Murder Is Easy

Pretty good mystery. Lesley-Anne Down has never looked better and Bill Bixby portrays the hapless American well enough. Plot twists abound and the viewer is left with a very satisfying mystery. Agatha Christie would approve!

Murder is Easy (based on the novel Murder is Easy aka Easy to Kill) differs from the Agatha Christie novel in that the amateur sleuth Luke Fitzwilliams is changed to American Luke Williams for American TV-Movie reasons. Aptly so, that an American actor (Bill Bixby) could assume the role. Having said that, it is fitting to say that Murder is Easy is a wonderful adaptation for television. Old-time greats Olivia De Havilland and Helen Hayes have some nice spots as British spinsters Honorea Waynflete and Lavinia Fullerton. Other Brit stalwarts Timothy West, Shane Briant, Lee Lawson, and the stunningly beautiful Lesley-Anne Down round out the great cast. Also in an early role was Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean) as Mr. Ellsworthy. Bill Bixby is adequate, but Olivia De Havilland is very engaging in one of her latter day roles as Miss Waynflete, as is the great Helen Hayes as Miss Fullerton.

Wonderful English countryside scenery, a great cast and an engaging story are more than enough reasons to view this movie over and over again.

Agatha Christie's 1939 story has been updated to the Eighties and it's hero/protagonist made an American allowing for the casting of Bill Bixby as Luke Williams, mathematical genius and computer programmer. He takes a fateful ride on a British commuter train and meets up with Helen Hayes who has an important errand to run.

Helen's a talkative old biddy who is worried that there have been a number of strange deaths in her small village recently and she fears that village constable Freddie Jones isn't quite up to a homicide investigation. She's confides in Bixby and then gets run down by a hit and run driver as she leaves the train.

Bixby's mathematical mind can't take in the random probabilities of all this coincidence and it intrigues him. He goes back to Hayes's village and turns detective, annoying village constable Jones, but finding romance with Lesley Anne Down and a host of suspects and a couple more deaths before the mystery is solved.

Among other inhabitants at the village is the local librarian Olivia DeHavilland and Timothy West who owns several newspapers. It's a pity that the story called for Helen Hayes to be killed off immediately so there could be no scenes with DeHavilland and Hayes.

As this story was written in 1939 I suspect that Agatha Christie had Lord Beaverbrook in mind for Timothy West's character. Audiences in 1982, especially American ones couldn't possibly appreciate the satire that Christie was employing with West as the tyrannical ego-maniacal newspaper publisher. Still I suspect citizens of the United Kingdom of the older generations knew quite well who West's character was modeled on.

I don't think the updating especially hurt the story however. The cast does very well by their roles and it's an intriguing film and idea that Helen Hayes voices.

Bill Bixby, not actually turning into the Incredible Hulk, tries to solve the deaths of citizens in one of those quaint English villages where murderers seem to thrive. A nice fair adaption of a fun Christie book with pretty Leslie Anne and a hefty Olivia huffing and puffing thru the scenery. She's a wicked gas here.

"Murder is Easy" begins promisingly enough, with the charming Helen Hayes boarding a train to London, where she plans to reveal to the Scotland Yard the identity of a serial killer above suspicion in her quiet little village. Unfortunately, she gets killed about 10 minutes in, and we're stuck with the bland Bill Bixby as our lead for the rest of the movie. Bixby's character acts like an amateur sleuth, but he barely figures out one thing right in the entire movie! With the exception of the lovely Lesley-Anne Down and the dependable veteran Olivia de Havilland, the rest of the cast is forgettable and their characters underdeveloped. The direction is flat. However, there is one very well-done bit towards the end: a confrontation between 2 characters who keep talking to each other suggestively, and the viewer knows that one of them is the killer but NOT which one, and only after the whole thing is over do we find out the truth. Those 5 minutes, and the 10 featuring Helen Hayes, cannot fully compensate for the dullness of the other 80, though. (**)