grantss 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.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU Nothing is serious in this criminal detective and private eye story. It is all humor, oh no, fun really. But who is getting the fun out of the story? Agatha Christie? For sure, and she even manages to put a direct allusion at her famous dramatic success in London for more years than anyone else, The Mousetrap. But she is making fun at a bishop, a lord and a few other social entities. And she enjoys it enormously. But we could wonder if it is not Miss Marple who is making fun of all these heavy heads and straight jacketed minds. We would be right too. She obviously makes fun of the poor detective inspector or chief inspector, of the captain, of a few more people in the dear society of Winchester. She appears as an eccentric, and she cultivates that appearance because one has to keep up appearances and because that's her true hallmark and method to capture the attention of those she wants not to see what she is really doing. To go inconspicuous, this Miss Marple knows we have to go very visible. But it could also be Margaret Rutherford who is enjoying herself at our expense, and there too I think we have a point. She seems to be enjoying herself so much that she could be God himself come down incognito. This film is a little gem of such nice detective suspense laced and stuffed with a lot of British or English humor, with a lot of tongues in a lot of cheeks. Quite interesting if we consider it as a remnant and a testimony of a time when computers did not exist and scientific police was not yet a glimmer in the eye of an administrative law and order progenitor. And we managed to arrest criminals in those days when we did not even have a computer to process and identify finger prints.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Andy Howlett To many of my generation (now in their fifties), Margaret Rutherford takes some beating as Miss Marple - in fact she *is* Miss Marple, and Joan Hickson etc are merely fakes. These four films (She Said, Most Foul, At The Gallop and Ahoy) may not be accurate representations of the original stories, but they do invite repeated viewing and have what modern films lack - charm. They also have good solid characters and a light-hearted approach that makes them so watchable. Margaret Rutherford may not have had a terrific range, but what she did, she did with enormous confidence and style, and she is never overshadowed in any scene she plays, which is virtually every one. All great fun from the moment that catchy theme tune plays (you'll be humming it for weeks afterwards) to the final credits, and you are left feeling satisfied. That's what they did in the 50's and 60's.

jamesraeburn2003 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.