Ten complete strangers get together for a posh weekend at a remote castle located in the Swiss Alps. Someone starts bumping them all off one at a time. Blandly directed by George Pollock, with an overly talky and insipid script by Peter Yeldham and hack producer Harry Alan Towers, a plodding pace, a wildly out of place and inappropriate groovy jazz score by Malcom Lockyer, a crippling dearth of both tension and momentum, murder set pieces that for the most part are flatly staged, and an isolated snowy setting that fails to add any much-needed suspense or spooky atmosphere, this strictly middling affair barely makes the grade as a merely acceptable diversion. Fortunately, the able all-star cast do their best with the mediocre material, with especially praiseworthy contributions from Wilfrid Hyde-White as the shrewd, affable Judge Arthur Cannon, the delectable Shirley Eaton as sweet, fetching secretary Ann Clyde, Hugh O'Brian as the brave and dashing Hugh Lombard, Stanley Holloway as no-nonsense Detective William Henry Blore, Leo Genn as the ramrod General Sir John Mandrake, Dennis Price as the suave, boozy Dr. Edward Armstrong, and Daliah Lavi as classy, glamorous actress Ilona Bergen. Moreover, Ernest Steward's crisp black and white cinematography looks nice, Fabian as brash pop singer Mike Raven compensates for his poor acting by belting out a hearty rendition of the classic nursery rhyme prior to meeting a welcome immediate untimely end, the ravishing Eaton heats up the screen with her smoldering presence and strips down to black undies at one point (yum!), there are a few witty lines of dialogue sprinkled throughout, and the revelation of the killer's true identity is a genuine surprise. However, this movie overall is far too pedestrian and unmemorable to rate as anything more than a merely passable time-waster.
Review of Ten Little Indians
