Considering that audiences have had to endure seven Police Academy movies and 12 Friday the 13th entries, it seems especially cruel that only four movies starring the inimitable Margaret Rutherford as Jane Marple were produced in the early ’60s.

Directed by George Pollock, who has included some beautiful severe photography of drab autumn country, Murder She Said is an adroit Agatha Christie thriller oddly like a thirties pastiche.

at least the opening salvo is worth the time of any murder mystery fan who likes the way Christie weaves stories, even when they are altered in many ways for the visual medium.

Rutherford is a treat.