Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate Helped Forge the Formula for Murder, She Wrote

The shine does tarnish in the scenes that follow Mal, played with demented gusto by Edwards. For some unearthly reason, the decision was made to accompany these scenes with a breathy stream-of-consciousness voiceover from Mal’s perspective, which yields all manner of unintentional laughs; from the way he narrates things that really do not need narrating (‘I’ll take a shower…”), to his strange manner of punctuating every thought with the word “Yeah” as if it ended with five Hs. As much as there is undeniable comedic value to these strange interludes—his incongruously tortured mental process in the flower shop is laugh-out-loud funny—the longer we spend with him, the more we miss Sophie T and her pals.

And though they are moral beacons compared to Mal, the central awkwardness of Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate is that if it weren’t for their actions, then “Rebecca” would still be alive; the film is less a whodunnit, than an “Oh no, we inadvertently helped him do it, so I guess it’s up to us to catch him!” While there is acknowledgement of their unintentional complicity, the gravity of the crime is not at all commensurate with the level of their regret—to such a degree that it really should have sunk the whole movie.

Yet using some strange, disconcerting tonal alchemy, Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate makes it surprisingly easy to skate past the specter of “Rebecca”’s unnecessary death. Once again, it’s the inimitable charm of the four leads we have to thank; when they pay a trip to the waitress who served them the previous night to verify if the murdered woman was who they think she was, it rings absolutely true that she would not give the proper response (“Umm, how did you complete strangers discover my home address? Please leave, I am scared.”), but answer them without hesitation. They are truly a formidable force. Throughout the movie, other characters’ reactions towards them are almost as funny as the women themselves; if memes had been a thing in 1971, the confounded face of John Beradino’s detective after every encounter with Sophie T and her friends would have been the subject of a fair few.

Indeed, ABC saw they were onto something good with our gang, and decided to bring half of them back for another Movie of the Week the following year, The Snoop Sisters, which also served as a pilot for a short-lived NBC series of the same name. Although it was canceled after only four episodes, the show—which saw Hayes and Natwick as a pair of murder-mystery writing siblings who’d use their sleuthing skills on real-world cases—paved the way for the iconic headline project of another long-lasting legend of classic Hollywood (RIP Angela Lansbury), Murder, She Wrote.

Seeing the bright lights of Hollywood’s golden age in low-wattage TV movies can be a depressing spectacle, but more often it’s an opportunity to watch big stars try something different, or just cut loose and have fun. While the narrative is morally dubious, the chance to hang out with Loy, Sidney, Hayes and Natwick—decades removed from the peaks of their stardoms, but still as delightful to watch as ever—makes Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate a hard film to resist.

Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can read her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Podcast Review, and Paste.