Teresa Reviews “Greenshaw’s Folly” (2013): Christie Goes Gothic

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Fidelity to text: 2 poison bottles.

The overall arc is there with wills, housekeepers, and gardeners with pasts. Add in a poisonous infusion from “The Thumbmark of St. Peter,” major character rewrites, a damsel escaping her abusive husband during a dark and stormy night, and an entire added subplot about nefarious medical experiments on innocent orphans and you’ve gone gothic.

Quality of movie on its own: 4 1/2 poison bottles.

This was a great mashup. The Miss Marple short stories tend to be sketchy and underwritten so they often benefit from scriptwriters running amuck. That is, as long as the scriptwriter controls the material which happened here. I wanted more of the crazy house (the folly in the title) onscreen and more about the nefarious medical experiments.

This installment doesn’t waste time getting started. Our blonde damsel desperately seeks refuge with Miss Marple. Miss Marple has — of course! — a dear friend in need of a secretary on short notice and we’re off to Greenshaw’s Folly, a huge mishmash of architectural styles owned by a dotty lady mad scientist. That’s Katherine Greenshaw, following in her feared and hated father’s footsteps but she does all her experimenting on plants, not orphans. She needs a secretary who doesn’t mind living in a spooky castle and being surrounded by poisonous plants. Nonetheless, there are parts of the castle we are told not to enter.

Louisa and Archie struggle to find their place in an increasingly weird, haunted castle. It’s strange that our lady scientist brews her own atropine eyedrops from deadly nightshade (atropa belladonna for scientifically-minded gardeners with a taste for home remedies). She’s got a strange relationship with the local orphanage run by a drunken, gambling priest (a hackneyed trope). She’s got an off-putting housekeeper (Mrs. Cresswell), a ghost-enthusiast butler (Cracken), and an ex-con gardener (Alfred) whose hobby is archery.

There’s also a creepy houseguest who slinks around, spying and prying, and is clearly up to no good. Then the smarmy nephew shows up from nowhere, hat in hand. This is Nat Fletcher, aspiring actor, and son of Miss Greenshaw’s ostracized sister.

Dear sister married beneath herself and got thrown out of the family by daddy dearest as a result. But when there’s a rich estate, poor relations don’t hesitate to show up at the door, hoping to be written into the will.

The orphanage-owning priest wants part of the inheritance too, after Miss Greenshaw moves onto her reward. The question for the priest is will the money go to rescue orphans or will he waste his share on gambling and drinking? It’s very nice that one of the wealthiest women in the district helps support the orphanage, but there’s a closer, weirder, many-leveled relationship that is gradually revealed over the course of the film.

At this point, mysterious flowers arrive for Louisa from a secret admirer. It’s a lovely spray of lilies, very suitable for a funeral arrangement on a lady’s casket.

The butler dies in what looks like an accident, but Miss Marple knows better. The creepy houseguest disappears under mysterious circumstances. Then, Louisa and Mrs. Cresswell are locked into their rooms while Archie is off on the grounds with the gardener. They watch in horror as Miss Greenshaw is shot to death by an arrow while gardening. An archer must have done it and the only archer around is Alfred, who’s teaching Archie how to use a bow and arrow.

Panic ensues, pushed up to eleven when the evil ex-husband shows up to kidnap his son back.

Is this the end of the plot? No, it thickens still further with a crazy old lady villager who know what Miss Greenshaw’s evil mad scientist father did. The old lady shows up to rescue Archie, but not from his father. She’s trying to save her dead little brother, gone for fifty years or more. She’s afraid Archie will be experimented on.

Is this enough plot for you? No? Good, because there’s still more to come. What is the relationship between Nat Fletcher and the Greenshaw family? How about Alfred the gardener and the Greenshaw family? You’ll find out and you’ll applaud.

There were flaws.

Louisa and Alfred are supposed to slowly fall in love but I never felt any chemistry between the two of them. This was an acting problem as well as a script problem. Even without dialog, they could have stared longingly at each other whenever they were in the same room. The camera would have picked up on their desire, but no. That didn’t happen. I suppose the scriptwriter wanted us to think she was pining after matinee-handsome Nat Fletcher. If so, that wasn’t fleshed out either yet it could have been. It would have demonstrated that our Louisa had a genius for choosing the wrong kind of man. Then, when she noticed the right kind of man, it would have been even more satisfying a happy ending.

I would have liked more interaction between the villagers and Greenshaw’s folly. I’d bet a gallon of atropine that the villagers knew plenty about daddy dearest’s mad experiments on innocent orphans. There were orphans paralyzed from the experiments; what happened to them? The survivors grew up and did not forget. But other than one crazy old lady, we don’t get this subplot fleshed out either.

We should have gotten more fleshing out with Horace Bindler, creepy houseguest. No one came looking for him after his mysterious disappearance and someone should have. He’s not an eight-year-old orphan with no family or coworkers keeping track of his whereabouts. I also wanted to know who tossed his room after he disappeared and why.

It was also strange that a huge castle like Greenshaw’s folly only had three servants: the butler, the housekeeper, and the gardener. Those gardens alone needed at least three full-time people plus a few extras when the miles of hedges needed pruning. I also can’t believe the housekeeper cleaned that entire pile by herself. And then followed up with cooking and washing up for family, guests, and staff? I don’t think so. The elderly butler wasn’t hoovering those carpets and dusting the chandeliers. This was the chance for a few village chars to show up, gossip about the house’s evil history, and scare Louisa and Archie more thoroughly as well as enlighten Miss Marple.

I also wanted to see more of the house itself. In the short story, the Greenshaw estate is described as being built by an extremely rich man who decided he wanted to have every possible architectural feature added to his house. Minarets, towers, arches, flying buttresses, ogees, widow’s walks, you name it, it was on the house. But the exteriors we did see, while lovely, didn’t say rich man’s bizarre fantasy mansion.

The mad scientist’s laboratory was properly scary and creepy, however. We could have spent more time in there, rescuing terrified children or distressed damsels. Don’t miss what looks like the examination chair from Satan’s dentist, complete with restraints so the patient can’t escape.

I did enjoy seeing the abusive ex-husband get his comeuppance at the hands of a man he would sneer at for his mere existence. Since the evil ex was a doctor, he should have ended up in the mad scientist’s lair and picked up a scalpel or two. Sadly, he didn’t, leaving a wonderfully creepy and gothic plot twist on the operating table.

So should you watch this film? You bet! It’s one of ITV’s best Marple episodes and like The Blue Geranium demonstrates what can be done with Agatha’s Miss Marple short stories. Yet sadly, most of them remain unfilmed.

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