Reviews

Middle aged and coventional, John Mills meets a new commuter, Anthony Steel, on his morning train whom he recognises as a boy, Foxley, who made his school life a misery many years before. Incensed by that and also by the man's general demeanour he finally cracks a few days later and tries to expose his old enemy to the others in the carriage for the brute which he believes him to be. To his anger the man simply claims to have a different name and to have gone to a different school (Eton).

That's it, really, and I fail to understand the praise heaped on the story by others. Was Mills simply mistaken or was the man lying? And where was the 'unexpected element?

There are many comments on this site about the performance of Arthur Askey in 'The Ghost Train', mainly to the effect that his character comes across as merely a pain in the UNOs.. I have to agree but I think that this came about as follows. I must, however, emphasise that I cannot explain my view without giving away a vital part of the plot so if you have not seen the film yet, please stop reading now. In other words SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! (I hope that's clear).

There is a character in the oriiginal play called Tommy Deakin who comes over as the silliest of asses, at one point, for example, stopping a train via the communication cord so that he can retrieve his hat which has blown out of the window. He continues in this vein for most of the film but it turns out that he is in fact a special agent who is on the trail of a gang of crooks (in the film, made in 1941, they are changed to Nazis) who are using the ghost train to frighten off intruders and his gormless behaviour was a deliberate front.

In the film Teddy is played by Richard Murdoch, who had only shortly before achieved nationwide fame in partnership with Arthur Askey for their radio programme 'Band Waggon' (1938 - 1940), which was so popular that many publicans had had to instal radios so that the punters could both drink and hear the show. Though they later went their separate ways, at the time Murdoch and Askey must have seemed as inseparable as say Morecambe and Wise or Ant and Dec so, I suspect, it was felt that a role for Askey in the film had to be found, with him, in the completely new character of Tommy Gander, sharing the silly ass bits, including the hat loss, with Murdoch.

As the comments here clearly show, this was a mistake. In the theatre audiences, once they had discovered the truth about Deakin, would have readily accepted why he had been behaving as he had, whereas cinema audiences must merely have found Gander to be a pest who had simply been that for no reason.

So who was to blame for this? Certainly the producer and director should have been aware of the problem from the start but Askey and perhaps to a lesser extent Murdoch must also have noticed it and realised that it put the film out of kilter. I have to say that despite all this I did enjoy it but pehaps for once that usually rather tedious call for a remake, Ganderless of course, would have some merit.

PS. Apart from this I have always liked Arthur Askey.

Apologies if I'm wrong or missed something vital but I really fail.to see what is unexpected about this episode. Crazy daughter kills a man and her father uses a threat of death to frame an innocent neighbour who rather conveniently happens to arrive just in time to be made use of. When he's sent on his way, presumably with no intention of reporting the matter to the police himself (somewhat unlikely), the father telephones them - with just the faintest of supicions that something is amiss, of course - and the famous theme music signifies the end of the episode.

Obviously something could go wrong thereafter but not within the structure of the storyline and we are left to guess what. I didn't.

I was nine years old when Dick Barton finally left the Light Programme (rough though not exact equivalent now Radio 2) in 1950 to make way for The Archers. In its short life it made a huge impression on the wartime and post-war generation of kids (and many adults)and it's difficult now to express what a thrill it was in those radio obsessed and almost TVless days to anticipate seeing on the screen what had previously been left to the imagination.

And therein lies a good part of the problem. We all had our mental visions of Dick, Snowy and Jock and the chances of their screen counterparts matching these was virtually nil. For my money Don Stannard, who tragically died in a car crash at 33 in 1949 just after the third and final Barton film, made a good and physically acceptable Dick Barton, though he could never match Noel Johnson's distinctive radio voice, and George Ford a good Snowy (or was it Snowey - sources differ?). More on Jock Anderson, the third of the trio, below.

I cannot but agree with the comments of other reviewers on the film. It is awful. The radio series may have been very much tongue in cheek, though we kids never thought so at the time, but the film takes itself seriously while having no plausible plot, some dreadful acting and directing and almost non-existent continuity. At one point Dick breaks into a building and somehow manages to change his shirt while he is in there!

