Evil Under The Sun | 1982
After the success of Murder on the Orient Express followed by Death On The Nile, the format for Agatha Christie movies was firmly established – an all-star cast and a glamorous location.
So the setting of 'Smuggler's Island' off the Devon coast was transformed into sun-drenched 'Daphne Island, near Tyrania' in the Adriatic. In fact – when it was not being filmed in the old Lee International Studios in Wembley – the location was the island of Mallorca in the Balearic Islands, east of, and part of, Spain.
But first (and no matter how many times I watch the film, I always forget this) there's a little prologue in cloudy England when a body is discovered in the Yorkshire Dales, North Yorkshire. The local police station is the old Muker Literary Institute, Guning Lane (the B6270) in the village of Muker, on a hillside above the River Swale at the western end of Swaledale in North Yorkshire.
But we're soon off to sunnier climes as Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) joins another gaggle of shady, well-heeled suspects checking into their luxury hotel.
The island is Mallorca but, a bit of bad news, the hotel seen in the film has since been demolished.
It stood on the seafront at Caló d'en Monjo, 07160 Calvià, on Mallorca's west coast, about thirty miles west of Palma.
This sheltered little cove, being in the quiet area of Cala Fornells and only reached via a forest path, has now been designated a nudist beach.
The hotel's gardens, though, were filmed somewhere else and it's somewhere you can visit. They're the gardens of the Raixa Estate, Carretera Ma-11 de Palma a Sóller, Bunyola, in the foothills of the Tramuntana mountains about eight miles north of Palma.
Once a Moorish farmstead, the estate is now publicly owned and allows free entry to the public.
'Gull Cove' (which does sound more Devon than the Adriatic) is Platja Cala en Feliu, Badia de, 07460 Pollença, a few miles northeast of Port de Pollença, way in the far north of Mallorca.
It's back to the southwest of the island for the beach on which the body of the murder victim is discovered, which is Cala Blanca, Camp de Mar, 07160, just outside the holiday resort Camp de Mar and a little west of the 'hotel' location.
