At least she can’t be confused with Bundle, Lord Caterham’s other daughter. Nope, she’s become Lord Caterham’s younger daughter. Virginia Revel, our heroine, is no longer a dashing widow-about-town. In the novel, the contrast between the two men is immense. Bill Eversleigh is supposed to be a waste of space and he is. The actor playing Anthony Cade also looks so much like the actor playing Bill Eversleigh that I had trouble telling them apart. He’s also been thoroughly castrated by the film-makers into a whiny, ineffective dull dweeb.
In the film, he’s relegated to a supporting player with about fifteen minutes of screen time.
You can see why Virginia falls in love with this exciting man of action. He’s virile, a stud, not entirely honest, dashing, daring, and everything else you want your romantic lead to be. In the novel, our hero is Anthony Cade, an adventurer with a past. Chimneys marks the first appearance of Inspector Battle, criminally underused in both prose and film. How could Miss Marple show up when Agatha published The Secret of Chimneys in 1925? Miss Marple arrived in 1927 in a short story and then in 1930, in the novel The Murder at the Vicarage. Here’s number one: Miss Marple solves the crime. Let’s start with the first of a series of egregious changes the producers inflicted on a fast-moving thriller with a studly romantic leading man. Or good luck, I should say, since watching virtually any of the other adaptations will take the taste of this stinker out of my mouth. We’ve watched several of them in the past, but I didn’t review them so we’ll have to re-watch them. Officially, this is the third Agatha Christie or Agatha-like film I’ve reviewed.
Remember, this is on a scale of one to five, with one being the lowest and five the highest. Quality of movie: One gun (plot holes you could sail battleships through) Fidelity to text: One gun (some names match and the house is terrific)
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