In one of the only times I can recall, Hercule Poirot does not fall into a murder mystery in Evil Under the Sun. Instead he's hired by an insurance company that is suspicious about the death of a young girl whose body was found on the moors in Great Britain. A large insurance claim on her life was paid out and they suspect but can't prove.

Poirot's travels put him also in the employ of a grubby nouveau riche millionaire played by Colin Blakely who is seeking to recover a large jewel from a woman who jilted him. His journey continues on to an Aegean island where the former mistress of a Balkan king, Maggie Smith now runs an exclusive resort for the rich and famous.

The woman who jilted Blakely is a Gertrude Lawrence like musical comedy star played by Diana Rigg. As is the case with Agatha Christie mysteries she provides us with a hotel filled with people who would just love to do her in. So when she's done in, it seems strange that everyone seems to have an ironclad alibi as to their whereabouts when the deed was done.

When Poirot puts it all together and reveals all, it turns out he's solved two murders and gets the jewel back. All in a day's work for our intrepid Belgian sleuth.

This is my favorite of all the Peter Ustinov-Hercule Poirot screen adaptions. A lot of that is because the background music if you'll carefully listen is provided by Cole Porter. Watch the film and listen to the soundtrack and see how many of Cole Porter's classics you can identify. In fact we're let in on the joke when in a shot of the hotel register, you'll see the autograph of Cole Porter prominently displayed.

With really stunning scenery from Mallorca, ably substituting for the Aegean, Ustinov is aided by a great cast that also includes Sylvia Miles and James Mason. Everyone plays their part superbly and Agatha Christie fans worldwide will love this film.

EVIL UNDER THE SUN marks the second of Peter Ustinov's appearances as the famous Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot and it's very similar to look and feel as his first, DEATH ON THE NILE. Once again a bunch of glamorous but ageing Hollywood stars are stranded in a remote exotic setting, where one of their number (an incredibly bitchy Diana Rigg) is murdered and Poirot has to work out who did it. I enjoyed this film slightly more than the two previous Poirot movies of the 1970s, because it has a lighter touch and more comedy, that makes it very amusing at times. The cast is very strong and has nice roles for Roddy McDowall, James Mason, and an on-form Maggie Smith, and I did get a hoot out of Colin Blakely's Yorkshireman. As ever, the only thing that took the edge of this - and it was the same with the other Poirot movies - is that it feels very drawn out, particularly in the first half. The murder takes forever to happen and too much time is spent merely wallowing in the star power instead of getting on with the plot. Still, it's a fun watch.

The fourth in the series of Brabourne/ Goodwin produced adaptations of Christie that began with MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974). This one, set on an island in the Mediterranean (actually filmed in Majorca) has Peter Ustinov in his second outing as Poirot investigating the murder of a self-interested actor (Diana Rigg),with a gang of suspects including hotel-keeper Maggie Smith, cuckolded husband Denis Quilley, camp journalist Roddy McDowall, theatrical producer James Mason and his domineering wife Sylvia Miles, and would-be gigolo Nicholas Clay and his mousy spouse Jane Birkin. Anthony Shaffer's script gives plenty of opportunity for humorous sequences, especially the cat-fights between Smith and Rigg, and the scene where Poirot, clad in a bathing-dress, attempts to have a morning swim. Whereas David Suchet in the television version tended to be low-key in his characterization, referring to his "little gray cells" and how they solved cases on more than one occasion, Ustinov turns in a flamboyant performance, full of little details: the sequence where he overhears Clay and Birkin arguing in their hotel room ends with a shot of Poirot twitching his mustache, as if he doesn't quite believe what they are saying (he is eventually proved right). The score has rightly been praised: John Lanchbery's arrangements of Cole Porter standards are both florid yet particularly appropriate for the film's bourgeois ambiance: the characters' entire lives are dedicated to pleasure rather than work. As Poirot observes, somewhat cynically, they resemble slabs of meat laid out in the sun to brown. Guy Hamilton's direction is both slick and very clear: unusually for most Christie adaptations, EVIL UNDER THE SUN ties up every single strand of its complicated plot, leaving viewers without too many questions to ask as to whodunit and why. Definitely one of the better versions of the great detective novelist's work, even if it departs quite significantly from the source-text.