A Caribbean
Mystery (1983) – 5.0
It strikes me as odd that Miss Marple (Helen Hayes) would even want to spend a week in a Caribbean resort. She would burn terribly in the sun. It is the most boring thing in the world just to sit around all day soaking up the sun at her age. No deep sea diving. Shuffle board, darts, croquet and gossip. And of course murder. Three of them. Miss Marple brings murder along with her no matter where she goes like we do a cheap paperback. Based on a 1964 novel by Agatha Christie. Most of the time I read the book and then watch the movie but not this time so a tiny bit more suspense in the TV movie - the first of two with Helen Hayes. The murderer seemed fairly obvious to me anyways. A simple matter of deduction as Holmes would say.
Agatha Christie vacationed in the Caribbean a few times. So have I. In much less style, I imagine. Back then it seemed kind of fun though I can't remember why. Once was at Club Med in the Bahamas - worst vacation in my life - what was I thinking. As soon as the group arrived and the staff broke into Kumbaya I knew I was screwed. Well, Miss Marple isn't at a Club Med but nearly as bad stuck with a bunch of annoying people and having activities scheduled. After Christie's divorce from her husband she had a trip to the Caribbean planned to recuperate when a friend persuaded her to go to the Middle East and work on an excavation. That changed her life as she met her archeologist husband in Iraq. Lesson learned - go somewhere interesting.
It isn't long before an elderly man with an endless array of boring stories latches on to her. But one story sticks out. About a man who marries women who later kill themselves. He tells Miss Marple that he has a picture of the man and he pulls it out and looks around him and turns white. You know he is a goner. And only Marple suspects murder. Until the next one. Decent enough for a TV movie though I was a little disappointed with the cast. They usually bring on a number of past their prime stars as they did in the other Hayes Miss Marple film. Here we have Bernard Hughes, Jameson Parker (Simon & Simon), Season Hubley, Brock Peters, Swoosie Kurtz, Zakes Mokae and Lynn Moody (Roots). The screen play was written by Sue Grafton - one of the better mystery novelists with her alphabet series of books.
Murder with Mirrors (1985) – 5.5
Aka - They Do It With Murders
This is based on Agatha Christie's book They Do It with Mirrors published in 1952. For me it is one of her duller books with a clever crime but much too long to get there. The Joan Hickson version which I saw not too long ago wasn't much better and this one is at best so-so. There were much better Miss Marple books to adapt. This one tries to give it a bit more energy but having Miss Marple taken hostage at the point of a gun wasn't a great idea. Now if she had disarmed him with a karate chop that would have been ok. But they basically just make Miss Marple into a snoop who keeps intentionally eavesdropping on everyone. And looking embarrassed when she is caught.
She is played by the actress tagged at one time as "The First Lady of the American Theater". Helen Hayes. I expect few people who are alive saw her on the stage - though they give us about 30 seconds of that here - so who can say. She began in film during the silent period but she never became the star in films that she was in theater. She was to make two Miss Marple TV films - this one and A Caribbean Mystery. They team her up with a few other fossils - ok that is mean - but Bette Davis looks like she got off of the morgue table to be in this. Honestly, it was sad seeing her like this. Getting old sucks. She had had a few strokes and her speech is very slow and clearly a struggle as she enunciates every word carefully. Still give her credit for still being out there. She was to perform in three more films before her death. A trooper till the end. Throw in John Mills and Leo Kern and you have a cast from an old folks home. I can say this because I am not far away myself.
Miss Marple is asked by a friend to go stay with an old friend she has not seen in years. Carrie Louise (Davis) ,who is married to Lewis (John Mills), is the wealthy matron of the extended family who stay with her. Too many to get into. The friend wanted Miss Marple to be there because something suspicious was going on. When this friend shows up the next day he is quickly done away with before he can tell her what it is. Everyone seems to either have an alibi or no motive. The Inspector played by Kern tells Marple - I have heard about you. A busybody. But someone I should listen to. Good that he does. One other name of note is Tim Roth as the possible crazy man - quite early in his career.
