Cool Herc

Every now and then, you just feel like a cozy - that's the technical term for those murder mysteries that take place in the vicarage with snoopy old lady detectives. Or like Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun.

EUtS is one of a series of Agatha Christie films starring Peter Ustinov as the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It takes place mainly on an island resort for show biz folk in the Adriatic, run by a sweetly bitchy Maggie Smith.  Broadway star Diana Rigg is the key guest - Poirot has been dispatched to retrieve a diamond given to her by a suitor. There will be a murder and you will get all of the clues, and maybe even figure it out. But if you're like me, you'll just soak in the talent: Roddy MacDowell, Sylvia Miles, James Mason, Jane Birken.

I particularly like Jane Birken - who sang the orgasm part in Serge Gainsbourg's Je T'aime, ... Moi Non Plus. She wore these bohemian layered outfits - kimono over robe over tunic over tights - all in mismatched earth-toned patterns. It was supposed to look frumpy and eccentric, but I loved it.

I'm not sure how many of these I've seen. Probably Death on the Nile, and possibly the non-canonical Murder on the Orient Express (Albert Finney is Poirot). I don't know how many of them I'll watch eventually. All of them, I suppose.