Remakes of TV series are so popular it seems everyone is doing it. Books continue the stories of MURDER SHE WROTE and MONK, comic books keep BUFFY THE VAMPIRE and THE MIDDLEMAN alive, and movies (and the studios that make them) love dead TV series. One could make a long list of TV series that have made it to the big screen including GUNN (1967, based on PETER GUNN), A TEAM, POLICE SQUAD, X-FILES, STARSKY AND HUTCH, etc. So it is no surprise television occasionally turns to its own past.

   Not all remakes are a bad thing. Look at the past of COLUMBO. The character Columbo first appeared in an episode of the TV anthology series THE CHEVY MYSTERY SHOW in “Enough Rope” (NBC 7/31/60). The story for the episode was partly based on a short story “May I Come In” (published in ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY magazine under the title “Dear Corpus Delicti”) that did not have Columbo in it.

   In 1962 the TV episode was remade into a stage play “Prescription Murder” which was adapted into a NBC TV Movie in 1968 starring Peter Falk. In 1971 the character returned in a NBC TV Movie called “Ransom For a Dead Man.” COLUMBO then became one of the rotating series in NBC MYSTERY MOVIE from 1971 until 1978. ABC brought back the cancelled series in 1989 for a series of TV Movies, first as part of ABC MYSTERY MOVIE (1989-1990) series, then as randomly scheduled TV Movies that lasted until 2003.

   The resurrection of cancelled TV series is so common there is a book out covering the subject, TV FAST FORWARD: SEQUELS & REMAKES OF CANCELLED TV SERIES 1955-1992 (McFarland & Co. 1993) by Lee Goldberg (DIAGNOSIS MURDER). No doubt the book would double in size if it were brought up to date. To avoid a book long post here, I decided to be extra picky about what I include (feel free to ignore my rules in the comments). What I discovered was how much of TV’s best shows were adapted from other mediums.

   So it must be original for TV. No series based on characters from books. Bye Sherlock Holmes, The Saint, Nero Wolfe, Ellery Queen, Mike Hammer, Perry Mason, Dracula, THE UNTOUCHABLES, HOUSE OF CARDS, and even STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO (yes, the two main characters were based on books by Carolyn Weston). No films. Bye LA FEMME NIKITA, ROBOCOP, and MCCLOUD. No plays. Bye CASABLANCA. No radio. Bye DRAGNET and GUNSMOKE. No comics. Bye BATMAN, SUPERMAN, FLASH GORDON, HUMAN TARGET and THE TICK. Not even “pulps”. Bye SHEENA QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE.

   The remake must have aired on American TV. No unaired pilots.

   I will limit myself to the mystery/crime genre. But every genre has many TV remakes of its own including science fiction with STAR TREK, and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, westerns with MAVERICK, KUNG FU, and BONANZA, action with SEA HUNT and DUKES OF HAZZARD, romance with CUPID and LOVE BOAT, horror with DARK SHADOWS, KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER and THE ADDAMS FAMILY, children’s programs with SCOOBY DOO and BUGS BUNNY, comedies with GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, GIDGET, and ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, and dramas with DALLAS and THE FUGITIVE.

   Cancelled series getting remade as pilots is nothing new but perhaps the earliest to make it back on the air was TIGHTROPE (CBS 1959-60) with unsold pilot THE EXPENDABLES that aired on ABC 9/27/62.

   Starting in the 1970s the TV Movie became a popular format. The increase demand for content had each network looking everywhere for program ideas including its dead but not totally forgotten TV series.

   TV series to return as TV Movies included RETURN OF THE MOD SQUAD (ABC 1979), RETURN OF FRANK CANNON (CBS 1980), RETURN OF THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (CBS 1983), STILL CRAZY LIKE A FOX (CBS 1987), WILD WILD WEST REVISITED (CBS 1979), MORE WILD WILD WEST (CBS 1989), and I SPY RETURNS (NBC 1994).

