I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

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.

I'm having a love/hate (mostly "love", though) relationship with these four Agatha Christie adaptations that George Pollock directed during the first half of the 1960s and starred Margaret Rutherford as the unsurpassable spinster-detective Miss Marple. Although Mrs. Rutherford was a great actress who put a lot of devotion into her role of Miss Marple, the character never should have been a headstrong, boisterous and intrusive woman. From the many books, I know Miss Marple as a timid and fragile little old lady who's always right and much more intelligent than everybody else, but she modestly remains at the sideline to solve the crimes. In the film series, she's more of an imposing hag and her intellect doesn't come so much from observation and deduction, but from nosing around and setting traps. Still, when I manage to ignore my own personal prejudices, these four whodunits (all starting with the word "murder") are admittedly very entertaining and well worth checking out. I even daresay that "Murder Most Foul" is the second best of the quartet. "Murder, She Said" is the cream of the crop, but this installment outshines "Murder at the Gallop" (originally a Hercule Poirot story, like this one) and "Murder Ahoy" (which wasn't even based on existing Agatha Christie material). The first 5-10 minutes of "Murder Most Foul" are downright brilliant and incredibly funny, with Miss Jane Marple stealing the show in court during a murder trial. First, because she's nonchalantly knitting on the jury's bench and thus irritating the honorable judge, and secondly because she, as only member of the twelve-headed jury, stubbornly refuses to find the accused guilty of murder. Of course we immediately know that Miss Marple is right and her "sabotaging" the trial provides her with the required extra time to investigate and solve the crime herself, much to the nuisance of the patient police inspector Craddock. She quickly deducts that the victim was a former stage actress and got killed because she tried to blackmail someone who wasn't too impressed. Miss Marple infiltrates into the stage actors' association of the eccentric Driffold Cosgood, as the murdered woman played with them during the early fifties. The killer helps her to reduce the list of potential suspects, however, because more members of the same association turn up dead. The mystery aspects are overall compelling and there are a few inventive red herrings. Like in the other installments, the middle-section somewhat drags and feels overlong. The comical chemistry between Rutherford and her real-life husband Stringer Davis has worn out since the first film, but luckily there's always a sublime supportive cast, this time including Ron Moody and Meg Jenkins.

This would be the third of Rutherford's Miss Marple movies that I have seen. It was made in a time where movies weren't too sure whether they were modern or old fashioned, so we got a mix of styles and characters. The movie is black and white in a time of color. It uses hip bouncy music instead of the usual classic style of sound track. A lot of bored hip young people.Rutherford is perfect as Miss Marple. You can almost smell the old lady smell on her. She dodders and blusters and squints down anyone who opposes her. She is less like the book Miss Marple than she is a creation of her own.Best scene in the movie: Marple, auditioning for a theater troop, recites Dangerous Dan McGrew to a horrified director.

This is probably the most densely plotted of the three Margaret Rutherford Marple films I've seen so far - it is based on a Hercule Poirot story ("Mrs. McGinty's Dead") which has already been adapted for the screen as part of the David Suchet series, but although I have seen that film, I did not remember much of it beyond the initial setup, so I was caught up in the various murders and red herrings that follow. I also think this might be Rutherford's top performance as Marple - she has some great facial expressions (like when she's teasing Mr. Stringer), some great lines ("A Marple's word is her bond!"), some great tricks (a small mirror attached to an umbrella!), and at the end she even gets to fire a gun - something that would be unthinkable for any other actress who ever played this character, but fits perfectly with her portrayal! The supporting cast is also strong in this one. The only problem with the film is the same with the previous entries: occasionally it moves like molasses. *** out of 4.

Despite my later comments below I very much like this film and indeed all the Margaret Rutherford/Miss Marple canon. They are well acted and directed and time has certainly lent a nostalgic, black and white enchantment to the view with their depiction of a cosy, tea and cakes England which never actually existed but which we like to imagine did. And the murders, while hardly cosy, are interesting too. Indeed, and if one forgets such inconveniences as Agatha Christie's 'real' Miss Marple, on their own merits all four films, while hardly classics of the cinema, are most enjoyable and an excellent way of passing the famous wet Sunday afternoon.However, although none include the words 'Miss Marple' in their titles, they are all marketed as featuring her, presumably for fairly obvious commercial reasons, and thus I think there is a case for invoking the Trades Descriptions Act as they bear precious little resemblance to the Marple world of the books, viz:- 1. Margaret Rutherford was a brilliant actress and good in this role but she was physically so unlike Agatha Christie's description of Miss Marple that it is difficult to take her characterisation seriously. Miss Marple is variously described in the books as fluffy, delicate and, I believe, like Dresden porcelain and those words, ungallant though it must sound, cannot possibly be applied to Miss Rutherford. I believe that Mrs Christie shared this view.2. Only one of the films is based on a true Marple story (Murder She Said - 4.50 from Paddington). Two are actually Poirot stories and the other has no Christie connection at all. (The ITV Marple is guilty of much the same).3. Miss Marple has been moved from St. Mary Mead to Milchester. If there is a point to this it escapes me.4. The famous Marple method of solving cases by comparing them with past events and characters from her village has unforgivably been ditched completely.5. Jim Stringer appears in all four films but in none of Christie's stories. Of course the reason for this was to provide a role for Miss Rutherford's husband, Stringer Davis, who, she insisted, must be cast in any film she was in. (To digress slightly, while I much admire and respect the couple's devotion to each other, I feel that this was wrong. Although it probably does not apply in the Marple films, the character having been created specifically to provide a role for him alone, if Mr Davis was the best available for a particular part he would have got it anyway - if not it unfairly deprived another actor). His part here is in any case not really essential, being largely confined to fetching and carrying and acting as a sounding board for Miss Marple's thoughts, all of which could have been accomplished by other means.6. Perhaps slightly irrelevant but it still irritates me - despite all the help he receives from Miss Marple, even gaining promotion on the strength of it at one point, Inspector Craddock persists in regarding her as an interfering old busybody who should stop bothering him. With that kind of stupidity he should be back on the beat at least.This is of course all a matter of opinion and I have already seen the view that any story is open to interpretation in any way. I agree with this to an extent but it depends,IMHO, on how far it can go before it makes a nonsense of the piece in question. For example Shakespeare in modern dress can be quite valid except in the historical plays (they simply did not wear suits, jeans and T shirts in 1483). And if Miss Marple can solve a Poirot case how long before we see Iago whispering in Hamlet's ear? Or Dr Watson chronicling the adventures of Sexton Blake? Just one more comment, of no relevance whatever to the above. Did you know that Margaret Rutherford is an anagram of Target for Murder? Well, almost. There's a rogue A,H and R which I can't fit in anywhere. Any (printable) suggestions?