John Gielgud

In a retelling of the timeless love triangle, the lives of perfect knight Lancelot, beautiful Lady Guinevere, and mighty King Arthur all converge in the golden city of Camelot.

When a former prison wardress who dominates the lives of her three adult stepchildren and her daughter is found dead at an archaeological dig near the Dead Sea, there are a great many suspects. Emily Boynton (Piper Laurie), stepmother to the three Boynton children, and mother to Ginevra (Amber Bezer), blackmails the family lawyer, Jefferson Cope (David Soul), into destroying the second will of her late husband, which would have freed the children from her dominating influence. She takes herself and the children on vacation to Europe and the Holy Land. In Jerusalem, Hercule Poirot (Sir Peter Ustinov) meets up with a woman friend, Dr. Sarah King (Jenny Seagrove), who falls in love with Raymond Boynton (John Terleskey) to Emily's disapproval. Lady Westholme (Lauren Bacall), her secretary, and Cope are following them too. The children learn about the second will, and Emily succeeds in rubbing the rest the wrong way, causing much hatred toward her. At a dig, everybody wonders about the camp, and Emily is found dead, poisoned. Poirot investigates. —Lee Horton <Leeh@tcp.co.uk> When Emily Boynton (Piper Laurie) is found dead at an archaeological dig near the Dead Sea, there are a great many suspects. Boynton is a harridan, a former prison wardress who dominates the lives of her three adult stepchildren and her daughter. She is loud and rude, much to the dislike of Lady Westholme (Lauren Bacall), a transplanted American Anglophile, and member of the British government, and Miss Quinton (Hayley Mills), the archaeologist in charge of the dig. Also present is Jefferson Cope (David Soul), the family attorney who she blackmailed into destroying her late husband's most recent will, thereby ensuring she would inherit everything. By the time of her death, Hercule Poirot (Sir Peter Ustinov) has been travelling with this group for several days, and already knows a good deal about them. He is more than happy to accept a request from his friend, Colonel Carbury (Sir John Gielgud), to assist the authorities in their investigation. —garykmcd 1938. A disparate group of travellers become acquainted during a Mediterranean cruise to the Holy Land and during what ends up being their extended stay there. They include: controlling American-born Lady Westholme (Lauren Bacall), a British Member of Parliament on an unofficial inspection of Palestine; Miss Quinton (Hayley Mills), Lady Westholme's secretary and a budding archaeologist; Dr. Sarah King (Jenny Seagrove), a newly minted physician also from Britain; and the American Boynton family and their lawyer, Jefferson Cope (David Soul). The Boynton family matriarch, Emily Boynton (Piper Laurie), is recently widowed and blackmailed Cope into executing an earlier will that left all of her husband's substantial estate to her, rather than the last will he wrote which divided the estate equally between his four adult children, only the youngest Ginevra (Amber Bezer) being Emily's biological daughter. The offspring are all aware that there is another will that left the estate to them but cannot prove it, leaving them under Emily's strict and self-serving control. Oldest offspring Lennox Boyton's (Nicholas Guest's) wife, Nadine Boynton (Carrie Fisher), is secretly or not so secretly having an affair with Cope. And second oldest son, Raymond Boynton (John Terlesky), is immediately attracted to Dr. King, his pursuit of her which may not sit well with his stepmother. The stay of this collective in Jerusalem is extended due to one of them being murdered there, the murder which was staged to look like an accidental death. Beyond Colonel Carbury (Sir John Gielgud), who is stationed in Palestine for the British government, another of the travellers on vacation is asked to lead the investigation, namely famed Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot (Sir Peter Ustinov). In the course of the investigation, Poirot finds that most of the others within this collective would have had the opportunity and motive to commit the murder, he having to dig a little deeper below the surface and undercover the context to some of the deceased's comments to discover the identity of the murderer. —Huggo Long Island, 1937. Emily Boynton has, under dubious circumstances, just inherited her late husband's vast fortune, much to the dismay and suspicion of her child and step-children. To ease the tension she takes them on a holiday to Europe and the Holy Land. In Trieste they meet the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and end up on the same ship as him, heading for the Holy Land. Ms Boynton rules the family with an iron fist and it is clear that she is not like by any of her children, step-children or children-in-law, all of whom stand to inherit vast amounts upon her death. Poirot suspects that the murder of Ms Boynton is imminent. —grantss

A lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, returns to British India after finishing his studies from South Africa. He initiates a nationwide movement of non-violent resistance against the British rule.

