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Summary: See my review of each individual Aunt Jane movie
Review: In case it gets cross-posted this is a review of [Agatha Christie Collection 1 - Boxed Set ASIN: 6303111564] This collection contains four Aunt Jane Movies ("Sleeping Murder," "A Caribbean Mystery," "The Mirror Crack'..."). There is no way to rank these movies as to which one is best. They are like shoes; everyone has a different favorite.I did look it up to find that all of Agatha Christie's full Miss Marple novels were made in to movies with Joan Hickson as Miss Jane Marple. And this set has 5. Collection 2 (1986) ASIN: 630340488X, contains 5 more. Then there are three individual films not in the collection boxes. If you do not obtain them all you will be haunted for the rest of your life wondering what you missed.
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Summary: Great Aunt Jane
Review: Because stars can get packaging and content mixed up, I always use stars for content. The product can be described in the review. In this case many people are disappointed with the quality of the recordings. I am concerned with the availability and for one am glad to get a copy while they are still being published. "Sleeping Murder"
"Very dangerous to believe people, I haven't for years" This film is an excellent adaptation of Agatha Christie's book. The actors were well chosen. Géraldine Alexander and John Moulder-Brown is a convincing newly wed couple. The couple gets to solve the lion's share of the mystery with guidance from Miss Marple of who warned them not to pursue the mystery. The location is beautiful and requires a vision of the sea. As with most Marple mysteries everyone and no one did it. In fact we are not sure that there was an "it" to did?
So get out your teacakes and sit back watching that new fangled invention that the Americans like (the TV) and be swept away to the Sleeping Murder. "A Caribbean Mystery"
Introducing Jason Rafiel A relative of Aunt Jane's pays her way for a rest in the West Indies. There she is still sort of out of place with the exception of talkative Major Palgrave who turns up dead. Aunt Jane is teaming up with and usually out guessing another guest (the exocentric millionaire) Mr. Rafael. In the process a few more murders show up and everyone looks suspicious. This story introduces you to Jason Rafiel who will turn up again in "Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, V. 7: Nemesis (1986) ASIN: 6303404855.
I t was an intriguing touch to have the dead person's spirit supposed to come back after nine days to get revenge.
You will want to view this movie several times to see how the plot could have gone. Later this movie will be like a friend and just need watching again. "The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side"
Mirror Cracked from Side to Side Aunt Jane finds herself at a local an annual summer garden party hosted by the new owners of Gossington Hall. The new owner is an aging movie star who is at odds with the studio producing the latest movie. A visitor mysteriously dies. People start dropping like flies and the Movie Star (Marina) knows she is next. The title of the movie is taken from "The Lady of Shallot" Joan Hickson is Miss Marple. Agatha Christie always considered her as the ideal Miss Marple; she shows this through her reserve savvy. Jane takes an interactive interest in the mystery and yet each character as part of the discovery, stands on their own. The ending of the story is as is in life, it is appropriate not black and white judgmental. "4.50 From Paddington"
4.50 From Paddington A woman is being strangled and there is a witness. The police are can not find any evidence. So it is up to Miss Marple with help from Lucy Eyelesbarrow an independent maid. Notice how Aunt Jane is always several steps ahead of the others in planning. Watch the expressions when Aunt Jane grates on David Horovitch as Detective Inspector Slack. "...When one of us is clever enough to find the body." The story does not totally follow the book yet it has the unmistakable Aunt Jane feel. John Hallam has fun playing randy Cedric Crackenthorpe watch him again playing "Lord Rhysart" in "A Morbid Taste for Bones" (1997) 156938195X
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Summary: Falsely advertised, but a good set of flicks
Review: Because I have a hearing deficit, I always look for movies with subtitles/captions. In its technical info here at Amazon, this set is advertised to have English subtitles; it does not. The stories are still interesting to the rest of the family, but they have to stop and explain to me every few minutes if I am to know what is happening.
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Summary: Tea, crumpets and murder!
