Good concept, poorly executed.

best movie i've ever seen.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A classic murder mystery, based on the Agatha Christie novel "Mrs McGinty's dead".Good set up, intriguing plot development, thrilling finale. You're kept guessing until the last moment. Many red herrings, but not overdone. Quite funny at times too, sometimes extremely so. There is a light- heartedness which runs throughout the movie (this is helped by the score), though this does not detract in any big way from the drama of the plot. Margaret Rutherford is great, as always, in her role as Miss Marple. Good support from a cast that includes the Australian actor Charles Tingwell as Inspector Craddock.

George Pollock returned again to direct Margaret Rutherford as Miss Jane Marple, Stringer Davis as her friend Mr. Stringer, and Charles Tingwell as police inspector Craddock. Here, Miss Marple is the lone holdout on a jury, convinced that the accused is innocent. She then joins a theatrical troupe in an effort to investigate the case herself. Based on Agatha Christie's novel "Mrs. McGinty's Dead",(a Hercule Poirot novel again! Why not a Miss Marple novel? There are plenty of them...) This isn't as good as the first two, but has a fine cast to compensate. There does seem to be some confusion if this or "Murder Ahoy" is the last in the series or not, but it makes little difference.

This is probably the most densely plotted of the three Margaret Rutherford Marple films I've seen so far - it is based on a Hercule Poirot story ("Mrs. McGinty's Dead") which has already been adapted for the screen as part of the David Suchet series, but although I have seen that film, I did not remember much of it beyond the initial setup, so I was caught up in the various murders and red herrings that follow. I also think this might be Rutherford's top performance as Marple - she has some great facial expressions (like when she's teasing Mr. Stringer), some great lines ("A Marple's word is her bond!"), some great tricks (a small mirror attached to an umbrella!), and at the end she even gets to fire a gun - something that would be unthinkable for any other actress who ever played this character, but fits perfectly with her portrayal! The supporting cast is also strong in this one. The only problem with the film is the same with the previous entries: occasionally it moves like molasses. *** out of 4.

There are three most important reasons why you should watch this film, even if it is in black and white and slightly old in style. We would not make films like that any more even for TV, but we could also say that about Hitchcock or Charlie Chaplin. So what! Well, be positive and as I said before there are three main positive reasons for you to watch this film, or any film of that series, because it is a series. First it is Agatha Christie, and Agatha Christie is the most English woman that writes the most English detective stories with the most English "private eye" or "sleuth" no one in no Hollywood or even Bollywood could think of or imagine. Second Miss Marple is the sleuth of the film and that Miss Marple is an old fire-fox at that. She knits when on duty in a jury, and then she blocks the jury in its decision, one to eleven. Her imagination is totally twisted and warped, just what is needed to find the criminal in the story, a typical English criminal, no serial killer or pure psychotic violent schizophrenic or whatever twisted lunatic you may think of. No, just a plain English person who for some reason or other has to kill someone out of logic, maybe not our logic, but a plain simple logic that says when endangered or menaced a plain ordinary simple unremarkable individual has to kill to survive. In this case the menace is blackmailing about some old childhood crime that had gone unpunished. And the third reason is that this Miss Marple is played by Margaret Rutherford who is a real pleasure on the screen or the stage, in fact I should say was of course since the film is from 1964 and she was already canonically old then. She is a real treat because she really acts and she turns her old age, her deformed body and her drooping skin and flesh into visual assets to build her character. This too is a very great particularity of England: first actors work equally on the stage or for the cinema or for TV, and they do make an effort to provide parts to older actors, and thus to give a picture of real society in which old people are part of our daily social landscape. Now to get the detail or details about the crime you'll have to go and watch the film. But be sure that in the most English way possible the private eye has the last word in the case over the public police officer and of course the woman sleuth has the upper hand over the male detective. Some will say the film is quaint, but that quaintness is a whole culture that you may not be able to witness any more in real life. The cinema is our unfailing memory.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines