This is the third (out of four) Agatha Christie adaptations starring Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple that I've seen and, even though I wasn't too keen on the depiction of the all-knowing small-town spinster since the first film already, it never really bothered me that much until now. Mrs. Rutherford was a great actress and she surely put a lot of devotion into her role of Miss Marple, but to me she never should have been a headstrong, boisterous and intrusive woman. From the many books, I know Miss Marple as a timid and fragile little old lady who's always right and much more intelligent than everybody else, but she modestly remains at the sideline to solve the crimes. In the film series, she more of an imposing hag and her intellect doesn't come so much from observation and deduction, but from nosing around and reading detective novels. It also didn't help that "Murder Ahoy" isn't based on an existing Agatha Christie novel but works from an original screenplay. There are references towards famous writings, for example "The Mouse Trap", but the setting and story twists clearly aren't from the hand of the almighty Queen of Crime. Miss Marple is welcomed as a new trustee of a ship on which juvenile delinquents are rehabilitated into potent young mariners, but during her first board meeting a fellow trustee is ingeniously killed via poisoned snuff. He looked like he was about to reveal a discovery he made during the last inspection of the ship, and so Miss Marple goes aboard with intention to figure out what secret was important enough to kill another man. The crew of the HMS Battledore isn't very happy to have her on board, and particularly Captain De Courcy wants her off as soon as possible, but Miss Marple's suspicion proves to be right when she and Mr. Springer discover that people are secretly leaving the ship at night for unknown reasons. I am possibly prejudiced because the story isn't based on a Christie novel, but I found it difficult to get into the plot and feel any sympathy for the characters. I prefer the murders to be committed in St. Mary Mead, where Miss Marple is much more at home than on a military vessel. She also doesn't any real investigating, but solves the crime by reading a book she found in the ship's library and one that the killer undoubtedly read as well. There isn't any suspense or mystery, not even during the confrontation with the culprit at the end. The one and only true strong point of "Murder Ahoy" is Lionel Jeffries' wildly enthusiast performance as Captain De Courcy-Rhumstone. What a brilliant but sadly underrated actor he was.

Decent murder mystery, based on the Agatha Christie novel "Miss Marple".Good set up, interesting setting, intriguing plot development, thrilling finale. Murderer is a bit obvious from a point but the revelation comes fairly late in the movie, so doesn't spoil it much.Very funny at times too, though, unlike Murder Most Foul, here the humour is overdone and often feels out of place. The portrayal of the ship's captain as dithering, babbling idiot was uncalled for, and introduced far too much slapstick into what should have been a reasonably serious movie.Margaret Rutherford is great, as always, in her role as Miss Marple. Good support from the usual crew of Stringer Davis, as Mr Stringer, and Charles Tingwell, as Chief Inspector Craddock.

This outing has Miss Jane Marple becoming a trustee for the Battledore ship, when an uncle of hers dies of old age. She attends the next meeting and already another murder falls at her feet, when a fellow trustee, having something important to say about his latest visit to the Battledore, keeps getting interrupted by the speaker who has the floor and finally getting a chance to speak and taking a whiff of his snuff, he begins, but abruptly dies.Of course, Craddock and the "very brisk" doctor think the victim died naturally from a heart attack. But Miss Marple finds out through some spilled snuff that he was poisoned by strychnine. She is determined to go aboard the Battledore to find out what he was trying to relate to other trustees and apprehend the killer.Rutherford is great as usual, with witty lines abound, but this entry, costarring Lionel Jeffries and written expressly for the screen and not based on Agatha Christie material, is probably the weakest of the four in the series. But, you'll probably enjoy it anyway, with Marple and Mr. Stringer trying to keep two shakes ahead of Inspector Craddock.

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