Eight Little Indians

I've heard that Hollywood are planning to remake this with Eddie Murphy, but I have a feeling that it was a joke. If it isn't, I wouldn't like to see the results: a gentle British comedy released in 1949 won't respond well to an American re-making in 2000.

Only, KH&C isn't all that gentle: it's about revenge and death. Or rather, about revenge and deaths. Eight of them, as the distant heir to an ancient aristocratic seat prunes his way thru the branches of the family tree to avenge his mother, who was disowned when she married an itinerant Italian singer. The distant heir is played by Dennis Price and the eight doomed relatives, a retired general, a womanizing lordling, a militant Suffragette, and a senile clergyman among them, by Alec Guinness.

Yes: forget Peter Sellars in Dr Strangelove or any other single-actor-with-multiple-roles movie you've ever seen: this is probably the original and is certainly the best, and Guinness is so good in the eight parts that it would be quite possible to miss spotting that he's playing two separate characters, let alone eight.

Combine all that with a dry, witty script, excellent sets and costumes, some good sight gags, and a score by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and you've got a flawed but highly enjoyable film that deserves to be much better known than it is. Keep an eye on TV listings if you can't find it on video, because it makes a fairly regular return to the small screen on one or another channel.