Later Agatha Christie and later effort from Sidney Gilliat who maybe wasn't the right director for this. It needed more atmosphere and thrills.
Hywel Bennett and Hayley Mills (in their third film together) aren't bad in the lead - though it's a bit annoying Mills is playing an American, I just wanted an American to play it. Also she plays the role as a bright, pretty well adjusted thing - you wonder why she marries moody chauffeur Bennett. I mean, he's handsome but she's pretty - it doesn't make sense the way say mousy Joan Fontaine marries fortune hunter Cary Grant in Suspicion. Why not have her play it dowdy or in a wheelchair?
Gilliat's script is fine but his direction is not up to it. Compare the creepiness of say the Hammer psycho thrillers written by Jimmy Sangster - they used wind, shadows, sound, desolation, music, weird extras, suspense, etc. This is just stock life in the country stuff.
Britt Ekland adds a little glamour. Agatha Christie hated her nudity at the end. It is a jolt in part because there's been no nudity until then - I mean nudity would be fine (and surely Mills and Bennett would have been up for it) but at the end it is weird.
Lois Maxwell is great fun as Mills' bitchy relative - Peter Bowles is smooth too, and it's fun (it also a little melancholy) to see George Sanders being George Sanders-y just before he killed himself, but there's some random guy with grey ish hair who doesn't quite work.
They should remake this only get a director who can really handle atmosphere.
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