like many screen adaptation of christie novel and the mirror crackd feature an all star cast and in this case the casting would seem inspired represent angela lansbury a miss marple and rock hudson a a film producer and elizabeth taylor a his movie star wife and kim novack a a rival screen queen and and tony curtis a novak lover and the producer of the film they be all make . but director guy hamilton be more interested in have his cast offer star turn than in actually serve the story and and the result be a strangely uneven and extremely plodding film that only come to life when taylor and novak square off in the series of hilariously write and perform cat fight that run throughout the movie . part of the problem lie in the source material . the mirror crackd be one of christie lesser novel and write in a very sparse style and lack christie usual knock out solution in it story of a fan who drop dead of poison at a film star reception . in order to flesh out the tale and the script pile extraneous scene upon extraneous scene with the taylor novak scenes a case in point represent enjoyable a they be and they actually have little to do with the story and so tend to slow the film down . to make matter bad and the performance be extremely casual at best . taylor and novak be extremely enjoyable in their scene together but elsewhere they be merely adequate . hudson and curtis be flat . and angela lansbury and a normally brilliant actress and have one of her rare failure with the role of jane marple . at most and this film be for viewer who want to be in on the last major cinematic gasp of taylor and novak and hudson and and curtis and those who derive a certain joy from evaluate the level of decay see here in the age cast . regretfully and this be particularly true of taylor and who be . shall we say . extremely ample . and most will enjoy see taylor and novak flog each other with nasty one liner deliver with considerable flair . but cat fight scene aside and the mirror crackd be just one very mild meow . gary f. taylor and aka gft and amazon reviewer .