Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie, Published 1969, Adapted into a movie "A Haunting in Venice" directed by Kenneth Branagh in 2023
Ah Halloween, it's probably my favorite holiday. I could wax poetic over how much I enjoy this holiday. i love the atmosphere, the colors, classic monsters, costumes, and just the general decorum. it's a pretty popular holiday, having roots in history and ceremony from over 2000 years ago. the history of Halloween is pretty interesting to read up on if you've never done so before.
Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie is... a novel. its a difficult book to recommend due to its subject matter and the construction of the story is not as well put together in my opinion of some of the other Poirot novels. i mostly want to talk about the film adaptation in this review, which is a bit more accessible and likely people's first introduction to the story at all.
A Haunting in Venice, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Kenneth Branagh is the third in his movie adaptation series of the Poirot novels. there are significant changes that are made to the plot of the book for the movie adaptation unlike the previous two adaptations in the series that are for the most part faithful adaptations of the print media. its for that reason i want to talk about the movie rather than the book, but i will go into detail about how they differ later on.
The content warnings for A Haunting in Venice are as follows:
the summary
in 1947, following the events of the previous film, Poirot is retired in Venice, but also quite depressed. people come to his door asking him to solve cases but he turns them away or refuses to hear them out.
the one person he accepts into his home is Ariadne Oliver, a mystery novelist and his friend. she invites him to a Halloween party and séance intending for him to prove that the medium is a fraud.
the party and séance is being hosted by Rowena Drake in a palazzo said to be haunted by the orphaned children that had died there. Rowena is asking the medium, Joyce Reynolds, to contact the spirit of her deceased daughter Alicia. Alicia committed suicide after her fiancé, Maxime Gerard broke off their engagement. the other guests of the séance are the housekeeper Olga Seminoff, the Drake family doctor Leslie Ferrier and his son Leopold, and Joyce's assistant Desdemona Holland. Maxine shows up right before the séance as well. the rest of the party's guests all leave before the seance.
during the séance, Poirot tries to reveal some of Joyce's tricks and even uncovers her hidden assistant and Desdemona's half brother, Nicholas, hiding in the chimmney. Joyce does seem to contact Alicia's spirit and speaks in her voice, stating that someone attending the seance murdered her.
Poirot privately confronts Joyce about the validity of her abilities and the results of the séance, but she refuses to yield on any of her tricks and gives him a mask and robe to wear and enjoy what remains of the Halloween party. she says they will never meet again.
Poirot dons the costume and while his back is turned, is nearly drowned in the apple bobbing bin as someone holds his head in. he can't recover to see his assailant and doesn't get much time to worry about that as Joyce is discovered to have fallen from an upper balcony and impaled on a statue. even if she was a fraud, she sure was right that she and Poirot would never see each other again.
the other guests have already since departed and the storm bearing down on the palazzo, Poirot forbids anyone from leaving as only the remaining guests could have killed Joyce and he intends to find out who it was.
during Poirot's investigation he keeps believing he sees the spirit of a young girl and hears her humming a tune. Leopold claims to have been hearing the same thing.
aahh scary ghost girl!
Poirot uncovers that Leslie is in love with Rowena but deeply traumatized by his time at war, Joyce's assistants were stealing money from her with the intent of traveling to America, and Maxime broke off the engagement because it did not seem like Rowena approved of him.
what else is uncovered from the situation is that Ariadne conspired with Poirot's bodyguard Vitale, who was a policeman on Alicia's case when she had died the year before, and Joyce by giving her details on the case and information needed to do the séance. Ariadne had hoped that Poirot's actions in debunking Joyce would help inspire her new mystery novel.
The group explore the basement after hearing a noise and find the bodies of the children that were locked in the palazzo all those years ago. Leslie almost kills Maxime during a panic attack and they lock him in the music room so he can calm down, with Poirot having the only key. Leslie is later found stabbed in the back and dead.
Poirot reveals that the true culprit behind it all was Rowena. She refused to let Alicia leave her and marry Maxime, so she ripped up her rooftop garden and planted flowers with toxic nectar that became more potent in honey form. Rowena begun poisoning Alicia with mad honey in order to care for her ill and hallucinating child. this honey is also what was giving Poirot his own hallucinations of the ghost girl during the course of the movie. Olga had unwittingly gave Alicia a fatal dose when making her tea with honey one night and Rowena staged Alicia's suicide for fear of it being found out what she had been doing to her daughter if a toxicology report was ever made known. Rowena started receiving blackmail threats and used the séance to draw in Joyce, whom she suspected might be the blackmailer. she also suspected Leslie, so when he was isolated she called the music room telephone and threatened Leopold's life if Leslie did not commit suicide.
Rowena attempts to escape via the roof and Poirot gives chase. Rowena and Poirot see the ghastly image of Alicia. it drags Rowena off the roof so she falls into the canal where she drowns under the torrential rain and waves.
the next day, Poirot forgives Ariadne for tricking him and also reveals that he knows that Leopold was Rowena's actual blackmailer. Leopold is a smart kid and he noticed the poisoning symptoms that Leslie was unable to and realized the circumstances mirrored and opera that Rowena had been famous for performing. Leopold will live with the Seminoffs and provide money to the Hollands so that they can start over in America.