Egyptologist Erica Baron finds more than she bargained for during her long-planned trip to The Land of the Pharoahs: murder, theft, betrayal, love, and a mummy's curse. Egyptologist Erica Baron (Lesley-Anne Down) is researching for a paper on Mernephtah, chief architect to Pharaoh Seti I. She meets with unscrupulous art dealer Abdu-Hamdi (John Gielgud) and witnesses him being threatened by black-market dealer Stephanos Markoulis (John Rhys-Davies). Abdu-Hamdi shows Erica a statue of Seti I that may prove there is a secret burial chamber filled with treasures within Seti's tomb. Erica witnesses Abdu-Hamdi being murdered by unidentified men and is rescued by French journalist Yvon Mageot (Maurice Ronet). He is interested in Erica's research, but his motives remain unclear. Erica then meets Dr. Akmed Khazzan (Frank Langella), who is head of the antiquities division for the government, and is also interested to know what Erica has learned about a secret chamber. He provides her a bodyguard who is promptly murdered, possibly by the same people who murdered Abdu-Hamdi. Despite continued threats from Markoulis and continued hindrance from Mageot, Erica is determined to learn all she can, no matter the risk. She also finds herself falling for Khazzan, which leads her further into ancient mysteries and intrigue.

A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man who is mistreated while scraping a living as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous facade, there is revealed a person of intelligence and sensitivity.

The film begins with wild African elephants killing Merrick's mother to death. After Merrick's mother was dead, we see the smoke rising upward, with a baby wailing in the background, resembling John Merrick being born. In 19th-century Victorian England, Dr. Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) wanders through an urban carnival in search of freak shows. He happens on a hideously deformed creature called The Elephant Man (John Hurt), and pays the owner Mr. Bytes (Freddie Jones) to examine it. Treves purpose is to present a paper to the Pathological Society and enhance his medical reputation. The Elephant Man returns from the seminar to Bytes and is beaten severely for wondering off. The man's injuries, as well as an attack from bronchitis, leads Treves to admit him to the hospital. In an attempt to convince the authorities to allow the man to stay, Treves endeavors to communicate with the person. During a meeting, Treves discovers that the man can talk and is educated. The Elephant Man's name is John Merrick and he reveals that he has had this strange disease since he was 14 which benign tumors grow all over his body, face and hands, in which he must sleep sitting up or he will die from suffocation. Merrick is given a room to live in and gradually becomes accepted by most members of the hospital staff. But one hospital night porter (Michael Elphick) sees a money spinner and each evening gathers a drunken crowd of people who will pay any price to see the freak. Treves attempts to introduce Merrick to London society and brings him over to meet with his wife (Hannah Gordon), who hides her shock at Merricks appearance. Soon the local newspapers run articles on Merrick. One is read by actress Mrs. Kendal (Ann Bancroft) who visits Merrick, tells him about her life in the theater and gives him a copy of Shakespeares plays. However the night porter is still in business in displaying Merrick. One evening, Bytes joins the throng and after a particularly humiliating brawl, kidnaps Merrick and takes him to France. Severely neglected and very ill, Merrick is once more put on display as the Elephant Man for the local crowds. Bytes' son (Adam S. Gottbetter) tells his father that he can take no more of seeing him humiliate a human being, but Bytes tells his son to mind his own business. That night, Bytes' son, with the help of other carnival freaks, releases Merrick and assists his escape back to England. In Liverpool Street Station, three boys harass him. Merrick flees and accidentally knocks down a girl, prompting an angry mob to chase him. Defenseless, he cries out, "I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!" and faints. Reunited with Treves, it appears that Merrick does not have long to live. Merrick visits the theater with Treves and his wife where Mrs. Kendal has her performance dedicated to him. Treves prompts Merrick to show his face to the crowd, which gives him a standing ovation. After the theater scene and before the hospital scene, we see the peacocks sitting outside the hospital. Back at the hospital, Merrick thanks Treves for a splendid evening and afterwards discards all pillows from his bed, determined to lie down like everyone else. Merrick lies down and sleeps one final time before quietly passing away, where his late mother welcomes him to the bright glory of Heaven.

