Chandler’s Trailers: “The Alphabet Murders” (1965)

“Alphabet Murders, The”  (1965)  A presumed follow-up to the successful series of Miss Maple mysteries featuring Margaret Rutherford, this Hercule Poirot vehicle modestly features Agatha Christie’s other famous sleuth in name only as the master exerciser of “the little grey cells” and savagely reduces him from hyper-observant detective to a low music hall version of Inspector Clouseau. Certainly if the intentions of the producers were to, for whatever reason, obscure those elements of the source novel which has elevated it to iconic status in the mystery field and, instead, present an entirely reconceived mystery plot played (almost) strictly for comedy, then it might have been prudent to sufficiently salvage the dignity of the central character by ensuring the nature of the parodistic variances be identifiably organic to the more idiosyncratic features inherent in the genre and, more specifically, in Christie’s Poirot-based canon.

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