So to Jock Anderson, played by Jack Shaw in what according to IMDb was his only film. In my view this is far and away its main fault. On radio Jock was a young, agile and athletic man, a reliable lieutenant to "Mr" Barton, and who had served in a Highland regiment during the war. Here he is unforgivably portrayed as a stage Scotsman, much in the Harry Lauder mould,in full tartan gear and clearly cast for comic relief. At one point he is in a stretch of water and there is a close up of a tadpole wriggling on his bald head. Laugh!? I thought I'd never start. It was a thoughtless and stupid insult to Barton fans. I can only assume that the Director had no working knowledge of the radio series or, if he had, unaccountably chose to ignore it. Perhaps you should do the same with the film.

A curious mish-mash of a film which doesn't seem to know where it's going or what it's for.

Basically, during the war a horribly snooty woman calls on a working class family, with the full support of her absent husband, and demands that their daughter stops seeing her son as the relationship is quite unsuitable. She is effectively thrown out but, after a single visit from the daughter,she and her husband relent and everything is hunky dory to the extent that the girl's parents visit and everyone is on first name terms, unlikely enough and certainly not back in the forties. Even more bewildering is that the working class family's neighbours, he a socialist unlikely to approve of the boy's parents and their lifestyle and she an unremitting scrounger, are for some reason invited along too, presumably to justify the film's title.

And in the middle of all this Jimmy James and Eli appear in a pub to do their "isn't drunkeness amusing?" act in a scene which has nothing to do with the already flimsy story. Padding pure and simple.

I'll give it three only because Jack Warner is in it. Probably nil otherwise.

Like some other reviewers I first saw H and C at the now long-forgotten Saturday morning pictures and it was thoroughly enjoyed by just about everyone there. Such a refreshing change from the usual feature films they dredged up for us, most of which seemed to date from the early thirties and to be based om motor racing.

Having seen it many times since it's difficult now to know what I remember from that first time but I do recall the remark of the sadly missed Joan Dowling when they first descended into the sewers, "Coo, dunnit pong", causing great hilarity. Easily pleased or what?

Much as I enjoyed reading the reviews here I have to take issue with some. One claims that the lack of swearing among the boy gang indicated some sort of superior morality back in 1946. Actually it was because bad language was simply not permitted in films then and I can assure everyone that in real life there would have been plenty. Another stated that Anthony Newley was in it. He wasn't. I think the reviewer was fooled by the Newley-like looks of Roy, played by Stanley Escane. And a third thinks that jumping on the stomach of the chief villain and killing him was a bit strong. I saw the film recently and there is no indication that he was killed, merely winded. It was perhaps unpleasant but if anything the scene where the bent cop was catapulted and stunned was worse. That could have killed or blinded him.

I was more interested in the review by Robert Temple. I have nothing against the gentleman and he is entitled to his opinion but I feel that some of his comments are misguided and on occasion just plain wrong. He seems for example to read into H and C, with its use of bomb sites and derelict buildings, some sort of metaphor for WWII but I think he's reading too much into this. The film was made on location in London in 1946 when the makers would have been hard put to it not to include bomb sites. They were an unavoidable backdrop to the action, not a part of it, though as they existed use was made of them. The film is simply no more than what used to be called a rattling good yarn and thankfully does not contain any 'messages'.

Further, amid what I have to say is a welter of name dropping, Mr Temple not only (wrongly) thinks that some of the action takes place in Tilbury but also makes a glaring geographical error in placing Tilbury in the East End despite its position in Essex some 12 or 13 miles from the fringes of the East End at East Ham. While there is certainly a Chadwell (St Mary) in Tilbury this is similarly miles from the scene of the action at the end of the film which is, officially at any rate, at Wapping and I suspect that Mr Temple has confused Chadwell with Shadwell, which is next door to Wapping and therefore does come within the East End.

Another website refers to this play as 'Return TO the Regiment' which, in view of its plot, seems more apposite.

I have been watching TV drama for many years and no doubt at least 90% of it has slipped from memory. Some though remains, in essence if not detail. For example in January 1960 I watched a dramatisation of Oscar Wilde's ' Lord Arthur Savile's Crime' which was so funny and featured such a superb performance from Terry-Thomas in the title role that I remember it still.

