Well, what a saga. After ordering the video of Blue Murder from the States, it finally arrived - in NTSC format, though I had specified I needed PAL in letters writ large. After much kerfuffle (though I must admit the vendors were very helpful), the right video arrived and I thrust it into the VCR and hooked up to my video capture card.

If you look at the credits, you'd think Sabrina was the star : in the opening credits she was billed as "Guest Artiste" and in the end credits, she billed just after Alistair Sim. However, in spite of the film's publicity stills showing her in uniform, she never got out of bed (in in this case, gentlemen, that is not a good thing.) And she never said a word.

Featuring as the school swot, she lounges with a good book as a jewel thief and several policemen revolve around her. It's unfortunate that the plot did not do the same.

15 June 2002

Addendum: in 2008 I repeated the process with a DVD and fewer complications. Now I can read the title of the book Sabrina is reading, and you can enjoy a new and improved rip of Sabrina in Blue Murder.

Hear Sabrina talk about Blue Murder

A couple of publicity shots from Blue Murder.
Unless I fell asleep, no such scene appeared in in the film.

Added 19 March 06 from the Scrapbook page

She was so integral to the film that she was given equal billing with Alistair Sim in the poster. One wonders why she missed out on an Oscar!

"Writer/artist Roland Searle's diabolical "belles" of St. Trinian's Girls School return in this raucous British comedy. Because the girls cannot behave themselves, their headmistress Alastair Sim in drag!) has been thrown in jail, and the school is surrounded by police and army troops. The students win an all-expense-paid trip to Europe (by cheating, of course). While laying waste to the Continent (with Terry-Thomas driving the bus), the girls are enmeshed in a diamond theft instigated by the safe-cracking father of one of the students. The film ends with an elongated water polo game, played with the ladies' usual sense of sportsmanship and fair play." Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A publicity poster for Blue Murder

" ...the cast even includes Sabrina as the school swot, reading Dostoevsky in bed, a self conscious reference to the artificiality of the school" - http://www.shu.ac.uk/services/lc/closeup/foale5.htm

Or maybe this is a better explanation?

Another publicity poster for Blue Murder

And yet another poster!

BOOBS members can click the key to get the 330K version!