The Mystery of Edwin Drood * (1993, Robert Powell, Nanette Newman, Gemma Craven, Jonathan Phillips) – Classic Movie Review 10,408

Writer-director Timothy Forder’s 1993 British film The Mystery of Edwin Drood stars Robert Powell, who is ideally cast but strangely subdued – exactly the wrong mode for this Grand Guignol mystery thriller – as Jasper the drug-addled, opium-addicted choirmaster whose obsession with his nephew’s fiancée Rosa (Finty Williams) leads to murder.

Forder’s rather ham-fisted attempt at filming Charles Dickens’s unfinished last novel results in an overplayed parody – all creepy cathedral interiors and mad-eyed ghoulishness – that would be fine if it was intended.

It obviously is not, however, and this is a messy and deeply misguided movie. Oddly, the newly written conclusion is far more convincing and exciting than the Dickens-adapted sequences. Some fine support turns from the too little employed British stalwarts (especially Nanette Newman as Mrs Crisparkle, Rosemary Leach as Mrs Tope and Freddie Jones as Sapsea) save the day.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood became a Broadway and West End musical in the 1980s; it was previously filmed in 1935 with Claude Rains as Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Also in the cast are Nanette Newman, Gemma Craven, Jonathan Phillips, Rupert Rainsford, Michelle Evans, Finty Williams, Rosemary Leach, Freddie Jones, Ronald Fraser, Glyn Houston, Peter Pacey, Andrew Sachs, Marc Sinden, Ken Wynne, and Barry Evans.

At a bad time for the British film industry, it was the only UK theatrical film then in production.

Other versions are The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1914), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1960) (TV Mini-Series), and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (2012) (TV Mini-Series).

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,408

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