Martin Bradley 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.

Leofwine_draca MURDER MOST FOUL is a fun and comic murder mystery featuring the inimitable Margaret Rutherford in her most famous role, that of Agatha Christie's sleuth Miss Marple. This time around, Marple investigates a murder with an apparently obvious suspect - he was caught red-handed, so to speak, at the scene - but follows a clue trail that takes her to a local amateur theatrics group.This is a well-paced and eventful little mystery with a decent cast and lots of character comedy to see it through. Rutherford dominates the proceedings, inevitably, with her larger-than-life character, and she's a real delight; relishing every line and dominating every co-actor from beginning to end. The mystery itself is cosy rather than exciting or dramatic, but the ensemble cast are very good. Ron Moody delights as the camp ham actor and manager; Charles Tingwell and Windsor Davis make a good tag-team as the police. Among the rest of the cast members, both James Bolam and Francesca Annis stand out in star-making performances. There's little to dislike about MURDER MOST FOUL.

masercot This would be the third of Rutherford's Miss Marple movies that I have seen. It was made in a time where movies weren't too sure whether they were modern or old fashioned, so we got a mix of styles and characters. The movie is black and white in a time of color. It uses hip bouncy music instead of the usual classic style of sound track. A lot of bored hip young people.Rutherford is perfect as Miss Marple. You can almost smell the old lady smell on her. She dodders and blusters and squints down anyone who opposes her. She is less like the book Miss Marple than she is a creation of her own.Best scene in the movie: Marple, auditioning for a theater troop, recites Dangerous Dan McGrew to a horrified director.

andeven Despite my later comments below I very much like this film and indeed all the Margaret Rutherford/Miss Marple canon. They are well acted and directed and time has certainly lent a nostalgic, black and white enchantment to the view with their depiction of a cosy, tea and cakes England which never actually existed but which we like to imagine did. And the murders, while hardly cosy, are interesting too. Indeed, and if one forgets such inconveniences as Agatha Christie's 'real' Miss Marple, on their own merits all four films, while hardly classics of the cinema, are most enjoyable and an excellent way of passing the famous wet Sunday afternoon.However, although none include the words 'Miss Marple' in their titles, they are all marketed as featuring her, presumably for fairly obvious commercial reasons, and thus I think there is a case for invoking the Trades Descriptions Act as they bear precious little resemblance to the Marple world of the books, viz:- 1. Margaret Rutherford was a brilliant actress and good in this role but she was physically so unlike Agatha Christie's description of Miss Marple that it is difficult to take her characterisation seriously. Miss Marple is variously described in the books as fluffy, delicate and, I believe, like Dresden porcelain and those words, ungallant though it must sound, cannot possibly be applied to Miss Rutherford. I believe that Mrs Christie shared this view.2. Only one of the films is based on a true Marple story (Murder She Said - 4.50 from Paddington). Two are actually Poirot stories and the other has no Christie connection at all. (The ITV Marple is guilty of much the same).3. Miss Marple has been moved from St. Mary Mead to Milchester. If there is a point to this it escapes me.4. The famous Marple method of solving cases by comparing them with past events and characters from her village has unforgivably been ditched completely.5. Jim Stringer appears in all four films but in none of Christie's stories. Of course the reason for this was to provide a role for Miss Rutherford's husband, Stringer Davis, who, she insisted, must be cast in any film she was in. (To digress slightly, while I much admire and respect the couple's devotion to each other, I feel that this was wrong. Although it probably does not apply in the Marple films, the character having been created specifically to provide a role for him alone, if Mr Davis was the best available for a particular part he would have got it anyway - if not it unfairly deprived another actor). His part here is in any case not really essential, being largely confined to fetching and carrying and acting as a sounding board for Miss Marple's thoughts, all of which could have been accomplished by other means.6. Perhaps slightly irrelevant but it still irritates me - despite all the help he receives from Miss Marple, even gaining promotion on the strength of it at one point, Inspector Craddock persists in regarding her as an interfering old busybody who should stop bothering him. With that kind of stupidity he should be back on the beat at least.This is of course all a matter of opinion and I have already seen the view that any story is open to interpretation in any way. I agree with this to an extent but it depends,IMHO, on how far it can go before it makes a nonsense of the piece in question. For example Shakespeare in modern dress can be quite valid except in the historical plays (they simply did not wear suits, jeans and T shirts in 1483). And if Miss Marple can solve a Poirot case how long before we see Iago whispering in Hamlet's ear? Or Dr Watson chronicling the adventures of Sexton Blake? Just one more comment, of no relevance whatever to the above. Did you know that Margaret Rutherford is an anagram of Target for Murder? Well, almost. There's a rogue A,H and R which I can't fit in anywhere. Any (printable) suggestions?