Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Blistering performances.

Basically Agatha Christie is not my cup of tea (Exceptions: "And Then There Were None" & "Murder On The Orient Express"), but this film is different. The reason is Leslie-Anne Down (Bridget Conway), beautiful as always (And perhaps never more so than in this film). Spoilers: The basis for the film is interesting where Luke Williams (Bill Bixby) meets Lavinia Fullerton (Helen Hayes) on a train heading for London because of the mysterious deaths happening in her small Village. When he sees her get run over by a car, and get killed, he realized it is statistically impossible for so many deaths in one small town to occur, so he decides to play amateur detective and prove his theory correct. There he meets and falls in love with Bridget( Who is engaged to a much older man (Major Horton (Patrick Allen). Now although his computer said Bridget was the killer, he refused to believe it, and of course, she is not. Who is the killer? It was pretty obvious, but I will not say. Needless to say, at the end, Maj. Horton who also is NOT the killer, realizes that marriage is not for him, and Luke has a very quick marriage proposal for Bridget, which of course, she accepts and they leave the village and live Happily Ever After. I give it 9/10 stars, mostly for Leslie-Anne but also for Constable Reed (Freddy Jones) who is a fun chap always loving to ride his bike, and is very happy when the small town returns to normal.

This is not an outstanding film by all means, but it is a very decent one, that is faithful in story, tone and dialogue to the book. The story is compelling and interesting, hindered only really by the nonsense with the computers which was underdeveloped and added very little to the story.The pace starts very briskly, and Helen Hayes brings a lot of charm to her brief role, but once more in the story unfolds it gets slower up to the conclusion, which is well-paced and rounds things off nicely as it should do. Bill Bixby starts off rather wooden and dull, but gets better.That said, the production values are excellent, the photography is pleasing on the eye and the costumes and scenery are beautiful. The music has some nice parts as well, the direction is decent and the dialogue is charming, controlled and witty. The cast do do very well, while some of the characters could have been developed a tad more, the cast do great jobs especially Lesley-Anne Down, Olivia DeHavilland and Timothy West.All in all, a decent film and adaptation. 7/10 Bethany Cox

"Murder is Easy" begins promisingly enough, with the charming Helen Hayes boarding a train to London, where she plans to reveal to the Scotland Yard the identity of a serial killer above suspicion in her quiet little village. Unfortunately, she gets killed about 10 minutes in, and we're stuck with the bland Bill Bixby as our lead for the rest of the movie. Bixby's character acts like an amateur sleuth, but he barely figures out one thing right in the entire movie! With the exception of the lovely Lesley-Anne Down and the dependable veteran Olivia de Havilland, the rest of the cast is forgettable and their characters underdeveloped. The direction is flat. However, there is one very well-done bit towards the end: a confrontation between 2 characters who keep talking to each other suggestively, and the viewer knows that one of them is the killer but NOT which one, and only after the whole thing is over do we find out the truth. Those 5 minutes, and the 10 featuring Helen Hayes, cannot fully compensate for the dullness of the other 80, though. (**)

Murder is Easy (based on the novel Murder is Easy aka Easy to Kill) differs from the Agatha Christie novel in that the amateur sleuth Luke Fitzwilliams is changed to American Luke Williams for American TV-Movie reasons. Aptly so, that an American actor (Bill Bixby) could assume the role. Having said that, it is fitting to say that Murder is Easy is a wonderful adaptation for television. Old-time greats Olivia De Havilland and Helen Hayes have some nice spots as British spinsters Honorea Waynflete and Lavinia Fullerton. Other Brit stalwarts Timothy West, Shane Briant, Lee Lawson, and the stunningly beautiful Lesley-Anne Down round out the great cast. Also in an early role was Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean) as Mr. Ellsworthy. Bill Bixby is adequate, but Olivia De Havilland is very engaging in one of her latter day roles as Miss Waynflete, as is the great Helen Hayes as Miss Fullerton. Wonderful English countryside scenery, a great cast and an engaging story are more than enough reasons to view this movie over and over again.