   PETER GUNN returned to TV in a TV Movie (ABC, 1989) starring Peter Strauss. According to TV FAST FORWARD, the PETER GUNN TV Movie was a pilot that, along with MURPHY’S LAW (starring George Segal), would have been part of ABC MYSTERY MOVIE. But ABC went with Universal studios for COLUMBO and KOJAK remakes instead. MURPHY’S LAW (based on a book series TRACE that was a remake of a book series DIGGER, both written by Warren Murphy) was picked up as a weekly series but PETER GUNN was not.

   Others to rise from the dead in TV Movies included James Garner in THE ROCKFORD FILES (CBS 1994-99), Angela Lansbury in MURDER, SHE WROTE (CBS 1997, 2000 -2003). Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers in HART TO HART (NBC 1993-94; Family Channel 1996-97).

   POLICE STORY started as a weekly series on NBC (1973-77). In 1977 the series changed from 60-minute episodes to TV Movies that ended in 1978. In 1987-88 NBC brought POLICE STORY back for a series of TV Movies.

   During the late 1980’s the market for programs exploded with the addition of new networks Fox, UPN, WB, and cable networks such as USA. The number of TV series remakes (the return of at least one of the original cast) and reboots (old series with new cast) increased.

   Perhaps the strangest series remake was for ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. During the series first run (1958-65) it bounced between CBS and NBC with different titles, the one thing uniting the series was host Alfred Hitchcock. Producer Christopher Crowe wanted to do an anthology series but had recently failed with one, DARKROOM (ABC 1981-82). The networks were not interested until he mentioned ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS.

   NBC aired the NEW ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS first as a TV Movie in 1985. Based on the TV Movie’s success NBC made it a weekly series that aired from 1985 to 1986, then NBC moved it to its sister station cable network USA. The series featured Alfred Hitchcock as host which was unusual as Hitchcock had died in 1980 five years earlier. The series colorized Hitchcock’s original black and white introductions and used them with the new stories.

   Cancelled TV series that have made the comeback to weekly series include BURKE’S LAW (ABC 1963-66; CBS 1994 -95). An episode from the remake is currently available on YouTube.

   Others to return from cancellation as a new weekly series included THE FBI (ABC 1965-74) that was rebooted as TODAY’S FBI (ABC 1981-82), THE HITCHHIKER (HBO 1983-87) waited until 1989 when it aired on USA until 1991. And HAWAII FIVE-O (CBS 1968-80) has returned as HAWAII FIVE-0 (CBS 2010-present).

   CHARLIE’S ANGELS (ABC, 1976-81) enjoyed a successful theatrical series run after ABC cancelled the series before crashing in a terrible TV series remake (ABC 2011). MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (CBS 1966-73) got its TV remake series (ABC 1988-90) first before being rebooted into a successful movie series. There are episodes from the remake currently on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISDAXbzuRa8

   IRONSIDE (NBC 1967-75) returned in 1993 with the original cast in TV Movie RETURN OF IRONSIDE. NBC rebooted the series in 2013 with Blair Underwood as Ironside. This was not the first rebooted TV series that changed the race of a main character.

   THE NEW ADAM 12 (syndicated, 1990) still featured a police car patrolling the city, but the black and white now had two different cops inside, one white and the other black.

   KOJAK (CBS 73-78; CBS TVM 1985 and 1987; ABC (part of ABC MYSTERY MOVIES) 1989-90; USA 2005 – weekly series) Kojak, TV’s most famous Greek-American detective played by Telly Savalas (who died in 1994), would be recast with black actor Ving Rhames taking over the role of Kojak for the 2005 USA network series.

   As with IRONSIDE and KOJAK, there have been cancelled series that have enjoyed the afterlife as a TV movie and TV series.

   GET SMART (NBC 1965-69; CBS 1969-70) has been remade and rebooted in a variety of forms including a TV movie GET SMART AGAIN (ABC 1989) and a TV series sequel (FOX 1995).

   KNIGHT RIDER (NBC 1982-86) first returned on NBC in TV Movie KNIGHT RIDER 2000 (1991). Syndicated TV movie KNIGHT RIDER 2010 (1994) kept little but the title. Next was syndicated TV series TEAM KNIGHT RIDER (1997-98). NBC tried one more time and rebooted the original version with a TV Movie and TV series in 2008-09.

