Clash of the Titans (1981)

Not the 2010 remake. It would take nothing short of a long plane ride with a poor entertainment menu to get me to watch that. Instead, in my quest for a summer-type viewing, I decided not to let Jason and the Argonauts be my only taste of Ray Harryhausen.

Perseus (Harry Hamlin), as a favored mortal bastard son of Zeus (Laurence Olivier), has grown up in peace. But through no fault of his own, sea goddess Thetis (Maggie Smith) has a bone to pick with him. He suddenly finds himself teleported to a kingdom where anyone courting the princess, Andromeda (Judi Bowker), must answer a riddle or burn to death. Already smitten with her, Perseus uses divine material gifts and the help of friends, including poet Ammon (Burgess Meredith), to protect her -- first from her former fiance, Thetis's son Calibos (Neil McCarthy), who forces her to ask the riddles, and then from Thetis's wrath in the form of the Kraken.

Death on the Nile (1978)

Only after watching did I become aware that another adaptation of the Agatha Christie book is coming out this year. This information does not make me regret my choice; if anything, it makes me gladder. If the remake is reputedly good, I'll be in a fine position to compare both versions.

I was particularly interested in seeing how, besides the exact setting and vehicle, the story differs from Murder on the Orient Express, which I both read and saw the 1974 movie of. Once again, famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov herein) must figure out which of many passengers committed murder in transit. The first obvious difference is that DotN, at least in this version, doesn't have any death until about halfway in. Before that, we get pretty well acquainted with the guests, whose actors include Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, David Niven, Maggie Smith, and Angela Lansbury. Poirot does, too, observing them slyly as if he fully expects a murder. Hey, detectives should pick up on patterns in their own lives.

Murder by Death (1976)

I swear I didn't mean to rent two Peter Falk flicks in a row. Ironically, the point was to see something rather unlike the first. Certainly the genre is different, and Falk is no worse suited to comedy. I still knew this to be a gamble, partly because Neil Simon wrote it.

Eccentric millionaire Lionel Twain (Truman Capote, the only time he acted without narrating or playing himself) summons ten humans and a terrier, all famous detectives or their companions, to his secluded mansion for "dinner and a murder." There is no dead body when they arrive, but the atmosphere is deliberately creepy, and they narrowly evade several traps. The blind butler (Alec Guinness) notes his employer's macabre sense of humor but appears unaware of any actual danger. At dinner, Twain announces that someone will be murdered in an hour and that the victim and culprit are both at the table; whoever correctly solves the mystery gets a million bucks. He leaves the room, and the guests are reluctant to split up....