Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Ploydsge just watch it!

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

SimonJack This TV film of "The ABC Murders" is one of the best movies of the entire Agatha Christie series on Hercule Poirot. It also ranks among the very best mystery thrillers of all time. The film is packed with intrigue from start to finish. The simple modus operandi of the murders in this story belie the complexities of this fantastic mystery. Super sleuth Poirot is stumped for a long time, but his little grey cells help him eventually unravel this great mystery. His sidekick, Captain Hastings, is on hand to lend a hand. And Chief Inspector Japp has more than the usual work cut out for him in the effort to apprehend the murderer. The cast for this film give it their all, and some guest actors turn in tremendous performances as well. Donald Sumpter as Cast gives a performance worthy of an award. This is too great a mystery to say much more about. It would deprive those who haven't yet seen the film from the full enjoyment of a superb mystery. Kudos to Grenada Media and associates. This is an outstanding production of an enthralling thriller from the pen of the greatest mystery writer of all time.

Prismark10 The contrast with this feature length episode and the much later ones cannot be more stark.Despite the longer running time, The ABC Murders does not feel padded. The art direction is exquisite even for small street scenes. More importantly it has dashes of humour even though the storyline is dark. I actually laughed several times. Captain Hastings returns to London from South America with a smelly stuffed crocodile as a gift for Poirot. Almost immediately Poirot's little grey cells are being tasked.Poirot receives a series of anonymous letters from a killer who calls himself ABC who taunts him by telling Poirot where he will strike next. The killer leaves an ABC railroad schedule at the scene of the murders, the victims appear to be random but the killer seems to have an obsession with an adherence to alphabetical order both in the names of the victims and the town or city the deaths occur.Poirot gets the friends and families of the various victims together to look for any common clues in order to find the serial killer. Suspicion falls on a shell shocked war veteran who is a door to door stocking salesman. The press are going hysterical with alliterative headlines.Poirot suspects that not all of the victims were random.The ABC murders is an intriguing episode which was simply well made, the characters are comfortable with each other, Japp joking about receding hairline to Hastings, it tries to divert you to a cul de sac but Poirot is too wily for that.

Robert J. Maxwell Dame Agatha tackles a serial killer.The story opens with Poirot greeting his friend Hastings, who is returning from South America. Hastings cradles a stuffed caiman in his arms, having shot it on the Orinoco. The caiman are rather small relatives of the American alligator. Their numbers are in drastic decline because of illegal hunting. Their skins are made into shoes and belts. At night, the good folk paddle their little rowboats through the swamps and look for caiman with flashlights. When the light beam catches a caiman's head above water, the animal simply sits there and stares back, to be shot through the eyes with a small-caliber rifle, so as not to damage the hide. Once in a while the police raid a warehouse filled halfway to the ceiling with stretched and dried skins, ready to turn into pocketbooks. Oddly, someone named Hastings was a well-known student of caiman paleontology.But, ah, mes amis, the story, yes? Poirot receives a letter telling him a murder will be committed in Andover. The letter is signed A.B.C. Poirot dismisses it as a crank but an old lady is killed in Andover on the date indicated. Her last name begins with "A" and a railroad guide, known popularly as the ABC Guide, is found near the body. Another letter, and the death of someone whose name begins with "B" in Brexhill. Another letter, and the murder of a Carmichael Clark in Chartwell or Camberville or someplace. Anyway you get the picture. There is no discernible connection between any of the victims nor any motive for the murders. One of the survivors questioned is another of the juicy, gray-eyed blonds the production has enlisted. There always seems to be a delicate blond. But then even Lady Carmichael's brunette nurse is quietly refulgent, even in those great black clod hoppers her profession and the period demand. And she's full of smiles. When pain and anguish wring the brow, a ministering angel thou. Why do my nurses always look like battle axes? The last one, in the middle of my colonoscopy, shouted at me, "RELAX!" The apparent murderer himself is revealed less than half-way through the film. (If I remember, the novel gives us his name in the first sentence.) At first we only know what he looks like. And he looks like a madman SHOULD look. Elderly, with thick glasses, parched gray skin and a set of crooked teeth that belong on a caiman. He cackles with glee at nothing and twists his hands together. When he stares into the camera it seems to be a skull grinning back at you from the Frankfort horizontal.The problem is that the guy is so miserable he enlists our sympathy. He's poor. He's shabby. He's epileptic. He's stupid. He's old. He's ugly. He's ridden with guilt. Mais, pas de soucis. He's even dumber than he looks and winds up rich and free.Except for the voluptuous Miss Lemon, the usual characters are there, doing their jobs -- Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp who, with his hooded eyes and default expression of surprised resignation, sometimes reminds me of an old childhood chum, Ronnie Foster, R.I.P.

TheLittleSongbird I love episodes like Sad Cypress, Five Little Pigs and Peril At End House, but The ABC Murders deserves to be up there with the best of them. It was a near-perfect, top notch and thrilling episode. There are one or two slow moments, and before I realised that there was half an hour left I had the impression as I haven't read the book that I had been told too much, but these are the only problems I had with it. The plot is complicated with plenty of surprises, but is well constructed and well explained. The adaptation looks splendid, not in a sumptuous visual style like say Sad Cypress but in a dark haunting visual style like something like Hickory Dickory Dock. The music is enough to make the hairs stand up on your neck, it certainly did that to mine. The acting from all involved is exceptional, whilst David Suchet gives an impeccable performance as always as Poirot, it is Donald Sumpter who walks away with the acting honours in one of the best supporting performances in the history of the Poirot run. It is considered as one of Suchet's favourite Poirots, and you know what, it is easy to see why. It is superb. 9/10 Bethany Cox