   While SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN was based on a book, the Bionic Woman Jaime Sommers (Lindsay Wagner) was a character created for the TV series in 1975 and spun off to her own TV series, BIONIC WOMAN (ABC, 1976-77; NBC 1977-78). She also appeared in the three TV Movie remakes of the SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN on NBC (1987-94). NBC rebooted the series again for a series in 2007 that had Michelle Ryan taking over the role of Jaime Sommers.

   HUNTER (NBC 1984-91) returned on NBC as TV Movies in 1995, 2002 and in 2003. In 2003 a weekly series was attempted but lasted only three hour-long episodes. YouTube currently has the 2003 episodes on line. Here is episode three.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2jT6CrM63Y

   The British and American have been exchanging TV series since the 1960s. Today PBS and BBC America make sure American’s see the British originals and British remakes of US series such as LAW AND ORDER UK (2009-present), while other networks are shopping all over the world for shows to Americanize.

   THE AVENGERS (United Kingdom 1961-69) aired on ABC (1966-69). The remake THE NEW AVENGERS aired in the UK from 1976-77 and aired on CBS in 1978-79. CBS wanted to do an American version. It was to be produced by Quinn Martin and created by Brian Clemens (THE AVENGERS). It was called ESCAPADE (that may have aired once on CBS in 1978). Here is a YouTube clip of the opening.

   British series that had American versions included CRACKER (1993-95) remade by ABC (1997-1999), BLACKPOOL (2004) became VIVA LAUGHLIN (CBS 2007), LIFE ON MARS (2006-07) with ABC’s version airing 2008-09, and ELEVENTH HOUR (2006) remade by CBS (2008). THE PRISONER (1967-68) was shown on CBS in 1968 and rebooted by AMC in 2009. LOW WINTER SUN (AMC 2013) was based on the British LOW WINTER SUN (2006).

   Remakes not only come from our past and the United Kingdom, but now from all over the world.

   Israel has inspired two American series. HOMELAND (SHOWTIME 2011-present) is based on PRISONER OF WAR (aka HATUFIM) (2009- present). HOSTAGES (CBS 2013-present) is airing at almost the same time as Israeli version of HOSTAGES (BNEI ARABA).

   Other countries supplying programs for American remakes are Denmark with FORBRYDELSEN (2007-12) rebooted as THE KILLING by AMC (2011-2013). THE BRIDGE (F/X 2013-present) is based on a Denmark-Sweden coproduction (Danish: BROEN; Swedish: BRON – 2011-present). While Netherlands PENOZA (2010-12) inspired RED WIDOW (ABC 2012). And coming soon to FOX is RAKE, based on the Australian series (2010-present).

   With the increasing number of places and ways the audience can find programs, places such as Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube where you don’t even need a TV set to watch, new programs need to find some way to stand out in the crowd. The remake is a quick easy way to attract attention, but just the title will not make any series successful. The series still has to be good enough to make viewers want to watch it next week.

         SOURCES:

TV FAST FORWARD by Lee Goldberg

IMDb

TV Tango

Wikipedia

PETER RABE – My Lovely Executioner. Gold Medal #967, paperback original; 1st printing, February 1960. Five Star, hardcover, 1999. Stark House Press (with Agreement to Kill), trade paperback, 2006.

   It’s my opinion — and so far’s I know, nobody else’s — that Peter Rabe should have a name in the mystery field comparable to some of those writing in the heyday of Black Mask magazine. No, not a top-notcher like Hammett or Chandler, but more along the lines of a Raoul Whitfield, say.

   Like the one at hand, much of Rabe’s work seems to have been devoted to inside glimpses into life in the underworld. Tough, sexy, hard-boiled — all are adjectives that seem to apply. To a certain extent, it occasionally takes some work to read in between the lines Rabe wrote, as if you really had to think like a crook to make the pieces of the puzzle fit together the way they should.