Miss Marple: By the Pricking of My Thumbs (2006) – 6.0
Some dozen years after the end of the Joan Hickson series of Miss Marple films another TV station began their own Miss Marple films. They first cast Geraldine McEwan as the elderly busybody and then later Julia McEwan. The series covered all the basic Marple books as had the Hickson series, but they also took other Christie books and shoehorned Miss Marple into them. Which doesn't strike me as cricket. Why not just take another one of her 20 short stories and expand it which they do in a few instances. This one is perhaps the most peculiar because they squeeze Miss Marple into a Tommy and Tuppence book. Not that this hadn't happened to Miss Marple before - two of the Margaret Rutherford Marple films were actually based on Hercule Poirot novels.
Tommy and Tuppence was a separate series of books by Christie. Five of them, with the first published in 1922 and the last one in 1973. I have not read any of them and based on their characters from their TV series in the 1980s I am not sure I want to. In the series they are a young married couple who set up a detective agency because they are bored. They are a bit frivolous but stylish and fashionable, very much in love and manage to solve the cases. Light and fluffy. It is set in the 1920s and her hats are often the highlight of the show. They get a bit tedious after a few shows. So their characters in this film come as a bit of a surprise. They are middle-aged with three children, he is off working for MI-6 much of the time leaving Tuppence at home who takes solace in the bottle. Basically a lush. Tommy has become a grumpy self-important personage who doesn't pay much attention to her. Reading further it turns out that in the books they aged as in real time - so by their final book Postern of Fate they are in their 70's. Very unusual for characters to age much in a series of books. By the Pricking of My Thumb was their book written in 1968 and they are middle aged in it. But what the film does is basically jettison Tommy except for an appearance at the beginning and end and replace him with Miss Marple. Well why not.
The plot is a bit silly but it is a decent effort watching Marple (Geraldine McEwan) and Tuppence (Greta Scacchi) solve the case. One a little old lady; the other who keeps drinking. Tommy's aunt Ada passes away in a retirement home and her possessions are sent to Tommy (Anthony Andrews), who is away as normal. One of the possessions is a painting of a small cottage and a note is attached saying that Mrs. Lancaster who was also in the Home is in danger and the clues are in the painting. Well, why not just tell them in the note rather than make them figure it out. Mrs. Lancaster it turns out was taken from the Home the same night Ada died. The two of them journey to a small village where the painter used to live and look for the house and other clues. It all seems to have something to do with a child that was murdered decades before. A murder that seems to still agonize the town's people all these years later.
90 minutes with a solid cast - Charles Dance and Claire Bloom as well - but includes a pointless romance thrown it which added nothing. A very good ending though. As to McEwan's portrayal of Miss Marple - maybe I am too influenced by Hickson - but it doesn't strike me as capturing the character in the books. Too active, too cheery and just not right. She kind of buzzes around as opposed to Hickson who just sits, knits and listens.
Murder is Easy (2009) – 5.0
Murder is easy. Yes I suppose it can be. I imagine hundreds go unsolved or unknown every year. They keep finding bodies in the woods or mountains years after they went missing. Too long to know if it was murder. You just need to be a bit careful, not get caught doing it or carrying it away or make it look like an accident. How many deaths do they put down to accidental that were murder. It is hard proving someone murdered someone else. Don’t confess is rule number 1. And be sure that there is not some little elderly innocent looking lady about with light blue eyes asking questions and offering tea. That would be Miss Marple of course whose hobby in old age is capturing killers. And she is very good at it. I have been reading the Miss Marple Short Stories and nothing gets by the old lady as she sits there and knits.
I was curious about this episode of the TV show starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple. She came after Geraldine McEwan retired. Julia may be my less favorite. Not terrible by any means but a bit too young and very obvious in her snooping. This was based on a novel of the same name by Christie and like the film By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Miss Marple is dropped into the plot in which she had no business. In the book it is solved by a policeman while here Marple works with an ex-policeman. And does most of the figuring out. Marple is on a train minding her own business as much as she is able to when the older woman (Sylvia Syms) across from her asks if Scotland Yard is open because she has to report two murders and another likely coming. And off she goes. Only to be murdered. When Marple reads about this unlike most of us who at most report it to the police, she decides to go to this small quiet English village where people are dropping like flies and figure it out. Helping her is the ex-policeman played by pre-fame Benedict Cumberbatch. Two years later he would be playing another sleuth. Sherlock Holmes. There is a 1982 version of the book which I watched a while back and it has no Miss Marple but also changes pretty much everything from the book with American Bill Bixby looking for the killer.