The murder Having sorted a matter out in the Middle East, detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) is returning to England aboard the Orient Express. During the journey, Poirot encounters his friend Bianchi (Martin Balsam), a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, which owns the line. The train is unusually crowded for the time of year: every first-class berth has been booked. Shortly after the train's departure from Istanbul, a wealthy American businessman, Ratchett (Richard Widmark), tries to secure Poirot's services for $15,000 since he has received many death threats, but Poirot finds the case of little interest and turns it down. That night the train is caught in heavy snows in the Balkans. The next morning Ratchett is found stabbed to death in his cabin. Poirot and Bianchi work together to solve the case. They enlist the help of Dr. Constantine (George Coulouris), a Greek medical doctor who was travelling in another coach with Bianchi as the only other passenger and thus not a suspect. Pierre Michel (Jean-Pierre Cassel), the middle-aged French conductor of the car, also assists the investigation, as well as being a suspect. Poirot soon discovers that Ratchett was not who he claimed to be. The victim's secret past indicates a clear motive for murder, even justification, but who was the killer? Clues Dr. Constantine's examination of the body reveals that Ratchett was stabbed 12 times. Some wounds were slight, but at least three of them could have resulted in death. The stopped watch in the victim's pocket, as well as Poirot's reconstructed timeline of passenger activities the night before, indicate that Ratchett was murdered at about 1:15 a.m. The train had stopped, surrounded by fresh snow, before that time. There are no tracks in the snow and the doors to the other cars were locked, so the murderer is almost certainly still among the passengers in the coach in which Ratchett was killed. Most importantly, Poirot realizes that Ratchett was in fact a gangster called Cassetti. Five years previously, Cassetti and a henchman kidnapped and murdered Daisy Armstrong, the baby daughter of a wealthy British Army Colonel who had settled in America with his American-born wife. The body was found after the ransom had been paid. Overcome with grief, the pregnant Mrs. Armstrong went into labor early and died while giving birth to a stillborn baby. A maidservant named Paulette who was wrongly suspected of complicity in the kidnapping committed suicide. Colonel Armstrong, consumed by these tragedies, later killed himself as well. Cassetti's accomplice was arrested and executed, but Cassetti himself fled the country with the ransom, as he was only revealed to be the leader on the eve of the execution. Having established these facts, Poirot, Dr. Constantine and Bianchi summon the other passengers one by one and proceed to interrogate them. (The fictitious Armstrong case was inspired by the real-life kidnapping of aviator Charles Lindbergh's child.) Suspects The thirteen suspects are: Hector McQueen (Anthony Perkins), a tall, young American man, the victim's secretary and translator; Edward Beddoes (Sir John Gielgud), the victim's British valet; Mary Debenham (Vanessa Redgrave), a young British woman, returning home to England after working as a teacher in Baghdad; Colonel Arbuthnott (Sean Connery), a British officer in the British Indian Army returning to England on leave; Princess Natalia Dragomiroff (Wendy Hiller), an elderly Russian royal; Hildegarde Schmidt (Rachel Roberts), a middle-aged German woman, the Princess' personal maid; Count Rudolf Andrenyi (Michael York), an aristocratic Hungarian diplomat; Countess Elena Andrenyi (Jacqueline Bisset), née Grünwald, his beautiful young wife; Greta Ohlsson (Ingrid Bergman), a middle-aged Swedish missionary returning to Europe on a fund-raising trip for her mission in Africa; Mrs. Harriet Belinda Hubbard (Lauren Bacall), an older, fussy, very talkative American pluri-widowed socialite; Antonio (Gino) Foscarelli (Denis Quilley), an exuberant Italian American car salesman from Chicago; Cyrus B. "Dick" Hardman (Colin Blakely), a Pinkerton's detective masquerading as a talent agent; Pierre-Paul Michel (Jean-Pierre Cassel), the French conductor of the sleeping car. Motive Poirot soon comes to realise that all the suspects were connected to the Armstrong family and had reason to seek revenge for the tragedies that followed the kidnapping. Some openly admit their connections to the Armstrongs, while other ties must be uncovered by Poirot. McQueen was the son of the District Attorney who prosecuted the case and was very fond of Mrs. Armstrong; Miss Debenham was Mrs Armstrong's secretary; Beddoes was Colonel Armstrong's army batman and the family butler; Col. Arbuthnott was an army friend of Col. Armstrong; Princess Dragomiroff was Sonia Armstrong's godmother; Miss Schmidt was the Armstrongs' cook; Miss Ohlsson was Daisy's nursemaid; Foscarelli was the Armstrong's chauffeur; Hardman was, at the time, a policeman who was in love with Paulette; Michel was Paulette's father; Countess Andrenyi was Mrs Armstrong's sister; Mrs Hubbard was Mrs Armstrong's mother; Count Andrenyi was Mrs Armstrong's brother in law. Ratchett was sedated by Beddoes and McQueen. Each of the passengers then stabbed him in turn. Poirot presents this explanation for the murder to the assembled passengers, describing it as the "complex" solution to the crime. Yet he also offers another explanation, a "simple" one. In the course of the inquiry evidence has been found of an intruder on the train, who may have murdered Ratchett and then escaped evidence planted by the suspects. Poirot suggests that Ratchett/Cassetti may have been involved with the Mafia and murdered as the result of a feud. He leaves it to Bianchi, director of the line, to decide which explanation to present to the local police. Bianchi decides that this "simple" solution will be enough for the local police and that Ratchett deserved everything he got. A cover-up is therefore instigated. Poirot is satisfied that justice has been done, though he does admit to a struggle with his conscience.

