I was reminded vividly last night when watching TV, of one of the classic and foolproof methods for picking out the murderer, early in a movie mystery. The method is to spot a relatively big-name or rather-better-than-average actor during the first act in what looks like a very small, walk-on part. Eventually, though, there will be the dramatic unveiling of the actual guilty party, where serious acting chops are required to chew the scenery in a properly dramatic fashion.

Lately, producers of the better sort of mystery move have gotten wise to this; they cleverly cast relative unknowns who are damn good actors, or salt the cast thoroughly with the same sort of relatively somewhat knowns… but in the instance of the movie that Blondie and I were watching… just about every part in the whole movie was played by a big-named star! Practically everyone with a part was a star, except possibly the two little pug dogs. And not only that, the dialogue was clever, the costuming was to die for, and oh, the set! Especially the Lalique frosted glass panels in the dining area; Blondie could not get enough of them, whenever they showed up in the background. For sheer period luxury, it beat the Titanic set all hollow.

We hadn’t watched this movie in a long, long time, so it was nice to see some of the very best of the lot at top form, and well as looking extraordinarily dishy… thirty years younger than we have seen them lately! It was also rather nice to be reminded that not all of the expensive, block-buster, all-star movie extravaganzas from the early 1970s sucked like a Hoover factory.

Murder on the Orient Express… reminding us of what we used to gladly pay the ticket price to watch. Rent or buy, and watch it again, especially if you haven’t seen it in a long time, and want to be reminded of what Hollywood used to be able to do.

And Blondie says that Sean Connery is gorgeous… and even now, if he didn’t remind her so much of her grandfather, she’d do him in a hot second.