Review: Excellent value for money are these faithful adaptations of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novels. Faithful at least to the spirit and atmosphere of the books. 4.50 from Paddington was also published as What Mrs McGillicuddy Saw, and that was my favorite adaptation, although The Mirror Crack'd was very well done, too. Joan Hickson is very much Miss Marple, all faded and sloping bosomed,and wrinkly pink and white, not bustling and robust like the old Hollywood version which made me cringe.Very enjoyable civilised viewing for all anglophiles. One issue, A Caribbean Mystery is set in Barbados, where I live, and yes it still does look exactly as it does in the film, although set 4 decades ago.All the black actors except one are British(the priest at a funeral is Wendell Smith, a local actor with a terribly fake accent!)I've never heard or seen the ritual performed at the gravesite in Barbados, and Christie certainly never mentions it in her book. Otherwise these movies are very beautifully done, and very authentic in their portaryal of life (and death) in small enclosed societies, both British and Barbadian.Add these as companions to your Christie library.
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Summary: "It is dangerous to believe people. I haven't for years ..."
Review: There she sits: A white-haired lady dressed in tweeds, a pair of knitting needles in her lap, more interested in village gossip than in the goings-on of the world at large - and out of nothing, she utters sentences like that. For more likely than not, another murder has been committed; and Miss Jane Marple, elderly spinster from the village of St. Mary Mead, just happens to find herself near the scene of the crime. And also more likely than not, while the police are still toddling around searching for clues she'll find the solution - relying on her ever-unfailing "village parallels;" those seemingly innocuous incidents of village life making up the sum of Miss Marple's knowledge of human nature, to which she routinely turns in unmasking even the cleverest killer. "Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner - Miss Wetherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Of the two Miss Marple is the more dangerous," already observes Vicar Clement, the narrator of Miss Marple's first adventure, 1930's "Murder at the Vicarage" (the small screen version of which is unfortunately not part of this first set, which features four post-WWII stories, but of the second set, which reunites three pre-war mysteries with 1952's "They Do It With Mirrors" and 1971's "Nemesis," the sequel to this set's episode "A Caribbean Mystery"). Originally airing on TV in the 1980s, the BBC's adaptations of Agatha Christie's twelve Miss Marple novels featured Joan Hickson in the title role; quickly establishing her as the quintessential Miss Marple even in the view of the grandmother (or rather, grand-aunt) of all village sleuths and "noticing kinds of persons"'s creator, Dame Agatha herself. (After seeing Hickson in an adaptation of her "Appointment With Death," as early as 1946 Christie reportedly sent her a note expressing the hope she would "play my dear Miss Marple.") Prior realizations, partly involving rather high-octane casts, had seen as Miss Marple, inter alia, Angela Lansbury and Margaret Rutherford, but had been decidedly less faithful to Christie's books. While Lansbury holds her own fairly well when compared to the character's literary original in 1980's "Hollywood does Christie" version of "The Mirror Crack'd" (and that movie's ageing actresses' showdown featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak is a delight to watch) the four movies starring Rutherford are only loosely based on Christie's books: Dame Margaret's Miss Marple, although itself likewise a splendid performance, has about as much to do with Agatha Christie's demure and seemingly scatterbrained village sleuth as Big Ben does with the English countryside, and of the scripts, only "Murder, She Said" is an adaptation of a Miss Marple mystery ("4:50 From Paddington"), whereas two of the others - "Murder at the Gallop" and "Murder Most Foul" - are actually Hercule Poirot stories ("After the Funeral" and "Mrs. McGinty's Dead," respectively), and "Murder Ahoy" is based on a completely independent screenplay. Following the rule that ever since Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade every great private detective needs a policeman he can outwit, the creators of the BBC series inserted the character of Inspector Slack (David Horovitch) into almost all of the storylines - hardly in keeping with the literary originals, which are set over a period of more than 30 years and thus, exceed the career span of a policeman already advanced on his professional path at the time of his first encounter with Miss Marple; even if the BBC's Slack is promoted from D.I. in "Murder at the Vicarage" to Superintendent in "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side." Yet, Hickson's and Horovitch's face-offs are a fun addition; and one is almost ready to pity Slack, who hardly ever gets a foot down vis-a-vis