Teresa Reviews “Murder Most Foul” (1964)

Fidelity to text: 1 garrote.

The film is based on a Hercule Poirot novel, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead. Miss Marple takes over, Poirot’s gone, Ariadne Oliver is gone, everyone else is gone, and virtually all of the plot other than the two-sentence synopsis is gone.

Quality of movie on its own: 4 garrotes.

Nonetheless, it works and quite well too. Margaret Rutherford is a force to be reckoned with and she gets a much better script than in Murder at the Gallop. She shines and so does the rest of the cast.

We open with one of the few surviving bits from Mrs. McGinty’s Dead. A hapless lodger is discovered trying to murder his landlady after stealing her savings. (That’s the first sentence from the two-sentence synopsis of the novel.) The trial over, the hanging judge gives a masterly summation and you know what the verdict will be: guilty.

Except Miss Marple is on the jury and she knows better. The case is declared a mistrial, giving Miss Marple a week or so to prove that someone else murdered landlady, former actress, barmaid, and good-time girl, Mrs. McGinty. Her own sister calls her a slut so you know she’s no good.

Mrs. McGinty had a checkered past.

Miss Marple trounces the constable several times at checkers.

Are they connected? It’s possible that the scriptwriter is making a subtle joke in multiple directions. I say this only because the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple film series often refers to her own dramatic past as a championship golfer (Murder, She Said), equestrienne (Murder at the Gallop), and here, lady’s pistol champion. Why wouldn’t she also be the local checkers champion? As further proof of her extensive talents, her audition for the Cosgrove Players is a fiery rendition of Robert W. Service’s great narrative poem, The Shooting of Dan McGrew. Margaret Rutherford’s Miss Marple is a true renaissance woman, although her past is not as checkered as Mrs. McGinty’s.

Another set of inside jokes is hiding in the dialog. It’s laced with Shakespearean references. The most obvious is the title itself, followed by the reference to a Rose by any other name. Pay attention and you’ll spot other literary references too: a play named Murder, She Said, supposedly written by Agatha and of course, Cosgrove claiming his play will run longer than The Mousetrap.

Ron Moody is worth singling out: he plays Driffold Cosgrove, a would-be playwright, theater impresario, and ham actor. He’s trying his best to keep his little troupe going while dealing with murder. Watch him complain to Inspector Craddock about having to postpone his performance merely because one of his own actors is poisoned! And then one of his actresses dies, leaving him even more short-handed. But the show must go on and lurid stories about murder make for boffo box office receipts. Or so he hopes. That’s also why he suddenly changed his mind about accepting Miss Marple in his theater troupe. It’s not her stalwart rendition of Dan McGrew, it’s that she’s a lady of independent means which implies plenty of money for his theater and no annoying husband checking up on her spending.

It’s always amusing to watch a film that involves the theater because the actors playing actors get to ham it up in ways they’d never be allowed to do otherwise. Don’t miss our weird, witchy sleepwalking actress, Eva (Alison Seebohm). She knows something is wrong and tells everyone all about it. Or does she just want attention?

There’s Arthur (Neil Stacey), who goes out of his way to make rude remarks about his fellow leading man in the heartthrob division, Bill (James Bolam). Arthur’s got reason to be jealous of Bill and not merely because he competes with Bill for heartthrob roles.

Bill is Sheila’s fiancé. Sheila Upward (Francesca Annis) is not just another ingenue. She’s an heiress! Sheila is sure that daddy won’t be upset at her marrying a third-rate actor in a fourth-rate touring theater company. She doesn’t see anything odd about Bill’s unusual intensity or how he tries to strangle Arthur and then pass it off as a joke. That’s just Bill being amusing.

There’s also the mysterious play, written by Cosgrove. It’s called Remember September and it is, by all accounts, as idiotic as its name. Miss Marple deciphers a clue leading to the play’s opening night in 1951. She joins the troupe and moves into their boarding house, where the script is left on Miss Marple’s pillow. She reads it and is unimpressed. The play was performed only once and never completed: it was so bad that it was booed offstage by the audience halfway through the second act. This is also the play that Mrs. McGinty starred in, long ago on that terrible opening night. That terrible night, full of terrible actors, turned into terrible tragedy, although the tragedy was presumably unrelated to the play.

One of the actresses on that long ago opening night, Rose Kane, murdered her cheating husband with weedkiller, purchased at her behest by their ten-year-old son. The crown executed Rose Kane but what happened to the son?

Miss Marple finds out, eventually, leading to the second sentence of the two-sentence synopsis of the novel. The innocent child of a murderer grows up and must face the deadly past.

Along the way, Miss Marple faces off with Inspector Craddock. He’s not thrilled about dealing with that dotty old lady again as he knows it always ends in tears for someone. Him, in this case, when he ends up in the hospital. Mr. Stringer aids and abets Miss Marple, whether it’s pretending to be a Lothario insurance representative or doing the legwork needed to decipher clues from the past. There’s the boarding house landlady for the acting troupe as well. She’s used to dealing with actors, lectures Miss Marple about no gentlemen callers upstairs, and in general, prefers the company of her six cats. Cats are more reliable and less self-centered than actors but they don’t pay rent.

This is an amusing and enjoyable outing. Why didn’t I give this film that all-important fifth garrote? It needed to be longer, at least a little bit, to tie up loose ends. What happened to the hapless lodger, the one who didn’t murder Mrs. McGinty? We never learn it because he never shows up again. There’s also the murderer’s friends and relatives. There’s never a scene where a friend says “I knew it!” or “You had a close call.” I like seeing at least a little bit of the aftermath of murder because the crime doesn’t stop reverberating in people’s lives for months or even years. Even so, don’t miss this film despite its checkered antecedents. You won’t miss Hercule Poirot. Margaret Rutherford admirably fills his shoes.