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. Oddly, the newly written conclusion is far more convincing and exciting than the Dickens-adapted sequences. It obviously is not, however, and this is a messy and deeply misguided movie. 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.įorder’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. The Mystery of Edwin Drood * (1993, Robert Powell, Nanette Newman, Gemma Craven, Jonathan Phillips) – Classic Movie Review 10,408
