The Last of Sheila (Herbert Ross, 1973)

Honest, I always hope to fall in love with murder-mystery behemoths like Evil Under the Sun (or Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express) or The Last of Sheila - undeniably stellar casts, exotic locales, zingy one-liners, queerness at the edges. And this one was written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins (albeit directed by the workaday Herbert Ross). But always I'm done in by the obsessive architecture of the mystery itself. These films are even more drearily narrative-focused than the geekiest sci-fi and fantasy. It's the "well, she put her left shoe on her right foot so she must be the killer" school of storytelling and an hour in, my eyes started to glass over. Also, is it too woke of me to bristle at the fact that as late as 1973, two gay men are equating "homosexual" with "ex-convict," "informant," "hit-and-run killer," and 'little child molester"? Some great one-liners, though: "There's nothing worse than a hustler with bad timing." 
Grade: C