Murder Most Foul Murder Most Foul Murder Most Foul is the third of four Miss Marple films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Loosely based on the novel "Mrs McGinty's Dead" by Agatha Christie, it stars Margaret Rutherford as Miss Jane Marple, Bud Tingwell as Inspector Craddock, and Stringer Davis (Rutherford's real-life husband) as Mr. Stringer. The story is ostensibly based on the original Christie story, but notably changes the action and characters. Hercule Poirot is replaced by Miss Marple and most other characters are not in the original story. The film was released in 1964 and directed by George Pollock, with David Pursall credited with
Agatha Christie However, unlike Conan Doyle, Christie resisted the temptation to kill her detective off while he was still popular. She saw herself as an entertainer whose job was to produce what the public liked, and the public liked Poirot. She did marry off Poirot's companion Captain Hastings in an attempt to trim her cast commitments. In contrast, Christie was fond of Miss Marple. However, the Belgian detective's titles outnumber the Marple titles more than two to one. This is largely because Christie wrote numerous Poirot novels early in her career, while "The Murder at the Vicarage" remained the sole Marple novel