Miss Marple's quick rejoinders and, in the words of her friend, retired Scotland Yard chief Sir Henry Clithering, "wonderful gift to state the obvious." (During a conversation with Inspector Craddock in "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side," Slack - whom Miss Marple herself, in the TV adaptation of "Murder at the Vicarage," has already likened to a railway diesel engine, or in that story's literary original to a shoe vendor intent on selling you patent leather boots while completely ignoring your request for brown calf leather instead - unaware that he is talking to one of Aunt Jane's nephews, rather unsubtly credits her with having "a mind like a meat cleaver.") Of the four episodes contained here, three are based on fairly well-known mysteries: In 1957's "4:50 From Paddington" Miss Marple seeks the help of professional housekeeper Lucy Eyelesbarrow to investigate the murder of a woman, whom the village sleuth's friend Mrs. McGillicuddy has seen being strangled from a passing train, and whose body must have disappeared somewhere on the grounds of the Crackenthorpe family estate Rutherford Hall. (In the original, this, too, is a story featuring Inspector Craddock, not Slack.) 1962's "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side" (whose title is based on a line from Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott") revisits the grounds of Gossington Hall, erstwhile home to Miss Marple's friend Dolly Bantry, who has sold the estate to ageing Hollywood star Marina Gregg. At a charity benefit, the charity's secretary is found dead - and much points to Miss Gregg as the intended victim. "A Caribbean Mystery" (1965) sees Miss Marple in a for her most unusual West Indian setting, solving the murder of Major Palgrave, who was killed in an attempt to prevent him from foiling his murderer's even more sinister intentions. This episode also establishes the title of its sequel "Nemesis," although in the original it is Miss Marple herself, not her new friend, rich old Mr. Rafiel, who names her thus. "Sleeping Murder" (1976) finally was Christie's last Miss Marple story; although it is less the old lady herself than newly-weds Giles and Gwenda Reed who act as detectives, with Miss Marple's help trying to get to the bottom of Gwenda's unsettling visions relating to their new home, which she conceivably cannot have known previously, and a murder occurring there over 20 years earlier.
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Summary: I love Miss Marple, but these DVD's don't do her justice..
Review: I watched all the Miss Marple's as my Mother & I are big fans of Agatha Christie's many books. I watched the series when it ran years ago, and was looking forward with great anticiption to the DVD's. I must say this is the worst job of transferring a beautifully produced television series to DVD. There were so many artifacts from cramming everything onto single disks that they are in many cases, completely unviewable. I would recommend renting this set from Netflix or somewhere before purchasing them. This is such a major disappointment. I loved the series and waited with great anticipation for their release, only to discover they're unwatchable.
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Summary: Great fun!
Review: I delayed ordering this set because of a couple of negative comments from others who had purchased it and complained about poor picture quality. I never once was distracted by scratches, faded frames or other imperfections in the DVD release. I have purchased the other two collections (Set Two and the Gift Set) and will be quite satisfied if they are of like quality. If you are unfamiliar with the Miss Marple series starring Joan Hickson this is a wonderful introduction. Sleeping Murder, A Caribbean Mystery and 4:50 from Paddington are great fun for Marple fans.
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Summary: Missing Scenes.
Review: Although these are excellent, it's too bad that scenes from the orginal BBC versions are missing. Especially disheartening is the absence of the wonderful kitchen scene from The 4:50 from Paddington. I guess PBS and A&E chopped of bits to fit American broadcast times instead of the open-ended British timings.
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Summary: Christie Fan-Upset by Grainy picture
Review: I did not heed the warning of the grainy look of the dvds that so many had perfectly described. I have seen these previously but,I still wanted them for my library. The price of these dvds warranted a much better quality. I suggest you go to your lending library to take a look at the quality before you decide to purchase.
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Summary: Agatha Christie would be ashamed
Review: Joan Hickson is THE Miss Marple. She's perfect in her role. All the other actors are well picked too. These are great episodes, but the simple fact is that these DVDs jsut don't have great visuals. The picture is dark, and you get sort of a musky feel from watching. Stick to the VHS. I hear it's a lot better.
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