Ranking the best Agatha Christie movie adaptations

It makes sense that filmmakers have been turning to Agatha Christie for source material since 1928 (The Passing Of Mr. Quinn). Her mystery plots are tightly wound, her characters rich and well crafted, the settings full of interesting and exotic locales. The solutions have the perfect balance of the unexpected and the obvious, based on the evidence she threads through the investigation. It’s always entertaining to watch her beloved detectives piece things together and try to follow along. Yet they can also be full of clunky exposition that doesn’t translate well to the screen, and can feel stodgy and outdated now (there’s a reason why so many of the adaptations are period pieces).

The latest Christie adaptation, Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting In Venice, arrives in theaters on September 15. It’s Branagh’s third time dipping into Christie’s deep well and taking on the mantle of quirky Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. In honor of the new release, we’re looking back at a dozen of the best Christie adaptations, going all the way back to the first time And Then There Were None was brought to the screen in 1945. We’re also throwing in a few recent limited series currently available to stream as well, in case this isn’t enough Christie for you.

15. Endless Night (1972)

Agatha Christie was still writing books well into her 80s, and this film is based on one of her last releases, published in 1967. It’s more of a psychological thriller than her earlier work, which has made it divisive among her fans. Hayley Mills plays an American heiress who marries a British chauffeur from a working-class background. After she buys them a parcel of land that’s supposedly cursed murderous hijinx are soon afoot, leading to the kind of twisty ending you’d expect from a Christie story. But without a detective around to make clever quips and solve the mystery, it lacks that special spark that makes her work so compelling.