In 1815, a soldier becomes the Governor of St. Helena, and jailer of Napoleon.

In 1854, during the Crimean War, poor planning leads to the British Light Brigade openly charging a Russian artillery position with tragic consequences. A chronicle of events that led to the British involvement in the Crimean War against Russia and which led to the siege of Sevastopol and the fierce Battle of Balaclava on October 25, 1854 which climaxed with the heroic, but near-disastrous cavalry charge made by the British Light Brigade against a Russian artillery battery in a small valley which resulted in the near-destruction of the brigade due to error of judgment and rash planning on part by the inept British commanders.

In 1872, an Englishman wagers that he can circle the globe in 80 days and embarks with his valet on a journey full of adventure, romance, unending obstacles and daring escapes.

The growing ambition of Julius Caesar is a source of major concern to his close friend Brutus. Cassius persuades him to participate in his plot to assassinate Caesar but they have both sorely underestimated Mark Antony. Brutus, Cassius, and other high-ranking Romans murder Caesar, because they believe his ambition will lead to tyranny. The people of Rome are on their side until Antony, Caesar's right-hand man, makes a moving speech. The conspirators are driven from Rome, and two armies are formed: one side following the conspirators; the other, Antony. Antony has the superior force, and surrounds Brutus and Cassius, but they kill themselves to avoid capture. —John Oswalt <jao@jao.com> Brutus is convinced by a scheming band of Roman senators, led by Caius Cassius, that his dear friend Julius Caesar intends to dissolve the republic and install himself as monarch, and he joins a conspiracy to assassinate him. Brutus stirringly defends his actions, but when Mark Antony responds with a speech that plays upon the crowd's love for their fallen leader, a battle between the two factions is assured. —Jwelch5742