The Lost Mine 1989

    Hercule Poirot is hired by Lord Pearson to find Mr. Wu Ling.  He is a Chinese businessman with a map showing a long lost silver mine.  Mr. Ling is found dead in Chinatown.  Poirot must use his little gray cells and also the new communication system at Scotland Yard to find the map and the killer.  Poirot feels the clues point to an American, Charles Lester, as the killer.  But, Poirot feels this is all a little too convenient to be true?  It is not helping matters that Poirot is overdrawn at his bank and it must be their mistake!!  It doesn't take very long for Poirot to become furious with the bank and the employees!!  Lord Pearson is the head of the bank where Poirot keeps his accounts.  Poirot and Hastings have been playing Monopoly and unfortunately, Hastings is winning!!  Everything Hasting does while playing the game tremendously annoys Poirot!! 

    It is interesting to see that Scotland Yard of 1935 has two way radios connecting headquarters and cars in the field.  They use a large map of the city and model cars to represent the positions of the cars.  Women in the office move the cars on the map according to the information that's called in.  They are able to trap a suspect by the use of 3 police cars.  3 1/2* (I liked this movie)

51 min, Mys directed by Edward Bennett with David Suchet, Hugh Fraser, Philip Jackson, Pauline Moran, Anthony Bate, Colin Stinton, Barbara Barnes, James Saxon, Vincent Wong, Richard Albrecht, John Cording, Gloria Connell, Julian Firth.

Note:  The book by Agatha Christie has 3.57* out of 5* with 188 ratings, Imdb 7.4 out of 10, Amazon 4.9* out of 5* with 579 reviews.

Special Note:  Filmed at Teddington Studios, Teddington, Middlesex, England, UK.  There are several mistakes in this film?  The setting is autumn of 1935 but Poirot and Hastings play Monopoly on a game board with London locations.  The first London edition of the game was not published until 1936.  Also, the Monopoly money has only numbers while actual money for the first British edition had number with pound symbols.  Lord Pearson tells Poirot and Hastings that a lump of ore can be refined into top grade 24 karat silver.  The karat is a unit purity for gold not other precious metals.  Silver purity is measured in parts per thousand with pure silver being 999.  When Japp is in conversation with one3 of the radio cars, the detective in the car says Control to Unit 7, he is Unit 7 not Control.