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4:50 From Paddington

1987, Movie, NR, 100 mins

4:50 From Paddington: Review

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Though the average TV mystery-movie fan could obviate the skullduggery almost as fast as Miss Marple — and certainly faster than the police — Marple-ites will enjoy sleuthing sleuthing along with their unassuming idol. On a train ride home from London, drowsy, elderly Elspeth McGillicuddy (Mona Bruce) thinks she glimpses a strangulation-murder on the train passing in the opposite direction. Fortunately, Elspeth counts Miss Jane Marple (Joan Hickson) among her friends. When chauvinistic, agist Inspector Slack (David Horovitch) doesn’t take the old lady seriously, Miss Marple gets her dander up and declares the Crackenthorpe Estate the likeliest spot for dumping a body and enlists Lucy Eyelesbarrow (Jill Meager), who's steadier on her pins, as a surrogate snoop. Lucy's mission is to infiltrate the Crackenthorpe domicile as an housekeeper, and since cranky Luther Crackenthorpe (Maurice Denham) has a history of scaring off the help, his daughter, Emma (Joanna David), welcomes a take-charge servant like Lucy. Lucy quickly becomes aware of resentment crackling throughout the household; sons Harold (Bernard Brown), Alfred (Robert East) and Cedric Crackenthorpe (John Hallam) have never duplicated their father's success with money and are just waiting for him to die. Lucy vindicates Miss Marple’s faith and Elspeth's veracity by finding the body of a past-her-prime ballerina named Anna Stravinska (Juliette Mole) in a storage area. Could Anna have borne a child to Luther’s fourth son, the late war hero Edmond Crackenthorpe? While keeping a watchful eye on the Crackenthorpe sons, Lucy also discovers that Emma has been less than forthcoming about her engagement to Luther’s solicitous physician, Dr. John Quimper (Andrew Burt). After shifty Harold dies of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot, the mystery seems wrapped up. But Miss Marple and Lucy recognize that simple solutions are seldom accurate ones, especially since Luther Crackenthorpe's will is a tontine. A tontine specifies that assets are divided equally among all surviving heirs, and that the inheritance of anyone who dies goes back into the pot — a virtual invitation to murder. This entertaining whodunit pits logical matron Miss Marple against a short-sighted copper who envies her success rate, and Christie’s addition of Lucy, a hand-picked Marple trainee, adds zest to her crime-solving formula. leave a comment --Robert Pardi
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