Review: Murder Ahoy (1964)

Murder Ahoy

Rating

Director

George Pollock

Screenplay

David Pursall, Jack Seddon

Length

1h 33m

Starring

Margaret Rutherford, Lionel Jeffries, Charles Tingwell, William Mervyn, Joan Benham, Stringer Davis, Nicholas Parsons, Miles Malleson, Henry Oscar

MPAA Rating

Unrated

Review

The final of four films made with Margaret Rutherford as the Agatha Christie sleuth Miss Marple, Murder Ahoy! helps the series go out on a stronger note, though perhaps as the least Christie-like of them all.

Unlike Rutherford’s first outing, her final one is a stark departure from the cozy British landscape. Marple has been appointed to a trust that oversees a sailing vessel aboard which miscreant youths can be turned into fine, upstanding young men. When one of her fellow trustees dies mysteriously, she embarks on a tour of the ship intending to unravel a mystery that piques her interests. While her friend Mr. Stringer (Stringer Davis) investigates from shore, Marple begins putting pieces together aboard the HMS Battledore where she hopes to trick the killer into stepping out into the open.

The mystery here is fairly superficial. While there are the typical additional killings to keep potential witnesses silent, it is all handled in such a bland, dispassionate way that the film must rely on its game cast to sell the material. David Pursall and Jack Seddon, who penned the prior outing, clearly never met a Christie mystery that they liked. While this time they haven’t credited an adaptation by name, calling it an original screenplay, the foundational setting can be found in a Marple work called They Do It With Mirrors. Even without that core source material, it is obvious that the choice is to make a great Rutherford Marple work rather than a great Christie adaptation.

Rutherford is certainly aware of this and hams it up to the best of her ability. She is at her feisty best this time and there’s seldom a frame of the film that isn’t dangerously amusing. Helping to make it so enjoyable is Battledore’s captain played by the engaging comedic talents of Lionel Jeffries. Jeffries plays his character’s flaws to the hilt, delivering a raucous performance. It isn’t incredibly believable, but this film establishes its lack of seriousness well before he shows up. He sets the film’s tone in a way beyond what even Rutherford could have.

Murder Ahoy! is certainly a clever little trifle, but probably shouldn’t have been a Miss Marple film. Turning the series into a more farcical event is as far removed from Christie’s legendary works as it can get, but damned if it isn’t entertaining. Completing the series of four really isn’t necessary unless you’re a Christie completist, but this one isn’t going to make you feel like you’ve made any headway in that list.