   This one opens with a guy named Gallivan as he’s being busted out of prison. Non-voluntarily, it should be added. He has only three weeks to go before his time is up. Now he’s on the run, aided by the prison-mate who helped spring him, along with a girl named Jessie whom the other guy seems to know.

   Gallivan’s problem is threefold: what’s their motive; how can he escape them; and should he escape them? Add another: can he escape them?

   Not a major story, by any means. There are no big scenes that stand out in your memory afterwards, ones you’d automatically think of when you think of this book. There are a lot of little ones, though, each one individually hardly worth a mention, but each one etched in its way in a small semblance of perfection.

Rating:   B

E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM – The Great Impersonation. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1920. Little Brown, US, hardcover, 1920. Reprinted many times since, including Pocket Book #224, paperback, 1943. Currently in print in various POD editions.

   Sir Everard Dominey, in his twenty-sixth year, leaves England, and after ten years of wandering, turns up in 1913 in German East Africa, where Baron Leopold Von Ragastein, a military commandant, rescues him from death in the bush.

   Dominey and Von Ragastein discover that they knew each other at Oxford, and that the amazing likeness which existed between them in undergraduate days still persists. Then Von Ragastein, who has been ordered to London by the Wilhelmstrasse, determines to make way with the Englishman, assume his identity and enter upon his espionage as Sir Everard Dominey.

   There is a love story of charm and appeal and a mystery that the reader is hardly likely to solve until the last page.

Bio-Bibliographic Note:   For as much as you might like to know about E. Phillips Oppenheim, check out this website dedicated to him. Quoting:

    “…Oppenheim published over 150 books and countless magazine stories between 1884 and 1946. While most often identified as a mystery writer, Oppenheim’s novels range from spy thrillers to romance. All of them have, however, an undertone of intrigue. Several of his books were published under the pseudonym, Anthony Partridge.”

DAN J. MARLOWE – One Endless Hour. Gold Medal R2050, paperback original, 1969. Reprints: Gold Medal T2662, paperback, 1972. Stark House Press (with The Name of the Game Is Death), trade paperback, 2013.

   I like to spend October watching old monster movies and reading spooky books. Things like Burn Witch Burn and Firebug, which I did. But I found nothing all last month quite so chilling as One Endless Hour, by Dan J. Marlowe.

   For awhile therein the 1960s Marlowe bid fair to take up the legacy of Jim Thompson with books like The Name of the Game Is Death and The Vengeance Man, but he chose to settle in the comfortable groove of the continuing (and no doubt more profitable) Earl Drake series, and who can blame him really?

   One Endless Hour is the “bridge” book between the old stuff and the new, and as such it has an attractively pointless momentum I find immensely appealing — that and the over-the-top violence and crude sex of its time.

   The first chapter of Hour is actually the last chapter (slightly re-written) of The Name of the Game Is Death: the bank robber hero finding his partner murdered, killing the woman who betrayed him (“Tell it in Hell, bitch, if you can get anyone to listen,”) and castrating the local lawman behind it all. Then we get a furious car chase and running gun battle that climaxes with our hero (now Earl Drake) getting his hands and face burnt off and ending up in the state prison hospital being systematically tortured — and plotting his escape.

   And that’s just the first chapter.

   There follows a uniquely creepy tale of plastic surgery, bribed guards, jail-break, double-cross, more murders and two bank robberies—one of which goes sour in spectacularly kinky fashion, all told in about a hundred and sixty fast-turning pages. An unforgettably hard-boiled story and perfect for the Halloween season.

   Dan J. Marlowe may have gone on to better selling books, but those of us who cherish the truly subversive in fiction will remember him more fondly for books like this.

ROBERT RICHARDSON – The Book of the Dead. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1989. First published in the UK by Gollancz, hardcover, 1989.

   The third of Robert Richardson’s novels about playwright and occasional sleuth Auguste Maltravers is The Book of the Dead. Here Maltravers is guesting in the countryside when a sixty-ish gentleman, widely respected and married to a habitually unfaithful young wife, is murdered.