Greenshaw’s Folly (2013) – 6.0
This is part of the Julia McKenzie Miss Marple series. I don't really like her portrayal as Marple - though I am not really sure why. Just not opaque and old enough. But I just finished reading the Complete Short Stories of Miss Marple and Greenshaw's Folly was the longest but still a short story. I was curious enough to see how they adapted it to watch this. For anyone who wants to read some enjoyable and not at all suspenseful easy to gulp short stories, these are fun. Most of them are people sitting around talking about mysteries and crimes they have come upon in their lives and see who can guess what the outcome was. Of course, Miss Marple sitting quietly doing her knitting figures them all out to everyone's amazement.
So what do you do if you have a short story and need to stretch it to 90-minutes? Well of course add characters and sub-plots. The crime itself and the solution stay just the same but they add an abusive father, a drunk priest, a young boy, a snooping reporter, two other murders and a scandal long in the past about experimental polio vaccines that were killing orphans. None of that is in the book. But for the most part it works especially after the murder of the main character which takes place at about the half way mark. It is a gallop after that. The police have the wrong man of course till Marple puzzles it out. In the end the not too smart cop says "A perfect murder"; to which Marple adds "Not quite perfect" leaving off the "You idiot".
Death on the Nile (2004) – 7.0
"It seems you had thought of everything except for one thing. Hercule Poirot". Yes, if you plan to commit murder, perhaps you should wait till Poirot is not around. It may be inconvenient, it may be annoying after such well-laid plans but it is for the best. There will always be another opportunity. This is from the TV series starring David Suchet. The series lasted from 1989 to 2013 consisting of 70 episodes. Suchet starred in all of them. I watched a bunch of these years ago and was curious whether they covered Death on the Nile and they did - season or series nine, episode three which I happened to have. Interestingly, for what it is worth it is rated higher on IMDB than either of the two films. And it is quite good though clearly a TV production. It doesn't have the all-star cast that the two films had - the best they could come up with were David Soul, James Fox and Emily Blunt as the wealthy man-stealer long before she became well-known, This was only her fourth credit.
But they did have Suchet who for fans of the books is the only legitimate Poirot. Albert Finney as Poirot (Murder on the Orient Express) is much too belligerent and rude and his Belgian accent is all over the place; Peter Ustinov in a series of films as Poirot is too informal, jokey and wispy; and Branagh is Poirot on steroids. Only Suchet got him right - the mannerisms, the way he walks in small steps, his old world charm. As he explains in the documentary Being Poirot, he read all the books, took notes and tried to get him down right out of the mind of Agatha Christie. He is too subdued for movies on the screen - never a man of action but for TV he was just right.
This covers all the same territory as the two films but without all the bloat. It comes in at 90 minutes while the 1978 version was 140 minutes and the 2022 version is at 127 minutes. This gets to the murder much more quickly and that is when the film and the book get interesting. You need the background certainly but not to go on forever. Still I think I prefer the two films over this mainly because of the casts - the 1979 version had so many they were tripping over one another and this last version did all right as well and really piled on the glitz. As off as Branagh's characterization is, I found his angry avenging angel fascinating. Poirot in the books is an avenging angel but he does it quietly, politely - though in this film after telling the murderer the quote above leans in further and says "The executioner here is very efficient".
The Sittaford Mystery (2006) - Miss
Marple S2E4
It strikes me as odd that Miss Marple (Helen Hayes) would even want to spend a week in a Caribbean resort. She would burn terribly in the sun. It is the most boring thing in the world just to sit around all day soaking up the sun at her age. No deep sea diving. Shuffle board, darts, croquet and gossip. And of course murder. Three of them. Miss Marple brings murder along with her no matter where she goes like we do a cheap paperback. Based on a 1964 novel by Agatha Christie. Most of the time I read the book and then watch the movie but not this time so a tiny bit more suspense in the TV movie - the first of two with Helen Hayes. The murderer seemed fairly obvious to me anyways. A simple matter of deduction as Holmes would say.
