This is one of those mysteries where a talented amateur (George C. Scott) slowly unravels what the police (despite having all the resources) can't seem to figure out.

Anthony Gethryn is a friend of the family of the Eark of Glenyre (Colin Brook). One of the cousins of the Earl's current heir (his grandson) is Adrian Messenger (John Merrivale) who is an author. Messenger has been working on what he calls a mystery plot, which he mentions vaguely, but with some ill-ease, to Gethryn. It seems he has been tracing a series of people he (Messenger) knew who have mostly died in grotesquely horrible accidents. He promises to tell Gethryn about it, but he has to take an air flight on business. Earlier we saw an odd looking religious man handing in a package that was supposed to go on the plane. Naturally the plane blows up killing most of the passengers and crew. But a badly injured (actually dying) Messenger tells the surviving passenger (Jacques Roux - Raoul Le Borg) a message for Gethryn. It is a long disjointed message, and Gethryn does get it after Roux is picked up (by then the sole survivor of the bombed plane).

Gethryn slowly works out the message on a set of blackboards with the assistance of the recovered Roux and Lady Jocelyn (Dana Wynter) and Sir Wilfred Lucas (Herbert Marshall). Gradually he realizes that the list of names are of men who were prisoners of war with Messenger, and that they and others were betrayed by another man who will kill anyone who is in his way to claim a large estate.

The gimmick of this film (which makes it a guessing game, but also ruins the mystery to some extent) was to guess who were the celebrities in cameo roles in this film. The five celebrities were Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, and Tony Curtis. In the case of Lancaster, Mitchum, Sinatra, and Curtis the disguises are not too bad (although Mitchum bone structure is a dead give-away. But Douglas (and I am not ruining the story to say this) is in four disguises, and like Mitchum it is just too difficult to hide his bone structure. One of his disguises, by the way, looks like Dr. Hawley Crippen.

Despite the gimmick taking one's attention away from the actual mystery, the film is a good one, well directed by John Huston (who has a cameo here as well, as does his son),and has some nice countryside photography - particularly of the final fox hunt. It is a decently made, above average mystery.

This was an incredibly star-studded film--having one of the most amazing list of actors assembled for one film. However, despite all this amazing talent, the film itself is only ordinary. This also despite the fact that the film is very original. The problem is that the film is sort of a comic-fantasy movie and when it degenerates into comical territory, it loses its steam and becomes a bit ponderous. It's really a shame, as you expect so much with such a star-studded cast. In many ways, this reminds me of THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE--also starring Lancaster and Douglas--made only a few years earlier. Like this film, when the characters act silly, the plot drags.

Adrian Messenger as played by John Merivale asks a friend George C. Scott to look up 12 names quite unofficially to see if these people are all still fogging mirrors. Right after that Merivale is killed in a plane crash that was caused by a bomb. That list becomes the key to finding his murderers as Scott and plane crash survivor Jacques Roux go on the hunt.

The List of Adrian Messenger is a nice murder mystery of the type that the British do so well. Had it not been for the gimmick of the heavily make-up laden stars playing bit roles except in two cases the film might well have stood on its own merits of well executed plot and good acting. Except for George C. Scott, like Gregory Peck in The Paradine Case he drifts in and out of an affected English accent.

Three of the stars, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, and Burt Lancaster have small walk-on parts. I'm also reasonably sure that both Lancaster and Sinatra's voices were dubbed. Robert Mitchum has a small role as one of the names on The List of Adrian Messenger. He plays a cockney war veteran who was with Merivale in a prisoner of war camp in the Burma Theater of World War II. John Huston would have been foolish indeed not to have taken advantage of Mitchum's uncanny gift for speech mimicry. It's the POW camp and what happened there that's the reason for all this homicide.

The villain is Kirk Douglas and we see him in several disguises. Douglas was the co-producer of The List of Adrian Messenger so he gave himself the villain's role. Although he precipitated both a train wreck and a plane crash to get two of his victims, he's by no means mad. He's got a very well thought out plan and he comes close to completing it.

I agree with everyone else who has said that John Huston took this particular film assignment so he good indulge in fox hunting and get paid for it. He was living in Ireland at the time and the fox hunting scenes were shot there. In fact it's a fox hunt that is the climatic scene of the film. Douglas almost gets away with a final murder, but a well trained gypsy horse and a bloodhound foil the villain at the end.

Clive Brook came out of a 20 year retirement to play the Marquess of Gleneyre and his daughter-in-law is played by the beautiful Dana Wynter who always graces any film she's in. Herbert Marshall is the MI5 man who was Scott's superior in war time and Huston cast as the young heir to the Gleneyre title and Douglas's last potential victim with his son Walter Anthony Huston. All look quite comfortable in their roles.

The List of Adrian Messenger is a short film for an A feature. It moves effortlessly and pleasantly and will be good entertainment. And personally I think you'll like guessing who and where the walk-ons are.