One of my all time favorites.

best movie i've ever seen.

Admirable film.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Let's see, this is an Agatha Christie murder mystery (which teases you with the supernatural at the start, but of course AC did not believe in the supernatural). There is a major character, who is of the right age to have committed the murder, had the motive and the opportunity, but NEVER gets implicated in the investigation, while several other minor characters are considered as the definitive suspects. Do you by any chance suppose that he or she will turn out to be the real killer? I don't know if Christie's story was so obvious on paper, but on the screen I spotted the killer as soon as he appeared, never changed my mind until the end, and I was actually right - something which happens in only about 10% of the mysteries I watch! Otherwise, this film is well-made, with an engaging performance by the lovely Geraldine Alexander, and a tense climax. Miss Marple herself is not the central character is this one, which works out fine. (**1/2)

The 1980s adaptations starring Joan Hickson are on the slow side by modern standards. This was in fact the last golden age of television before it was ruined by too many channels and the advent of the MTV attention span -- which has sadly affected us all, I fear. This version is lovingly crafted with delightful period details.Although, in its slowness, this version fails to build up the various suspects as sufficiently menacing, it is a good version which keeps quite faithful to the book. Geraldine Alexander is excellent as Gwenda and to my ears does a super New Zealand accent. John Moulder-Brown is a let-down as her unconvincing animatronic husband, beautifully dressed in the gent's outfitters styles of the period, but far too mannered in his perfect elocution. Joan Hickson does her stuff very well as usual.It is interesting (if depressing) to compare this with the travesty version starring Geraldine McEwan, where the plot has been mangled -- and garbled -- beyond recognition.

Mysteries of the past should be left alone; otherwise, they may awaken danger. Using that well-known idiom, Dame Agatha pens another whodunit, wherein a young married woman's infatuation with an old, stately English house translates into buried secrets and impending murder.Having already read Christie's novel and concluded that this story was not quite as good as some of her other works, I watched the BBC adaptation of "Sleeping Murder", not expecting a lot. The film, like the book, gets off to a slow, tedious start. The plot gets better as it plods along. Toward the end, Director John Davies injects some needed suspense. The screenplay is a bit talky. Acting is adequate. I especially like Joan Hickson as Jane Marple who delightfully meddles in the business of a newlywed couple, and who naturally is a step, or several steps, ahead of everyone else in solving the crime.The story is not dependent on majestic scenery or unusual visual perspective, so that cinematography is fairly unimportant. But sets are important here, and so the filmmakers have given adequate attention to production design and costumes. Overall, they have done a good job with a Christie story that is relatively weak, and thus rendered a film that is reasonably entertaining.

POSSIBLE SPOILERSA young man called Giles Reed (Moulder-Brown) returns home with his New Zealand raised wife, Gwenda (Alexander). They buy a house in the small seaside town of Dartmouth in Devon and a number of strange things happen. Gwenda feels that she has been in the house before and she sees a strange apparition on the staircase of a man strangling a pretty blonde woman. The couple contact Miss Marple (Hickson) and after some investigation, they discover that when Gwenda's father sent her from India to live in New Zealand, they stopped off in England for a while and lived in the house that they have just bought. They also discover that Gwenda's father was committed to an asylum because he was obsessed with the fact that he may of strangled Gwenda's step mother and he committed suicide while inside. Giles and Gwenda are convinced that a murder did occur in the house, but the step mother had several affairs and any one of her lovers could have done it. Despite Miss Marple's advice not to dig up the past, they start their own investigation to find the real killer and clear her father's name even though it all happened twenty-years before.SLEEPING MURDER is a long and wordy adaptation of Christie's whodunit, but none of the talk is irrelevant to the film's plot twists and it is superbly acted throughout. Director John Davies does very able work and the settings are well chosen to suit the film's sinister mood. A few flashbacks would of helped things along.