Teresa Reviews Accident (1990)

Teresa reviews Accident (1990) which adds Miss Marple to the story but gives her little to do.

(c)2024 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 3 ½ poisoned teacups

Miss Marple’s inclusion was clumsily done. Worse, she didn’t save the day.

Quality of movie: 3 poisoned teacups

Slow, stodgy, illogical, and talky. But this is the only version of “Accident” you’ll get so be happy.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

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“Accident” was never a Miss Marple property. It’s possible to integrate Miss Marple into non-Marple stories. ITV did it all the time in Marple, with varying degrees of success.

This film didn’t quite manage. Miss Marple remains offscreen for long stretches and is unable to save Inspector Evans from his own hubris. This felt a bit like ITV’s version of Endless Night (2013) where you’ve got two quite different stories forcibly edited together.

Even more weirdly, Inspector Evans is apparently a member of the local police yet he doesn’t research Mrs. Merrowdene’s background to prove that she’s really Mrs. Anthony, acquitted of her husband’s accidental death by arsenic poisoning, as well as cleared of involvement in her stepfather’s accidental fall from a cliff while walking with her.

No, it’s Miss Marple who investigates at the police station, spilling coffee on the policewoman’s uniform so she can sneak into a locked office and snoop through an amazingly antiquated computer to prove Inspector Evan’s suspicions. The only reason for this I can see is that the scriptwriter couldn’t think of another way to insert Miss Marple into the action.

Neither the script nor the original story go into detail as to why Mr. Anthony would eat arsenic. It fell out of favor generations ago but when Agatha wrote the story in 1929, arsenic-eating, like strychnine tonics, wasn’t unheard of. The dose makes the poison and in tiny quantities, arsenic was a mild stimulant, improved breathing, clarified the skin, and might have enhanced sexual prowess. It did plenty of bad things to the body too, but those effects were subtle. Arsenic-eating also meant that if you were married to an addict (the user slowly developed a tolerance and needed to up the dosage), you might get away with murder.

Where the story really failed was the ending. Miss Marple doesn’t save Inspector Evans from his folly and you don’t learn the true reason behind Mrs. Merrowdene’s actions. She loves her current husband, she’s always loved him, and her stepfather, Mr. Anthony, and now Inspector Evans are in the way.