Teresa Reviews Strange Will (2004)

Teresa reviews Strange Will (2004) and thought that it packed a lot of story into 25 minutes.

(Fugawari na Yuigon)

(c)2025 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 5 stamps

The major change was changing a British idiom into a joke for the Japanese audience.

Quality of film: 4 stamps

There’s a lot packed into 25 minutes.

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

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

For Agatha Christie, She Watched, I’d chosen not to review all 39 episodes in this Japanese anime series. Just one Miss Marple and one Poirot novel and that’s it. This time, I realized that this book contained very few Miss Marple adaptations. Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot and Marple was the only source of Miss Marple short stories with English subtitles. So here we are.

Strange Will shows how ACGDP&M excels at faithful, yet culturally appropriate adaptations. It follows the text almost exactly, even referring to cookbook pioneer Mrs. Beeton’s instructions to catch your hare before cooking him. Miss Marple quotes her to explain why — to locate the treasure Great Uncle Mathew promised to Charmian and Edward — she must first understand the old reprobate’s character.

The first major change from the story (other than adding Maybelle and the duck) makes Charmian and Edward properly respectful toward an elderly lady as customary in Japan. Charmian remains abrupt to the point of rudeness, but she doesn’t disparage Miss Marple’s wandering journey through all her village parallels. In the short story, she and Edward conclude that Miss Marple is gaga. Not here. They may think it, but they don’t say it.

The second major change is cutting Uncle Mathew’s “all my eye and Betty Martin” clue. That idiom meaning “utter nonsense” can’t be translated to a Japanese audience. Instead, Uncle Mathew winks and points to his eye. So when the recipe and letters are discovered in the secret drawer within the secret drawer, Maybelle works out that bacon and spinach means nonsense.

That leads to Miss Marple gently leading Charmian and Edward to see what’s in front of them.

Their suspicious and paranoid uncle wanted them to be rich but feared of burglars and fraudsters. Using the purloined letter idea, he hid the treasure in plain sight. His winking was a direct clue to the priceless winking blue angel stamp on the first envelope.

Miss Marple dryly comments via another village parallel that you can be too clever by half: Your hidden treasure can end up in the fireplace.