Happy Agatha Christie Month!
All month long, we're celebrating the Queen of Crime as she and her works appeared on screen, with a grand finale of five Murder on the Orient Expresses the first full week of November. Today, and all this week, we're looking at the main source of her bread and butter, the little Belgian himself, Hercule Poirot.
The fussy little man with the egg-shaped head, effete manner, and impressive mustache made his debut in Christie's first detective novel, 1920's The Mysterious Affair at Styles. He would eventually star in over 40 novels and short story collections, as well as an original play, Black Coffee, over a period of 54 years.
Yet as popular as he was and is, he's had surprisingly little representation on screen. To date, only eight films featuring Poirot have been released. The first three, released between 1931 and 1934, were produced in England and starred the tall, handsome, cleanshaven Austin Trevor, and have since been considered lost. It would be another 30 years before someone else would take on the mantle...and the results were very unexpected....
Read on, after the jump.
Read on, after the jump.