   The man had in his safe an unusual treasure — an authentic and unpublished Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle. This Sherlockian tale — [itself] not to me very impressive — is fully recounted within Richardson’s narrative, and provides Maltravers with some dangerous clues to whodunit.

   Pleasant and devious story: the author had me confidently looking at the wrong person.

       The Augustus Maltravers series —

The Latimer Mercy, 1985.
Bellringer Street, 1988.
The Book of the Dead, 1989.
The Dying of the Light, 1990.
Sleeping in the Blood, 1991. US title: Murder in Waiting.
The Lazarus Tree, 1992.

LESLIE FORD — The Clue of the Judas Tree. Dell #61, mapback edition, no date [1944]. First published by Farrar & Rinehart, hardcover, 1933. Also reprinted several times by Popular Library in the 1950s and 60s.

    In several ways it’s hard to believe this book was written almost fifty years ago. The writing is remarkably fresh and relevant, even if the characters and the setting are out of the pages of history, if not history books, per se.

    For example, the Crash of Wall Street in 1929 is still very much on everyone’s mind when it comes to matters financial, and the person who is the immediate suspect when financier Duncan Trent is found murdered is a shell-shock victim of World War I.

    “Psychology” is an important ingredient in this early cross between a gothicky novel overwhelmed with apprehension and a strictly-playing-it-by-the-clues detective story, and so is romance.

    The ending is unusually cluttered, but then perhaps it had to be to explain away all that had happened. Dashiell Hammett, one suspects, would not have had patience with a story like this, nor with the sort of fantasy world it takes place in, but it’s a branch of the detective novel that certainly seemed to blossom about the same time as The Maltese Falcon. This book is not still in print, but it could be — and its descendants, either direct or indirect, certainly are.

Rating:   B minus

[UPDATE] 11-06-13.   I do not remember reading this book at all. I have only this review to remind me that at one time I did. I see that I did not mention the detective of record, one Lt. Joe Kelly, who also appeared in Murder in Maryland (Farrar, 1932). Ford’s most frequently used series characters, Grace Latham and Colonel John Primrose, did not begin their fictional careers until 1937.

LYNN BROCK – The Kink. Harper and Brothers, US, hardcover, 1927. First published in the UK by Collins, hardcover, 1927, as Colonel Gore’s Third Case.

   Lt.-Col. Wyckham Gore, D.S.O., senior partner of Gore & Talley, Confidential Agents, and his firm have failed to find a missing husband and a missing brother for two clients. One of the missing men turns up In a nursing home, having had, so he says, an accident necessitating the amputation of an arm; he is also missing a significant part of one ear and almost all of his nerve.

   When the Hon. Mrs. Ronayne, whose name had appeared in connection with both mysterious disappearances, calls upon Gore to begin a constant surveillance of her husband, a famous Irish poet who may be involved with the IRA, but does not say why she wants his movements watched, Gore’s interest is piqued.

   He is even more intrigued when her father, Lord Haviland, former Prime Minister, asks him to investigate the theft of what would seem to be some fairly insignificant items from his study, with the peer’s daughter and the poet both suspects.

   As Gore begins his investigation, he meets other members of the family and discovers that they all are more than a bit peculiar, as are some of the servants. Pornographic movies and orgies would seem to be the worst of it, but then someone is brutally murdered.

   Gore is a moderately interesting character, with a dry wit that should have been more in evidence, and a slightly more than adequate investigator. He gets things straightened out, at the risk of his life, in a rather complex but not particularly engrossing case.

    The Colonel Wyckham Gore series —

The Deductions of Colonel Gore (n.) Collins 1924; Harper, US, 1925.
Colonel Gore’s Second Case (n.) Collins 1925; Harper, US, 1926.
Colonel Gore’s Third Case (n.) Collins 1927; reprinted in the US as The Kink, Harper, 1927.
The Slip-Carriage Mystery (n.) Collins 1928; Harper, US, 1928.
The Mendip Mystery (n.) Collins 1929; reprinted in the US as Murder at the Inn, Harper, 1929.
Q.E.D. (n.) Collins 1930; reprinted in the US as Murder on the Bridge, Harper, 1930.
The Stoat (n.) Collins 1940 [no US edition]

    Under his Lynn Brock pen name, Alister McAllister (1877-1943) also wrote three books about Sgt. Venn, none of which have been published in the US, and two stand-alone mysteries. He also wrote two crime novels as by Anthony Wharton.

