The List of Adrian Messenger

Unique and stylized movie loaded with a bunch of star cameos. Not to mention a good thriller.

The rubber face novelty was clever, but it didn't work for me. I just didn't find this film entertaining.

Slight but highly enjoyable Sherlock Holmesian mystery includes the most pointless celebrity cameos of all time as a way of showing the then-new and cool special effect: rubber masks (which now look quite dated). This probably actually adds to the entertainment value even if it gives the whole thing a strange tone, but a supremely watchable lead performance by the always terrific George C. Scott and a great Jerry Goldsmith score makes it a film well worth watching.

Numerous major Hollywood actors are all thickly concealed in makeup design. Their identities are exposed to the audience at the very end, when each star strips off his masquerade. Actually, only Douglas and Mitchum do any real acting beneath their heaps of collodion and crepe hair. The others just walk on to shoot their brief, tacked-on unveilings at $75K each, while being doubled in the film itself. The film even further cheats by often dubbing over their voices! So yeah I call bullshit.

If you think you can identify who is who just by looking at the poster YOU ARE SO WRONG!!!!

There are much better murder mysteries to be seen. The story isn't that great and the acting isn't particularly strong (Scott is decent), but it could have been much better had Huston actually used Mitchum, Lancaster, Curtis, and Sinatra more in the story instead of an odd gimmick that IMO made the film even worse.

Perhaps a little too clever, but interesting nonetheless.

An entertaining and star-studded mystery/thriller with more mask removals than a Mission: Impossible film.