i must have seen a different film!!

Excellent but underrated film

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The good: well it has a jaunty theme song. At least it honors the original form in that the order we see things in is roughly the order of discovery by the detective.By this entry in the series, they had seriously lost their way. What genuinely started out as detective stories had morphed into humor-driven light entertainment. Characters are just silly. Slapstick appears for the first time.There is no deduction, only snooping. This Marple has no hard won village-centric wisdom. What she accidentally discovers, comes from the book she is reading that just so happens to be the pattern the murderer used. Once again, we have this old woman putting herself at risk, presuming that the murderer will confess to the hidden police before killing her.You should avoid this one.

In this last film in which Margaret Rutherford plays Ms. Jane Marple, the redoubtable old sleuth finds herself elected trustee of a restored sailing ship of the line which is now used as a training vessel for young criminal offenders. Kind of a British version of an American boot camp for the wayward youth. When one of the trustees dies of a heart attack while at a board meeting while trying to tell in a most dramatic fashion that something is afoul at the ship, Rutherford finds the cause of his death. His snuff box had been laced with strychnine. Does she go to the police with such information, she does not. In this case given the forensic science lab that Scotland Yard has which I daresay is superior even to her own, Inspector Charles Tingwell might have solved the crime on his own. No wonder this man wants to strangle her, she is withholding evidence in point of fact.That bit of business puts Murder Ahoy a bit over the line. It's a maxim in detective fiction that the private eye no matter how much the amateur always shows up the professional. But there are limits as to how far you can take it and I think Agatha Christie stepped over the line in this Marple story.But if she hadn't we wouldn't have had the pleasure of seeing Margaret Rutherford in full Navy regalia taking over the HMS Battledore and giving Captain Lionel Jeffries and his crew fits. Two murders later of ship's officers and we do find the real culprit.What was interesting about Murder Ahoy is that there are two separate criminal enterprises going on at the same time on the good ship Battledore. The first murder sets off a chain of events among the villains in which the group involved in one enterprise comes across the second conspiracy and the motives do get tangled up for the police. But of course not for Margaret Rutherford.Fittingly the whole thing is resolved on Trafalgar Day. It was quite a scheme that the murderer's fear of discovery caused the individual to become so homicidal.Margaret Rutherford is of course wonderful as Ms. Marple and she and Lionel Jeffries have some great scenes. Years ago I could have seen the master of the slow burn, Edgar Kennedy playing the part as Jeffries plays it.I don't think it's as good as some Christie stories, but her fans shouldn't mind at all.

Miss Marple joins the board of senior trustees for a youth reformation committee, which prides itself on reforming troublesome teenagers by means of naval cadet training on board a ship called The Battledore. But when one of her fellow trustees is murdered by his snuff being laced with poison, Miss Marple learns that he had just returned from a routine visit to The Battledore and she suspects that the motive for his murder must lie on the ship. Using her position as senior trustee, Miss Marple pays a visit to the ship much to the chagrin of the eccentric Captain Rhumstone (Lionel Jeffries) who seems anxious to get rid of her. With the help of her loyal friend Mr Stringer (Stringer Davis), she soon learns that the shore leave patrol has been committing a series of jewel thefts from the high society. But the question is which one? Meanwhile, Lieutenant Compton (Francis Matthews) has been run through with a sword and hung from the ship's yardarm and suspicion immediately falls on Sub Lieutenant Humbert (Derek Nimmo) whom didn't get along with Compton because they both fancied the same girl, Nurse Shirley (Norma Foster). As usual, Chief Inspector Craddock (Charles Tingwell) thinks he's got an open and shut case, but Miss Marple isn't convinced of Humbert's guilt even though the jewel robberies were all committed after high society parties, all of which he and Shirley had both attended. In her usual shrewd way, Miss Marple sets a trap for the killer and uncovers a big swindle attached to the higher ranks among the committee but not before Shirley is murdered by a poisoned spike primed to a mousetrap...Murder Ahoy was the fourth and final entry in the series of comedy whodunits starring Rutherford as Miss Marple. The series was doing well at the box office, but the producers were unable to get the rights to any more of Christie's works. In addition, this is the only one that wasn't adapted from a Christie novel and the film was produced in 1964, but released at the end of 1965 in order to space out the series. Following the end of the Miss Marple franchise, director Pollock would make one more feature before he more or less vanished from the scene. Another Christie, Ten Little Indians (see my review), for Fu Manchu producer Harry Alan Towers.All in all, Murder Ahoy is fantastic light hearted fun with Rutherford on fine form as usual as the spinster detective. She gets good support from Lionel Jeffries as the Captain and Stringer Davis offers his touching portrayal as the local librarian Mr Stringer who is Miss Marple's closest friend and is always concerned that her meddling may result in her getting bumped off, but its never any use as she is determined to unravel the mystery and she does in her own inimitable fashion. Moments to savour here include her sword fight with the killer at the climax when she assures her assailant "I must warn you that in 1931 I was the winner of the ladies fencing championship." Screenwriters David Pursall and Jack Seddon came up with quite a good storyline of their own and the identity of the killer is well concealed until the end, but I felt that the script could of been a little tighter. Nevertheless, its all good fun and Rutherford has no trouble in dominating the film with her uniquely individual performance as Miss Marple, George Pollock's direction is smooth and the atmospheric black and white camera-work of Desmond Dickinson is an added bonus.

I can't praise the opening theme by Ron Goodwin enough . If it doesn't get your feet tapping it's only because you've had your legs amputated or your ears cut off . It's amazing that Goodwin's theme to the MGM Ms Marple movies weren't nominated at any of the more prestigious film awards . In fact it's somewhat criminal that the only major award nomination Goodwin ever received was for FRENZY where he was nominated for a Golden Globe The rest of Goodwin's score might be criticised for being intrusive but like Sergei Prokofiev's Peter And The Wolf it need not apologise for telling the audience how they should feel . I'm afraid however that Goodwin probably deserved a better film because MURDER AHOY is camp nonsense mainly down to David Pursall and Jack Seddon's original screenplay , a screenplay that Agatha Christie herself didn't like hence didn't allow MGM to produce anymore original movies featuring Ms Marple and you can see her point , I mean the sword fight is just laughable . I also guess that in 1964 audiences in Britain were getting fed up with these quaint very English murder mysteries and were far more interested in an anti-hero like James Bond