Agatha Christie vacationed in the Caribbean a few times. So have I. In much less style, I imagine. Back then it seemed kind of fun though I can't remember why. Once was at Club Med in the Bahamas - worst vacation in my life - what was I thinking. As soon as the group arrived and the staff broke into Kumbaya I knew I was screwed. Well, Miss Marple isn't at a Club Med but nearly as bad stuck with a bunch of annoying people and having activities scheduled. After Christie's divorce from her husband she had a trip to the Caribbean planned to recuperate when a friend persuaded her to go to the Middle East and work on an excavation. That changed her life as she met her archeologist husband in Iraq. Lesson learned - go somewhere interesting.
It isn't long before an elderly man with an endless array of boring stories latches on to her. But one story sticks out. About a man who marries women who later kill themselves. He tells Miss Marple that he has a picture of the man and he pulls it out and looks around him and turns white. You know he is a goner. And only Marple suspects murder. Until the next one. Decent enough for a TV movie though I was a little disappointed with the cast. They usually bring on a number of past their prime stars as they did in the other Hayes Miss Marple film. Here we have Bernard Hughes, Jameson Parker (Simon & Simon), Season Hubley, Brock Peters, Swoosie Kurtz, Zakes Mokae and Lynn Moody (Roots). The screen play was written by Sue Grafton - one of the better mystery novelists with her alphabet series of books.
Murder with Mirrors (1985) – 5.5
Aka - They Do It With Murders
This is based on Agatha Christie's book They Do It with Mirrors published in 1952. For me it is one of her duller books with a clever crime but much too long to get there. The Joan Hickson version which I saw not too long ago wasn't much better and this one is at best so-so. There were much better Miss Marple books to adapt. This one tries to give it a bit more energy but having Miss Marple taken hostage at the point of a gun wasn't a great idea. Now if she had disarmed him with a karate chop that would have been ok. But they basically just make Miss Marple into a snoop who keeps intentionally eavesdropping on everyone. And looking embarrassed when she is caught.
She is played by the actress tagged at one time as "The First Lady of the American Theater". Helen Hayes. I expect few people who are alive saw her on the stage - though they give us about 30 seconds of that here - so who can say. She began in film during the silent period but she never became the star in films that she was in theater. She was to make two Miss Marple TV films - this one and A Caribbean Mystery. They team her up with a few other fossils - ok that is mean - but Bette Davis looks like she got off of the morgue table to be in this. Honestly, it was sad seeing her like this. Getting old sucks. She had had a few strokes and her speech is very slow and clearly a struggle as she enunciates every word carefully. Still give her credit for still being out there. She was to perform in three more films before her death. A trooper till the end. Throw in John Mills and Leo Kern and you have a cast from an old folks home. I can say this because I am not far away myself.
Miss Marple is asked by a friend to go stay with an old friend she has not seen in years. Carrie Louise (Davis) ,who is married to Lewis (John Mills), is the wealthy matron of the extended family who stay with her. Too many to get into. The friend wanted Miss Marple to be there because something suspicious was going on. When this friend shows up the next day he is quickly done away with before he can tell her what it is. Everyone seems to either have an alibi or no motive. The Inspector played by Kern tells Marple - I have heard about you. A busybody. But someone I should listen to. Good that he does. One other name of note is Tim Roth as the possible crazy man - quite early in his career.
Miss Marple: By the Pricking of My Thumbs (2006) – 6.0
Some dozen years after the end of the Joan Hickson series of Miss Marple films another TV station began their own Miss Marple films. They first cast Geraldine McEwan as the elderly busybody and then later Julia McEwan. The series covered all the basic Marple books as had the Hickson series, but they also took other Christie books and shoehorned Miss Marple into them. Which doesn't strike me as cricket. Why not just take another one of her 20 short stories and expand it which they do in a few instances. This one is perhaps the most peculiar because they squeeze Miss Marple into a Tommy and Tuppence book. Not that this hadn't happened to Miss Marple before - two of the Margaret Rutherford Marple films were actually based on Hercule Poirot novels.
