I'm having a love/hate (mostly "love", though) relationship with these four Agatha Christie adaptations that George Pollock directed during the first half of the 1960s and starred Margaret Rutherford as the unsurpassable spinster-detective Miss Marple. Although Mrs. Rutherford was a great actress who put a lot of devotion into her role of Miss Marple, the character 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's more of an imposing hag and her intellect doesn't come so much from observation and deduction, but from nosing around and setting traps. Still, when I manage to ignore my own personal prejudices, these four whodunits (all starting with the word "murder") are admittedly very entertaining and well worth checking out. I even daresay that "Murder Most Foul" is the second best of the quartet. "Murder, She Said" is the cream of the crop, but this installment outshines "Murder at the Gallop" (originally a Hercule Poirot story, like this one) and "Murder Ahoy" (which wasn't even based on existing Agatha Christie material). The first 5-10 minutes of "Murder Most Foul" are downright brilliant and incredibly funny, with Miss Jane Marple stealing the show in court during a murder trial. First, because she's nonchalantly knitting on the jury's bench and thus irritating the honorable judge, and secondly because she, as only member of the twelve-headed jury, stubbornly refuses to find the accused guilty of murder. Of course we immediately know that Miss Marple is right and her "sabotaging" the trial provides her with the required extra time to investigate and solve the crime herself, much to the nuisance of the patient police inspector Craddock. She quickly deducts that the victim was a former stage actress and got killed because she tried to blackmail someone who wasn't too impressed. Miss Marple infiltrates into the stage actors' association of the eccentric Driffold Cosgood, as the murdered woman played with them during the early fifties. The killer helps her to reduce the list of potential suspects, however, because more members of the same association turn up dead. The mystery aspects are overall compelling and there are a few inventive red herrings. Like in the other installments, the middle-section somewhat drags and feels overlong. The comical chemistry between Rutherford and her real-life husband Stringer Davis has worn out since the first film, but luckily there's always a sublime supportive cast, this time including Ron Moody and Meg Jenkins.

Margaret Rutherford has a lot of personality, charm and originality. And, indeed, she was born to play Miss Jane Marple. She's perfect as the character created by Agatha Christie. If "Murder Ahoy" is about poop, this "Murder Most Foul" made in the same year, 1964, by the same director, George Pollock, is good. The story is captivating and, in addition, we have Ron Moody, the famous Fagin in "Oliver!" (1968), Vorobyaninov of "The Twelve Chairs" (1970), and Uriah Heep in "David Copperfield" (1970). George Pollock directed also "Ten Little Indians" (1965), the most successful film adaptation of Agatha Christie, in my opinion.

Murder Most Foul begins with Margaret Rutherford as Jane Marple serving jury duty where she proceeds to deadlock the jury in what everyone, including her exasperated friend Charles Tingwell as Inspector Craddock thinks is an open and shut case. The poor defendant was found bent over the body of a hanged woman. It was his lucky day to have Rutherford on his jury of peers. No sooner than a mistrial is declared than Margaret is off to investigate and the trail leads to a traveling theatrical company. Two more murders of the company of strolling players occur and the original victim in fact was a former actress herself. Besides Tingwell as the arm of the law and Stringer Davis as Mr. Stringer and Margaret Rutherford's husband in real life, the cast of Murder Most Foul also includes Dennis Price and Ron Moody as a pair of fourth rate hams. They're the older members of the stock company, the younger ones are hams as well, but Price and Moody are hams with a lot of style. This is a fine addition to the Marple quartet that Margaret Rutherford did in the Sixties. Even though the story is actually from a Hercule Poirot mystery by Agatha Christie, it suits Rutherford just fine.

A little surprisingly this has turned out to be my personal favourite of the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple films. This is an adaptation of the Poirot novel 'Mrs McGinty's Dead' with Miss M inserted instead. I was expecting a very loose connection with the novel but actually this is a very clever re-working of the story indeed. All the basic elements are there and the writers manage to make the shift from 'residents in an English village' to theatrical boarding house very convincing. I love the mixing up of names from the novel (eg Sheila Rendell and Mrs Upward combine into young Sheila Upward) and the deliberate pacing as details are revealed (we only come to know about the important character of Rose (Eva) Kane towards the end).Margaret Rutherford continues to delight as a Miss M who is nothing like Christie's creation. The supporting players are all perfectly adequate though no-one is really outstanding (except maybe Megs Jenkins in the tiny role of a widow ready to snatch up poor Mr Stringer). Its the cleverness of the adaptation that delights here, the atmospheric filming, the broad comedy and Rutherford's bold performance are the other winning features. Highly recommended.