbling-inspector bit was borrowed and slathered onto an Agatha Christie adaptation, of all things: The Alphabet Murders. The comedic approach well suits director Frank Tashlin (The Girl Can’t Help It), although it loses some intended panache by not playing out in color.
After addressing the audience as himself, a miscast but really trying Tony Randall (The Odd Couple) morphs into Clouseauian character as Hercule Poirot, Christie’s iconic detective: bald, Belgian, mustachioed fey — a tut-tut Renaissance man who carries a cane, bowls perfect frames and makes his own “ripping” cigarettes. The famed, finicky sleuth is called upon by the British Secret Service to solve a string of killings where an ABC book was left at the scene. The murderer seems to be working through the alphabet, too, first killing someone with the initials of “AA,” then “BB,” “CC” and so on.
Much to Poirot’s annoyance, the service has assigned one by-the-book Hastings (Robert Morley, Theatre of Blood) to tag along. Poirot spends nearly as much time trying to shake him as he does investigating. Somehow, La Dolce Vita vixen Anita Ekberg figures into the puzzle as Miss Cross, cooing such come-ons as, “Do you want my balloons?” Gulp! (Mind you, she’s holding actual balloons at the time, but still; Tashlin is, after all, the guy who had Jayne Mansfield bounce down a street with a milk jug in each hand, held at breast-level.)
A former cartoon director, Tashlin is in playful form as always, here taking to the camera as if it were a new toy, the limits of which he itched to test. He turns it upside down, aims it at mirrors, mounts it to a roulette dealer’s stick, places it within a bowling alley scoring table. In essence, he’s not afraid of having too much fun or letting the movie call attention to itself. Witness, too, the self-mocking cameo of Margaret Rutherford as Christie’s other classic clue-sniffer, the matronly Miss Marple, whom she played in four films.
As Poirot himself, The Alphabet Murders exercises a well-mannered, dry wit. It hums along to its own score, light on its feet. It’s just too bad it’s not all that funny — more of a passing amusement than anything else. —Rod Lott
I do like this film but I think you are quite right – it’s not really funny enough but is always amusing none the less and Randall is surprisingly good in it actually.