Tommy and Tuppence was a separate series of books by Christie. Five of them, with the first published in 1922 and the last one in 1973. I have not read any of them and based on their characters from their TV series in the 1980s I am not sure I want to. In the series they are a young married couple who set up a detective agency because they are bored. They are a bit frivolous but stylish and fashionable, very much in love and manage to solve the cases. Light and fluffy. It is set in the 1920s and her hats are often the highlight of the show. They get a bit tedious after a few shows. So their characters in this film come as a bit of a surprise. They are middle-aged with three children, he is off working for MI-6 much of the time leaving Tuppence at home who takes solace in the bottle. Basically a lush. Tommy has become a grumpy self-important personage who doesn't pay much attention to her. Reading further it turns out that in the books they aged as in real time - so by their final book Postern of Fate they are in their 70's. Very unusual for characters to age much in a series of books. By the Pricking of My Thumb was their book written in 1968 and they are middle aged in it. But what the film does is basically jettison Tommy except for an appearance at the beginning and end and replace him with Miss Marple. Well why not.
The plot is a bit silly but it is a decent effort watching Marple (Geraldine McEwan) and Tuppence (Greta Scacchi) solve the case. One a little old lady; the other who keeps drinking. Tommy's aunt Ada passes away in a retirement home and her possessions are sent to Tommy (Anthony Andrews), who is away as normal. One of the possessions is a painting of a small cottage and a note is attached saying that Mrs. Lancaster who was also in the Home is in danger and the clues are in the painting. Well, why not just tell them in the note rather than make them figure it out. Mrs. Lancaster it turns out was taken from the Home the same night Ada died. The two of them journey to a small village where the painter used to live and look for the house and other clues. It all seems to have something to do with a child that was murdered decades before. A murder that seems to still agonize the town's people all these years later.
90 minutes with a solid cast - Charles Dance and Claire Bloom as well - but includes a pointless romance thrown it which added nothing. A very good ending though. As to McEwan's portrayal of Miss Marple - maybe I am too influenced by Hickson - but it doesn't strike me as capturing the character in the books. Too active, too cheery and just not right. She kind of buzzes around as opposed to Hickson who just sits, knits and listens.
Murder is Easy (2009) – 5.0
Murder is easy. Yes I suppose it can be. I imagine hundreds go unsolved or unknown every year. They keep finding bodies in the woods or mountains years after they went missing. Too long to know if it was murder. You just need to be a bit careful, not get caught doing it or carrying it away or make it look like an accident. How many deaths do they put down to accidental that were murder. It is hard proving someone murdered someone else. Don’t confess is rule number 1. And be sure that there is not some little elderly innocent looking lady about with light blue eyes asking questions and offering tea. That would be Miss Marple of course whose hobby in old age is capturing killers. And she is very good at it. I have been reading the Miss Marple Short Stories and nothing gets by the old lady as she sits there and knits.
I was curious about this episode of the TV show starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple. She came after Geraldine McEwan retired. Julia may be my less favorite. Not terrible by any means but a bit too young and very obvious in her snooping. This was based on a novel of the same name by Christie and like the film By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Miss Marple is dropped into the plot in which she had no business. In the book it is solved by a policeman while here Marple works with an ex-policeman. And does most of the figuring out. Marple is on a train minding her own business as much as she is able to when the older woman (Sylvia Syms) across from her asks if Scotland Yard is open because she has to report two murders and another likely coming. And off she goes. Only to be murdered. When Marple reads about this unlike most of us who at most report it to the police, she decides to go to this small quiet English village where people are dropping like flies and figure it out. Helping her is the ex-policeman played by pre-fame Benedict Cumberbatch. Two years later he would be playing another sleuth. Sherlock Holmes. There is a 1982 version of the book which I watched a while back and it has no Miss Marple but also changes pretty much everything from the book with American Bill Bixby looking for the killer.
Greenshaw’s Folly (2013) – 6.0
This is part of the Julia McKenzie Miss Marple series. I don't really like her portrayal as Marple - though I am not really sure why. Just not opaque and old enough. But I just finished reading the Complete Short Stories of Miss Marple and Greenshaw's Folly was the longest but still a short story. I was curious enough to see how they adapted it to watch this. For anyone who wants to read some enjoyable and not at all suspenseful easy to gulp short stories, these are fun. Most of them are people sitting around talking about mysteries and crimes they have come upon in their lives and see who can guess what the outcome was. Of course, Miss Marple sitting quietly doing her knitting figures them all out to everyone's amazement.
