Murder Ahoy!
| Murder Ahoy! | |
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Theatrical release poster by Tom Jung
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| Directed by | George Pollock |
| Written by | Agatha Christie (motifs) |
| Screenplay by | David Pursall Jack Seddon |
| Starring |
Margaret Rutherford Stringer Davis Lionel Jeffries Bud Tingwell |
| Music by | Ron Goodwin |
| Cinematography | Desmond Dickinson |
| Edited by | Ernest Walter |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
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Release date
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Running time
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93 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Murder Ahoy! is the last of four Miss Marple films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that starred Margaret Rutherford. As in the previous three, the actress plays Agatha Christie's amateur sleuth Miss Jane Marple, with Charles 'Bud' Tingwell as (Chief) Inspector Craddock and Stringer Davis (Rutherford's real-life husband) playing Mr Stringer.
The film was made in 1964 and directed by George Pollock, with David Pursall and Jack Seddon credited with the script. The music was by Ron Goodwin. Location shots included Denham Village and St Mawes, Cornwall.
Unlike the previous three films that were adapted from Christie novels – The 4.50 from Paddington (Murder, She Said – the only Miss Marple novel used), After the Funeral (a Poirot mystery, adapted for Miss Marple with the title Murder at the Gallop) and Mrs. McGinty's Dead (another Poirot novel, adapted as Murder Most Foul) – this film used an original screenplay that was not based on any of Christie's stories.
It does, however, employ elements of the Miss Marple story They Do It With Mirrors. Specifically, the Battledore is a training ship for teenage boys with criminal tendencies, who are supposedly being set on the straight and narrow path – when, in fact, one of the members of the crew is training them for careers in housebreaking. Likewise, in They Do It WIth Mirrors, Lewis Serrocold is running his wife's mansion, Stonygates, as a boarding school for delinquent youths, to straighten out their lives – but, in fact, he is training selected students to hone their criminal skills, not to give them up. That is the only element borrowed into the film from a Christie story.
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Wikipedia