The Moon-Spinners is a 1964 American mystery film starring Hayley Mills, Eli Wallach and Peter McEnery in a story about a jewel thief hiding on the island of Crete.

Produced by Walt Disney Productions, the film was loosely based upon a 1962 suspense novel by Mary Stewart and was directed by James Neilson.

[2] A young English woman named Nikky Ferris and her aunt, Frances, a folk musicologist, travel to the village of Elounda, on the island of Crete.

They rent a room at the Moon-Spinners Inn, though the innkeeper, Sophia, initially refuses them until her teenage son Alexis and Aunt Frances persuade her.

During a wedding party at the inn later that evening, Nikky meets a young Englishman named Mark Camford, who invites her and Aunt Frances to dinner.

The next morning, the British consul at Heraklion, Anthony Gamble, finds the pair and takes them to his summer villa in Agios Nikolaos, where his wife, Cynthia, looks after them.

In the film an adolescent and less resolute Nikky is accompanied by her aunt Frances, a musicologist interested in folk tunes.

The film morphs the character Lambis, the captain of the boat rented by the Langley brothers to tour the Greek Isles, from an ally to an adversary.

The film production is similar to other Disney live-action features made in the 1950s and 1960s for more mainstream audiences, such as Treasure Island (1950) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).

The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther offered a mixed review, praising "the ripening attractiveness of the young British actress Hayley Mills and some beautiful scenery in color on the island of Crete", but calling the film "essentially an entertainment for the younger set".

With regard to adult viewers, he noted that "it is a picture in which standard melodrama abounds – the kind that the older observer may find just too bubbling with clichés".

[3] Rotten Tomatoes, describing the film as a "distilled Hitchcockian suspense yarn, diluted for the consumption of children", gives it an approval rating of 63%.