MovieChat Forums > The Honey Pot (1967) Discussion > Brilliant! but I still have questions. ...

Brilliant! but I still have questions. (Spoilers)

posted 11 years ago by ksf-2
3 replies | jump to latest

SPOILERS

LOVE this one. fun early maggie smith; its in color, but still before Hot Millions & Jean Brodie. It’s great that his name is “Fox”.. so symbolic. I kept trying to figure this one out ahead of time, but there were so many ways the plot could have gone. some unresolved issues:

1. was there ever really a sapphire, or was that just another of Fox's fake promises? I kept expecting Nurse Watkins to find it in the box of chocolates (or somewhere), since Fox made such a big deal about her taking a chocolate, but I guess the sapphire was a McGuffin.

2. After the first death, Miss McGill says the princess will say “we were together all night, playing gin rummy together. but that’s a lie. Know why? She can’t even play gin rummy “... was that a lesbian reference? or was McGIll just trying to make the princess look like a liar? Then the princess says she had never been in McGill’s room, and doesn’t play gin rummy. as if there had been a scene where the two agree to say they were playing gin all
night as an alibi.

I wonder if there was more to those scenes that are the missing 18 minutes. acc to imdb, the UK version is 150 minutes. or is that just a difference in US/Euro tape formats? seems like a big difference.

3. why isn’t this shown more often? its so fun and cryptic. Even when we find out who-dunnit, I still kept expecting the dead man to jump out from behind the curtain and mock the Inspector.

[–] GinaRenee 10 years ago

There was an earlier scene where McGill told the princess about a movie she'd made, where two murderers agreed to say they'd been together playing gin rummy all night. It was clear she was making a veiled suggestion that maybe the two of them could kill Lone-Star and then provide alibis for each other.

[–] Tchoutoye 10 years ago

1. Could Mr Fox have inherited his common-law wife's money so easily after having murdered her? Aren't there any laws to prevent heirs benefiting from murdering their benefactors?

2. If Mr Fox did indeed inherit the fortune of his common-law wife, what was then his motive for committing suicide? Was it because he realised that he would be found out for killing Mrs Sheridan?

2. It was already established, in particular by McFly, that Mr Fox had inherited a fortune from his common law wife. So why did McFly seem to have forgotten about this so soon after, when he put the nurse's name on the will as if there was nothing to inherit?

[–] jackharbor43 9 years ago

1. Fox's plan was no-one would've known that she was murdered. It was designed to look like an accident, she was known to be nervous, it looked like she woke up and accidentally took too many of her own sleeping pills. Which her nurse knew was a risk

2. Yes, Maggie Smith come up to his apartment and tells him her suspicions and how she worked out *how* his common law wide had been murdered. However she thinks McFly did it. Once she tells Fox that she has told McFly this, he realises McFly will go to the police and so the game is up.

2.Because throughout the film, Maggie Smith's character keeps on repeating that she is decent, moral and not interested in money, particularly in all her scenes with Fox. So when she asks Fox for the signed will as a souvenir, he believes she is speaking the truth. Because throughout the film she's been completely honest, even when it means risking her life. However it turns out she can lie with the best of them.