Poirot returns home, people literally asleep waiting at his door, wanting him to take on their cases. despite it all, he is invigorated to solve mysteries again and invites them in so that they can tell him what troubles them.
inevitable comparisons to the book
so. after writing this summary i'm realizing how very different the book is to the movie. the book does not pose the events of the mystery as so grandiose as a séance, nor does it take place in Venice.
the murder victim is still Joyce Reynolds at a Halloween party, however she is a 13 year old girl. Ariadne Oliver was in attendance at that party and asks Poirot to help solve her murder. Joyce was drowned in the apple bobbing bucket, similar to how Poirot was almost murdered in the movie.
in fact, Leslie (who is a shady lawyer's clerk), Leopold (who is Joyce's brother), and Olga (who is Rowena's Aunt's au pair) are all found stabbed or murdered by some kind of assailant in the book. Desmond Holland is just the name of one of the teenagers that attended the party. none of the other character's names appear in the book.
the reason that book Joyce was murdered is that she claimed that she had witnessed a murder in order to impress those around her, but Joyce was known to lie, and had actually stolen the story of another girl named Miranda who did not attend the party. Rowena figured out that the murder that Joyce had "witnessed" was that of Olga, who had "disappeared" but Rowena and her lover had disposed of her body in a well after Rowena's aunt threatened to disown Rowena and leave all of her money to Olga. Rowena drowned Joyce after luring her to the library, then pretended to drop a vase of flowers in surprise to hide the water splashes on her dress. Rowena's lover killed Leslie to cover up their trail as they had him create a fake will to throw into question if the aunt's updated will where Olga was the only benefactor was forged. Leopold was murdered because he had figured it out and was trying to blackmail Rowena.
Miranda is almost murdered in the end as she was tricked by Rowena's lover for thinking she was special and had to die for the beauty of art of.... landscaping. her lover was a landscaper. and he was obsessed with making the perfect garden. and he was gonna steal all the money Rowena was going to inherit from her aunt in order to make it happen.
so it's all quite different, no? save for the names and some of the references to circumstances in the book, a lot of the content of the movie is all original.
there is the destruction of a garden and replanting in the name of murder in the movie, which could be tied to the motive of Rowena's lover but it's a minor connection i guess.
the book is... incredibly convoluted. looking at the wikipedia page there are 26 named characters with varying degrees of influence on the plot, but i really really cut down on the chaff of the story in that paragraph i have above that tries to explain why it all happened. it's messy and weird, and deals with a lot of child death that i'm not really into. i don't think there's any other Christie stories that are this heavy with the violence against children either.
if you want to see a more faithful adaptation of the book, the TV series with David Suchet as Poirot adapted the story and it was my first exposure to it, though i watched it so long ago that before reading the book all i had managed to remember about the story was that a kid died.
but as a movie, how is it?
i think it's pretty good actually. i'll be the first to admit i reallllly did not like Death on the Nile and i almost was going to write a review of that one after i had seen it in 2022 but it was hard to write it since it was so... i don't know how to describe it. uninspired? bad? produced during a worldwide pandemic and it shows?
the book Death on the Nile i think is a very fascinating story about the nature of love and money and influence, not one of my favorite Poirot stories, but certainly one that feels... stereotypically "grand" as to be major motion picture worthy, which is why i can only assume it was chosen as the second story to adapt. the movie also starts with trying to give Poirot a backstory as to why he has his mustache and by the end of the case it has left him so depressed the final shot of the film is of him with his mustache shaved off. oh by the way, if you didn't watch this one, Poirot has a facial scar that he got during the war and grew out his mustache in order to hide it. the mustache has a backstory now.
a screenshot of Poirot from the final scene of Death on the Nile. from Fancaps.net
but i think Branagh realized that Death on the Nile was probably a bad way to leave his Poirot movie series and came up with a supernatural mystery horror-ish story in order to return Poirot to form. and i think that worked! i was engaged with the story, the movie felt tense and spooky in the appropriate moments and untangling how each of the suspects are related to the situation and the previous crime of Alicia's death is interesting!
i liked Leopold's character a lot and i was somewhat unsure of how it would develop over the course of the movie, where this boy is basically the caretaker of his own father and has a wealth of knowledge beyond his years.
i'm a self admitted horror movie disliker and this movie never reaches a level of tension and suspense that becomes unbearable for me when watching that genre since its always being viewed through the lense of an analytical detective. there are some pulls from the horror genre in how shots are framed and what occurs but there's nothing so terribly horrific to prevent someone from watching it that isn't into horror media.
if i had to rank the Branagh movies, Death on the Nile would be at the bottom, but im almost tempted to put A Haunting in Venice higher than Murder on the Orient Express just for the originality and atmosphere that Haunting provides. also Michelle Yeoh is in this movie and she fucking owns so that also drives up the quality in my opinion.
it makes me feel hopeful that if Branagh tries to make another Poirot film that it actually could be quite good if he goes a similar route that he took with a Haunting in Venice. it doesn't look like he has another one on the way just yet (at the time of writing he has a movie called "The Last Disturbance of Madeline Hynde" in production), but like i said i'm hopeful for more good for this series, much like how Poirot felt at the end of this movie.
conclusion
i thought it'd be fun to pull up some of the covers of the book versions of Hallowe'en party as there's been a couple of really interesting ones over the years.
i do actually like the reprinted cover for the movie, the third one on the second row. it mixes the mask that Joyce arrives in and gives to Poirot with a skull in a neat effect.
the one on the upper right is really fucking weird though, the closest i can tell is that it was a 1972 edition of the book and whoever did that cover sure was only told that it was a mystery that happened around halloween and then could go hogwild with whatever else they wanted. it is a really nice illustration otherwise but really not indicative of the internal material. some of the ways others have played with the themes of apples and pumpkins are pretty cool.
the fun thing about older mystery novels are the pulpy covers that have been created for some printings of the books. i always try to look for a copy of Hound of the Baskervilles while im out second hand book shopping in case i find a copy with a really interesting cover. the copy i have is pretty cool, but we can go weirder, pulpier, sexier, totally-tonally-dissonanter, we can go huge-ass-pumpkin-and-naked-woman-with-a-sheet-draped-over-her crazy with a cover. i know there's one out there. that's my white whale: a fucking weird cover of Hound of the Baskervilles.