Murder Ahoy (1964) - film review

Miss Marple has just been elected onto the board of a trust that has been set up to finance a project to reform young criminals.  At her first meeting of the board, Miss Marple witnesses the death of a fellow trustee, Cecil Ffolly-Hardwicke.  The official verdict is that he suffered a fatal heart attack but Miss Marple knows that he was poisoned, by a lethal dose of strychnine in his snuff.  Just before he died, Ffolly-Hardwicke was to report on his findings after a surprise visit to the old battleship on which the young offenders are rehabilitated.   Certain that foul play is afoot, Miss Marple decides to pay a visit to the battleship, and finds far more than she bargained for...

Margaret Rutherford bows out with style as Agatha Christie’s famous spinster sleuth in this, the last of four Miss Marple films made by MGM in the early 1960s.  Unlike the previous three films, Murder Ahoy! was not based on an Agatha Christie novel but was an original story, and that could explain why it is the weakest entry in the series.  Overly convoluted and uncertain whether it is a kiddy’s farce or a mystery whodunit, the film lacks the charm and intelligence of the previous three films and in some places is just plain silly.  Miss Marple’s surprising transformation into Errol Flynn at the end of the film is a case in point. 

Rutherford still manages to delight with her larger-than-life performance but her co-stars are clearly only there for the money and look as if they would rather be doing something else.  Lionel Jeffries turns in one of the most irritating performances you will find in any British film, his penchant for camp excess infecting other members of the cast, including Charles Tingwell.  Still, anything with the young (and brisk) Nicholas Parsons in it is worth seeing, probably.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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