Murder Most Foul (1965)

Touches You

Great Film overall

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Extremely minor it may be but it's also a lot of fun thanks in large part to Margaret Rutherford's performance as Miss Marple. We may have had several Miss Marple's since but none could top the slack-jawed Rutherford. In keeping murder at the forefront they changed the title from "Mrs McGinty's Dead" to "Murder Most Foul". This one has a theatrical setting and the tawdry milieu of the touring company is nicely captured while that old ham, Ron Moody, is excellent playing, naturally, an old ham and there is a decent supporting cast of British character actors to round things off.

Margaret Rutherford has a lot of personality, charm and originality. And, indeed, she was born to play Miss Jane Marple. She's perfect as the character created by Agatha Christie. If "Murder Ahoy" is about poop, this "Murder Most Foul" made in the same year, 1964, by the same director, George Pollock, is good. The story is captivating and, in addition, we have Ron Moody, the famous Fagin in "Oliver!" (1968), Vorobyaninov of "The Twelve Chairs" (1970), and Uriah Heep in "David Copperfield" (1970). George Pollock directed also "Ten Little Indians" (1965), the most successful film adaptation of Agatha Christie, in my opinion.

How great is Margaret Rutheford in this? As aging amateur sleuth Miss Marple, who investigates a theatre company where a murderer may be hiding, Rutheford is shrewd, eccentric, likable. It's the kind of memorable performance which elevates a droll movie into a fine one.In fact, everyone was plainly having fun on set, from Charles Tingwell as the Inspector torn between annoyance and reverence for Miss Marple to Ron Moody as a hilariously smarmy, hammy thespian.As much as I enjoy Christie and respect her seminal influence on the genre, not all her plots have aged well - some of the mysteries, like this one, could be solved by a modern investigator with a Google search. However, her detectives and their quirks are still vivid and entertaining.8/10

Murder Most Foul begins with Margaret Rutherford as Jane Marple serving jury duty where she proceeds to deadlock the jury in what everyone, including her exasperated friend Charles Tingwell as Inspector Craddock thinks is an open and shut case. The poor defendant was found bent over the body of a hanged woman. It was his lucky day to have Rutherford on his jury of peers. No sooner than a mistrial is declared than Margaret is off to investigate and the trail leads to a traveling theatrical company. Two more murders of the company of strolling players occur and the original victim in fact was a former actress herself. Besides Tingwell as the arm of the law and Stringer Davis as Mr. Stringer and Margaret Rutherford's husband in real life, the cast of Murder Most Foul also includes Dennis Price and Ron Moody as a pair of fourth rate hams. They're the older members of the stock company, the younger ones are hams as well, but Price and Moody are hams with a lot of style. This is a fine addition to the Marple quartet that Margaret Rutherford did in the Sixties. Even though the story is actually from a Hercule Poirot mystery by Agatha Christie, it suits Rutherford just fine.