THE AMAZING MR. BLUNDEN. Hemdale/Hemisphere, UK, 1972. Laurence Naismith, Lynne Frederick, Garry Miller, Rosalyn Landor, Marc Granger, Diana Dors. Based on the novel The Ghosts by Antonia Barber. Directed by Lionel Jeffries.

   Am I stretching things to include this not-really-so-spooky children’s movie about ghosts and time-travel – apparently a staple on British television every Easter morning for years – as a mystery movie?

   Well, no, not really, according to my standards. This is, after all, a murder of two young children to be solved – no, I’ll take that back. There is the murder of two young children to be undone. We know who committed the murder – their uncle’s in-laws, of whom one (Diana Dors) you probably wouldn’t recognize even under duress.

   To start from the top. In the year 1916 or so, a family without a father is visited by an aged lawyer (Mr. Blunden, played by Laurence Naismith) who saves them from a wretched life in a basement hovel, giving them a new home in the caretaker’s cottage for a manor in which the two children perished in a fire 100 years before.

   When the two dead children appear (in solid ghostly form) to Lucy and Jaime, it is to take them into the past, where it is hoped, the past can be undone, and redeem Mr. Blunden’s error at the time in not taking the children’s warning more seriously. (Lucy is played by Lynne Frederick at 18, she being the future Mrs. Peter Sellers, five years later.)

   The DVD print I viewed was not very good, as if it were taken from an indifferent video tape, but if re-processed properly, this would be quite a period spectacle for the eye indeed – two periods of British history, as a matter of fact. As it is, it’s charming, warm-hearted and delightful and – I hate to mention it – flawed.

   In terms of time-travel and logic going together, maybe they’re totally incompatible, and maybe not, but this one has a gigantic gaff in it that’s easy enough to ignore, simply because you want to, but it still needs a mention, even by the most sympathetic reviewer. Such as the one you have here.