Murder With Mirrors (1985)

A man (John Woodvine) believes his stepmother (Bette Davis) might be in trouble so he asks her best friend Jane Marple (Helen Hayes) to invite herself to her friend's large country estate. But before he is able to tell Miss Marple what his suspicions are, he is murdered. With the assistance of the local police inspector (Leo McKern), Miss Marple does some sleuthing to ferret out the murderer. Based on the Agatha Christie novel THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS, this is one of three Miss Marple films that Helen Hayes did for television. While she doesn't come across as remotely English, Hayes brings her own pixie-ish charm to Christie's old maid amateur detective. It's not one of Christie's better mysteries, it's fairly easy to figure out who the killer is and how they did it. The suspects aren't a particularly interesting lot either. Some of the actors like Dorothy Tutin as Davis's widowed daughter and Tim Roth as a wayward cosh boy flesh out their thinly written parts by their strong talent but most of the others are rather colorless. This was made after Davis's stroke and though the effects of the stroke were still obvious, she seems more sturdy than frail. Directed by Dick Lowry with a forgettable score by the usually reliable Richard Rodney Bennett. With John Mills, Frances De La Tour, Anton Rodgers and John Laughlin.