10 Best Agatha Christie Adaptations
No conversation about mysteries is complete without a nod to Agatha Christie, the author of 75-plus stories that inspired 30 movies and counting. With two billion copies of her books sold in 103 languages, Christie, who died in 1976 at age 86, remains the bestselling novelist of all time. And movies (Haunting in Venice, in theaters Sept. 15) and adaptations (an upcoming Christie-inspired BBC series called Murder is Easy) continue to be made.
“Christie is sort of the patron saint of the cozies,” says Turner Classic Movie’s Noir Alley host Eddie Muller, referring to a subgenre of crime fiction in which most sex and violence occur off-screen, the stories take place in a small, contained (“cozy”) setting, and the detective is an amateur sleuth who’s typically female, or a softer, more genteel male. “Because, Miss Marple, you know…and Hercule Poirot is, well, he’s not Sam Spade, if you know what I mean,” Muller says, comparing two of Christie’s most popular recurring sleuth characters to the hard-boiled, tough-skinned detective created by writer Dashiell Hammett and popularized by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon.
“But a lot of Agatha Christie’s books are a much darker than people give her credit for,“ Muller says. “She’s written some pretty ‘nasty’ stuff in her day.” Nasty, as in her 1932 short story The Fourth Man, which deals in premonitions, jealousy and death.
A Haunting in Venice, inspired by the 1969 Agatha Christie book, Hallowe’en Party, with the location changed from the UK to post-WWII Venice, looks wonderfully dark too. The action takes place 20 years after Death on the Nile and is “very striking and shadow-filled, as Venice is,” Kenneth Branagh, who returns as Poirot, has said. Think old palazzo and seances, and things going bump in the night. Joining Branagh are Michelle Yeoh, Tina Fey, Kelly Reilly and Jamie Dornan.
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While you wait for A Haunting in Venice, watch these 10 classic Christie movies.
10 best movies based on Agatha Christie novels
1. Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
20th Century Studios
Kenneth Branagh donned the movie crown of Christie’s iconic Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, anchoring an ensemble cast alongside Daisy Ridley, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench and Penélope Cruz. An earlier version of Christie’s 1937 novel, in 1974, starred Albert Finney as Poirot, with Jacqueline Bisset, Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Hopkins, Michael York…and James Bond! (Well, actually, Sean Connery.)
2. Death on the Nile (2022)
20th Century Studios
Branagh returned for the recent movie remake of another Christie novel, also another all-star affair with Annette Bening, Tom Bateman, Gal Godot and Russell Brand. The previous movie, also based on Christie’s 1937 work of detective fiction, starred Peter Ustinov as Poirot, with Olivia Hussey, Bette Davis, George Kennedy and Angela Lansbury.
3. The Mirror Crack'd (1980)
Associated Film Distribution
Another Christie character from the 1930s, detective Miss Marple, makes a reappearance (played by Angela Lansbury) in this film, in which a local woman (Maureen Bennett) is poisoned with a spiked cocktail, and everyone thinks a visiting movie star (Elizabeth Taylor) was the intended victim. With Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis and Kim Novak.
4. Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
IMAGO / United Archives
Helmed by the sure-handed director Billy Wilder and based on a play adapted by Christie from her own short story, this courtroom classic starred Marlene Dietrich as a woman accused of murder and defended by a dedicated barrister (Charles Laughton). It's so full of socko surprises, the last ten pages of the script were withheld from the cast until the final days of filming.
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5. Ten Little Indians (1974)
Embassy Pictures
This was the title given to a movie remake of an earlier film, And Then There Were None, in 1945, about a group of people invited to remote hotel—who then start to die, one by one. Can they work together to find the killer before it’s too late? Oliver Reed, Herbert Lom, Orson Wells and Gert Fröbe (he was Goldfinger in Goldfinger!) star. The Christie story on which it’s based, written in 1939, is regarded as the world’s most successful murder mystery, selling more than 100 million copies in multiple languages.
6. Murder in Three Acts (1986)
Warner Bros. Television
Let’s all go to Mexico! This Acapulco-set, made-for-TV movie (from a story originally titled Three Act Tragedy) again starred Peter Ustinov as the clue-sniffing Poirot, and Tony Curtis as a famous American actor at a shmaltzy dinner party where murder is on the menu.
7. Crooked House (2017)
Vertical Entertainment
Based on a novel from 1949 (and reportedly one of Christie’s all-time favorites of her works), this juicy potboiler starred Glenn Close, Terence Stamp and Gillian Anderson in a tale of dark family secrets and a private investigator looking into a murder in the family of his former lover. Downton Abbey’s creator, Julian Fellowes, contributed to the screenplay.
8. Evil Under the Sun (1982)
IMAGO / United Archives
When a millionaire somehow winds up with a phony diamond, Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov again) is plunged into an exquisite, exclusive island resort for the rich and famous—and a murder for which everyone has an alibi. It’s not as star-packed as some other Christie movie adaptations, but hey, Ustinov designed his own swimsuit for the beach-y scenes!
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9. Murder, She Said (1961)
MGM
Based on the 1957 novel 4.50 from Paddington, this mystery had a touch of comedy as detective Miss Marple (Margaret Rutherford) witnesses a killing through the window of a train—but authorities dismiss her as a dotty old biddy when no trace of the crime can be found. Christie once said she wasn’t terribly impressed with the movie, but it spawned three film sequels (Murder at the Gallop, Murder Most Foul and Murder Ahoy!), and the author dedicated a later book, The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side, to Rutherford, a renowned British actress of stage and screen.
10. The Passing of Mr. Quin (1928)
This is the first movie made from anything Christie wrote, in this case a short story later released in a 1930 collection called The Mysterious Mr. Quin. In it a doctor (Stewart Rome, a British actor who would go on to appear in some 150 movies and TV shows) tries to prove that his wife’s first husband was killed by a neighbor.