BERNARD CAPES – The Skeleton Key. Collins, UK, hardcover, 1919. US title: The Mystery of the Skeleton Key. Doran, hardcover, 1918. Also available in several current POD editions, and can be read online at archive.org.

   If Hugh had returned from hunting by another path, or if he had left his gun behind him, or if one could have told just when the shot was heard, perhaps the murder of beautiful Annie Evans might have been cleared up without so much effort on the part of the famous Sergeant Ridgeway from Scotland Yard, or so much mutual suspicion on the part of the various guests assembled at the Hall.

   Baron Le Sage of doubtful fame might have gone on playing chess, and pretty Audrey’s love affairs might not have become so tangled. But it’s just as well as it is, perhaps, for the result of all these complications is a thoroughly exciting detective story.

Biographic Note: From Capes’ Wikipedia page:

    “Capes was a prolific Victorian author, publishing more than forty volumes – romances, mysteries, poetry, history – together with many articles for the magazines of the day. His early writing career was as a journalist, later becoming editor of a paper called The Theatre, which was well known in late nineteenth century London. Other magazines for which Capes wrote included Blackwood’s, Butterfly, Cassell’s, Cornhill Magazine, Hutton’s Magazine, Illustrated London News, Lippincott’s, Macmillan’s Magazine, Literature, New Witness, Pall Mall Magazine, Pearson’s Magazine, The Idler, The New Weekly, and The Queen.”

CLEMENTS RIPLEY – Black Moon. Harcourt Brace & Co, hardcover, 1933.

BLACK MOON. Columbia, 1934. Jack Holt, Fay Wray, Dorothy Burgess, Cora Sue Collins, Arnold Korff, Clarence Muse. Based on the novel by Clements Ripley. Director: Roy William Neill.

   Clements Ripley’s Black Moon amounts to very little really, but it has its moments. Steven Lane is one of those wealthy, athletic, handsome and single young men who crop up regularly in adventure stories of that day, and as this one opens he’s on his way to an island somewhere south of Haiti to marry Amalia Perez, your typical fiery Latin beauty, who mysteriously returned to the tiny isle of her birth just as they were getting serious about each other back in New York.

   Lane is barely past the first page when he gets a bit of foreshadowing from a cagey servant — a black man named “Lunch” whose depiction is regrettably condescending — and it’s not much later that he encounters Amalia’s uncle, Dr. Perez, who owns the island (and the people on it, he presumes) and looks over his niece’s interests with a solicitude bordering on the pathological.

   Amalia herself appears not much later, but she seems so remote and disinterested that Lane wonders how serious they were about each other to begin with. Fortunately, there’s a perky level-headed young American girl around on the island and the veteran reader of this sort of thing can see their attraction coming several chapters before they do.

   The plot develops apace, with unrest among the natives, sinister drums, mysterious disappearances and even more mysterious antics from the sultry Amalia, who turns out to be a High Priestess of the local Voodoo cult, bent on human sacrifice.

   Well we’ve all dated girls like that from time to time, but oddly enough it is not Amalia who emerges as the villain of the piece but her uncle, the good doctor whose fine manners mask a control freak on the order of Count Zaroff, gradually spinning out of bounds as he countenances murder, cover-up and even cold-blooded savagery in the name of tradition and family pride—all with the suave graciousness one expects from baddies in pulp fiction.

   And even more surprising, the racially stereotyped Lunch starts taking on more and more of the heroics, performing handy bits of business like chewing through ropes and even a bit of convenient killing that our nominal hero is just too decent a chap to commit. Before we get to the end, Ripley has treated us to a fine panoply of thrills, including capture by natives, murder on the garden path, black magic rites and a running gun battle across the island by hero and villain with the natives in hot pursuit of them both. Possibly not the most intelligent book you could pick, but undeniably lively.

