Murder Most Foul (1965)

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Brilliant and touching

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

MURDER MOST FOUL is a fun and comic murder mystery featuring the inimitable Margaret Rutherford in her most famous role, that of Agatha Christie's sleuth Miss Marple. This time around, Marple investigates a murder with an apparently obvious suspect - he was caught red-handed, so to speak, at the scene - but follows a clue trail that takes her to a local amateur theatrics group.This is a well-paced and eventful little mystery with a decent cast and lots of character comedy to see it through. Rutherford dominates the proceedings, inevitably, with her larger-than-life character, and she's a real delight; relishing every line and dominating every co-actor from beginning to end. The mystery itself is cosy rather than exciting or dramatic, but the ensemble cast are very good. Ron Moody delights as the camp ham actor and manager; Charles Tingwell and Windsor Davis make a good tag-team as the police. Among the rest of the cast members, both James Bolam and Francesca Annis stand out in star-making performances. There's little to dislike about MURDER MOST FOUL.

There are three most important reasons why you should watch this film, even if it is in black and white and slightly old in style. We would not make films like that any more even for TV, but we could also say that about Hitchcock or Charlie Chaplin. So what! Well, be positive and as I said before there are three main positive reasons for you to watch this film, or any film of that series, because it is a series. First it is Agatha Christie, and Agatha Christie is the most English woman that writes the most English detective stories with the most English "private eye" or "sleuth" no one in no Hollywood or even Bollywood could think of or imagine. Second Miss Marple is the sleuth of the film and that Miss Marple is an old fire-fox at that. She knits when on duty in a jury, and then she blocks the jury in its decision, one to eleven. Her imagination is totally twisted and warped, just what is needed to find the criminal in the story, a typical English criminal, no serial killer or pure psychotic violent schizophrenic or whatever twisted lunatic you may think of. No, just a plain English person who for some reason or other has to kill someone out of logic, maybe not our logic, but a plain simple logic that says when endangered or menaced a plain ordinary simple unremarkable individual has to kill to survive. In this case the menace is blackmailing about some old childhood crime that had gone unpunished. And the third reason is that this Miss Marple is played by Margaret Rutherford who is a real pleasure on the screen or the stage, in fact I should say was of course since the film is from 1964 and she was already canonically old then. She is a real treat because she really acts and she turns her old age, her deformed body and her drooping skin and flesh into visual assets to build her character. This too is a very great particularity of England: first actors work equally on the stage or for the cinema or for TV, and they do make an effort to provide parts to older actors, and thus to give a picture of real society in which old people are part of our daily social landscape. Now to get the detail or details about the crime you'll have to go and watch the film. But be sure that in the most English way possible the private eye has the last word in the case over the public police officer and of course the woman sleuth has the upper hand over the male detective. Some will say the film is quaint, but that quaintness is a whole culture that you may not be able to witness any more in real life. The cinema is our unfailing memory.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

A little surprisingly this has turned out to be my personal favourite of the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple films. This is an adaptation of the Poirot novel 'Mrs McGinty's Dead' with Miss M inserted instead. I was expecting a very loose connection with the novel but actually this is a very clever re-working of the story indeed. All the basic elements are there and the writers manage to make the shift from 'residents in an English village' to theatrical boarding house very convincing. I love the mixing up of names from the novel (eg Sheila Rendell and Mrs Upward combine into young Sheila Upward) and the deliberate pacing as details are revealed (we only come to know about the important character of Rose (Eva) Kane towards the end).Margaret Rutherford continues to delight as a Miss M who is nothing like Christie's creation. The supporting players are all perfectly adequate though no-one is really outstanding (except maybe Megs Jenkins in the tiny role of a widow ready to snatch up poor Mr Stringer). Its the cleverness of the adaptation that delights here, the atmospheric filming, the broad comedy and Rutherford's bold performance are the other winning features. Highly recommended.

Like an intrepid war ship that patrols the high seas, wonderful Margaret Rutherford patrols a theatrical troupe of actors and actresses known as the Cosgood Players, searching for a killer-most-foul amongst them. And a killer she finds, lurking in the backstage shadows, in this screen adaptation of Agatha Christie's book "Mrs. McGinty's Dead".It's a nifty whodunit. I was fairly sure who the murderer was. But I was dead wrong. With good film direction, and effective plot misdirection, the film cleverly leads viewers down the garden path, with red herrings scattered here and there. As you make your way through the story, you'll be hard pressed to find the relevant clues, plainly visible, but camouflaged amid a complexity of detail. And that's the mark of a good murder mystery.If I had to pick the script apart, looking for something to complain about, I could point out that the various suspects have back-stories that are all too thin. But that's normal, more or less, for films in this genre.En route to the solution of the puzzle, Miss Marple (Rutherford) auditions to be part of the theater troupe, in a solo recital of the Robert Service poem "The Shooting Of Dan McGrew". This sequence alone, with Rutherford's terrifically hammy stage performance, is enough to make the film worth watching.In searching for the killer, the befuddled police don't have a clue, of course. But with her keen wit and perceptive insight into human nature, Miss Marple sifts and sorts through the jumble of facts with cunning effectiveness. The film's final few minutes take place behind the stage of a play in progress, where she conks the murderer over the head with a stage prop. Marvelous.As a whodunit, "Murder Most Foul" is a good one. But what really makes the film enjoyable is Rutherford in the role of Miss Marple. With her animated facial expressions, her commanding tone of voice, and her formidable and intimidating stage presence, 72 year old Margaret Rutherford is an absolute joy to watch. I'm surprised that the British didn't name a battleship after her.