So what do you do if you have a short story and need to stretch it to 90-minutes? Well of course add characters and sub-plots. The crime itself and the solution stay just the same but they add an abusive father, a drunk priest, a young boy, a snooping reporter, two other murders and a scandal long in the past about experimental polio vaccines that were killing orphans. None of that is in the book. But for the most part it works especially after the murder of the main character which takes place at about the half way mark. It is a gallop after that. The police have the wrong man of course till Marple puzzles it out. In the end the not too smart cop says "A perfect murder"; to which Marple adds "Not quite perfect" leaving off the "You idiot".
Death on the Nile (2004) – 7.0
"It seems you had thought of everything except for one thing. Hercule Poirot". Yes, if you plan to commit murder, perhaps you should wait till Poirot is not around. It may be inconvenient, it may be annoying after such well-laid plans but it is for the best. There will always be another opportunity. This is from the TV series starring David Suchet. The series lasted from 1989 to 2013 consisting of 70 episodes. Suchet starred in all of them. I watched a bunch of these years ago and was curious whether they covered Death on the Nile and they did - season or series nine, episode three which I happened to have. Interestingly, for what it is worth it is rated higher on IMDB than either of the two films. And it is quite good though clearly a TV production. It doesn't have the all-star cast that the two films had - the best they could come up with were David Soul, James Fox and Emily Blunt as the wealthy man-stealer long before she became well-known, This was only her fourth credit.
But they did have Suchet who for fans of the books is the only legitimate Poirot. Albert Finney as Poirot (Murder on the Orient Express) is much too belligerent and rude and his Belgian accent is all over the place; Peter Ustinov in a series of films as Poirot is too informal, jokey and wispy; and Branagh is Poirot on steroids. Only Suchet got him right - the mannerisms, the way he walks in small steps, his old world charm. As he explains in the documentary Being Poirot, he read all the books, took notes and tried to get him down right out of the mind of Agatha Christie. He is too subdued for movies on the screen - never a man of action but for TV he was just right.
This covers all the same territory as the two films but without all the bloat. It comes in at 90 minutes while the 1978 version was 140 minutes and the 2022 version is at 127 minutes. This gets to the murder much more quickly and that is when the film and the book get interesting. You need the background certainly but not to go on forever. Still I think I prefer the two films over this mainly because of the casts - the 1979 version had so many they were tripping over one another and this last version did all right as well and really piled on the glitz. As off as Branagh's characterization is, I found his angry avenging angel fascinating. Poirot in the books is an avenging angel but he does it quietly, politely - though in this film after telling the murderer the quote above leans in further and says "The executioner here is very efficient".
I always feel a bit guilty when I watch a Miss Marple TV show without Joan Hickson as Miss Marple. She is the only one who really counts but every generation seems to need a new Miss Marple. From 2004 to 2013, 23 episodes were produced - the first three seasons starred Geraldine McEwan and the next three seasons starred Julia McKenzie. For some fans of Miss Marple, these are their favorites - I put that down to either poor taste, not having read the books or not seen the Hickson ones. Still it is Miss Marple. The odd thing about the latter series is that they took some of Christie's standalone books and added Miss Marple to them and that is the case here. This novel was written in 1931 and Miss Marple is nowhere to be seen. In fact, Miss Marple had only been created by Christie the previous year in Murder at the Vicarage and wasn't to show up again till 1942 with The Body in the Library. Poirot was her bread and butter.
I have not read The Sittaford Mystery but did read the plot and this has a resemblance to it like a third cousin. But it is a decent little mystery that keeps the killer well hidden from view. A group of people get stuck in a country house because of a snow storm and someone is killed and a young woman investigates and solves it. In this one Miss Marple (McEwan) is one of the people stuck and with the help of the young woman, she figures it out without ever leaving the house she is staying at. Only hearing the clues from the young woman and a another man. McEwan is ok as Marple but Hickson had those watery blue eyes that were so intelligent and when she figured it out, the eyes showed it. Timothy Dalton is in this as well.