   Black Moon had the good fortune to be filmed by Roy William Neil at Columbia in 1934, and it’s really a crackerjack little film, handled by Neill – he of the Universal / Rathbone / Holmes movies — with his usual flair for atmosphere and pace. Dorothy Burgess plays the mysterious Latina, but as the film opens she’s already married to Lane, who has become a solid businessman, played by square-jawed and middle-aged Jack Holt.

   But Burgess is yearning to return to the Caribbean island of her birth, and Holt lets her take their daughter and his secretary (Faye Wray) down there while he wraps up some business stateside, and in his absence things in the tropics go quickly hellward as Dorothy recalls her upbringing and realizes she was raised to be the priestess of a local voodoo cult – a destiny she will embrace even if it becomes the spark of a bloody religious uprising.

   This has it all: steamy tropical suspense, bursts of action, and those incessant drums pounding-in-my-head-night-and-day-Oh-why-won’t-they-stop? Neill, who brought elegance to predestined piffle like Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, directs with real feeling for the lurid essence of the material, and the result is a splendidly watchable little film I can highly recommend.

   And though there’s no way to segue smoothly into this, I should add that Clarence Muse, one of the few minority performers of his day to consistently invest his roles with intelligence and dignity, brings real depth and feeling to the role of “Lunch” lifting the character out of the rut most black-servants-in-the-movies found themselves stuck in.

   Previously on Mystery*File, Ray O’Leary did a fine review of John Curran’s Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks, and you’re urged to read it.

   In his book, Curran includes two previously unpublished short stories featuring Hercule Poirot and speculates about when and why these tales were never published. In his review, O’Leary suggests equally valid speculations.

       (1) “The Capture of Cerberus”

   Readers might like to compare this version dating from 1939 with the one that finally saw print in 1947. As Curran notes, this story has a “complicated history.”

   In Geneva, Poirot happens to encounter an old nemesis-turned-friend, Countess Vera Rossakoff. Predictably, there is a male admirer trailing in her wake, Herr Doktor Keiserbach; but it would seem that Keiserbach has been using the countess as a means of meeting the little Belgian.

   Keiserbach later tells Poirot his true identity, and entreats the detective to help clear his murdered son’s name for having assassinated a popular but controversial European politician, a double for Adolf Hitler.

   In true Christie fashion, doubles figure prominently in the plot, with Poirot contriving an intricate plan to find a dead man and convince him to come back to life, while at the same time vindicating Keiserbach’s son.

   Last time we checked, you could read a portion of “Cerberus” online here. Presumably Christie’s revised version, which differs radically from the original, has somehow recently been adapted for the television series, Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

       (2) “The Incident of the Dog’s Ball”

   Based on surer evidence than is available for “Cerberus,” Curran surmises that this story “was written in 1933 and never offered for publication but, instead, transformed, in 1935/36, into the novel Dumb Witness.” With the transformation, Christie changed both the murderer and the solution.

   Captain Hastings narrates the story. When Poirot receives an almost incoherent letter from an elderly woman, his little grey cells are set aquiver. It being hot and sultry in London, a dubious Hastings nevertheless welcomes the chance to quit the city for the more tolerable hinterlands when Poirot suggests they find out more about this woman.

   Not long after arriving in Little Hemel, Poirot is crestfallen to learn of the old lady’s death, and he finds it inexplicable that she should will her estate, not to her closest relatives, but to a paid companion who is, let’s be honest, a little flaky.

   The little grey cells inform the Belgian sleuth that all is not as it appears to be in this affair, and a series of seemingly unrelated clues — including a toy ball — lead him to conclude the elderly woman was murdered.

   Bob, the titular canine, comes by implication to be a murder suspect himself; and the fact that the village doctor can’t smell most odors will help the real murderer escape suspicion — but only for a while, because the indefatigable Hercule Poirot is on the case.

   Christie’s final version of this story was filmed for TV as “Dumb Witness” in 1996.