For similar reasons, despite the vastly different subject matter, I remember Return to the Regiment, the fiftieth anniversary of which will occur next year. I stress that what follows constitutes a spoiler though in view of the age of the play and the unlikelihood of a rebroadcast that may be academic. Also, after all this time my grasp of its detail is shaky. The main character (Michael Redgrave), for instance, is an ex WW1 officer probably, though not certainly, a Colonel.

The play is set in the then present of 1963, when many WW1 survivors were still around. The regiment in question is holding a dinner to celebrate the Colonel's achievement during that war of taking from the Germans a military objective, a ridge, albeit at great cost. So memorable is the occasion that a hack journalist has been employed to write a book about the encounter and, very unusually, some of the other ranks from the battle are to be invited into the officers' mess later on.

The dinner is convivial until the Colonel gives a rather smug speech about his role in the battle. The journalist (excellently played by Nigel Davenport), who has been invited and is a cynic even when sober, becomes drunk and begins to interrupt the speech, finally shouting him down with the (approximate) words "I'm a professional. When I do a job I do it thoroughly and I've researched this one". He goes on to claim that the Colonel had been duped by the Germans into a Pyrrhic victory, concluding "Can't you understand. THEY WANTED YOU TO TAKE THAT RIDGE!!".

He is hustled out and it is tactfully suggested that now would be a good time for the other ranks to enter and file past the Colonel. As they do so he notes with increasing horror that scarcely one of them is whole. Some are in wheelchairs, most have lost at least one limb, some are blind. All respectfully salute him and call him "Sir".

As the appalling realisation of what he did, and probably for nothing, hits him, the Colonel becomes increasingly distressed until, as the play ends, tears stream down his face.

Redgrave's acting in that final scene was remarkable. His face was static yet the Colonel's pain, guilt, shame and pity were obvious. He would never be the same man again.

The 'war is stupid and obscene' point made by the play was hardly original even then - 'The Case of Private Hamp' (later a 1964 film 'King and Country') had made the same point three years earlier - and has been made many times since but 'Return to the Regiment' did hit a nerve with me. Perhaps it was because a member of the WW1 officer class felt sympathy for his men and because it at last dawned on him that events of nearly fifty years earlier could retain a devastating effect. In both cases that was almost a first.

Great film. One I'd take to the desert island. It's not only entertaining, it also provides a fascinating glimpse of its era.

However I do have a few niggles, some of which constitute definite spoilers so if you haven't seen the film and don't wish to note them, please read no further.

At the lunch early in the film Hyde accuses all the assembled Gentlemen of being crooks "of one sort or another". While most of them had certainly been up to no good during their time in the army and been punished accordingly the word "crooks" is hardly appropriate in their later civilian lives. Mycroft certainly and possibly Race and Lexy but Weaver and Porthill seem to be more or less blameless, if in the latter case a bit disreputable, and Rutland-Smith's only crime anywhere seems to have been to have run up some "embarrassing mess bills". Stevens' implied indulgence in homosexual acts, while illegal at the time the film was made, would hardly justify his being labelled a crook even then. I feel that some more convincing criminality could have been devised - perhaps beating up Hyde en masse after he had gone round the table insulting each in turn!

To my mind the only real weakness in the film is the way they were caught. There are two reasons for this, one regarding plot and the other structure. Firstly, if I am correct, they were rumbled because the policeman who visited their warehouse recorded, for some unexplained reason, the number of Hyde's car, which the latter later used in the robbery. Its number was then noted by the small boy near the crime scene. Would such a meticulous planner as Hyde really have committed such a faux pas? The stolen car, after all, had its number changed so why not his? Or, preferably, would it not have been better - indeed obvious - not to have used his car at all? Secondly the sudden appearance of the boy, taking car numbers, jarred.It clearly had some relevance, otherwise there was no need to include it, and it indicated fairly clearly that it would somehow lead to the plan's ultimate failure.

Something that has always worried me and which has doubtless occurred in real life (certainly in the GTR of 1963) but which the film does not address was the fact that the taking of huge numbers of used notes inevitably led to the group taking their share of the loot in that form. We were not told how much was eventually seized but on the basis of the estimated £million divided by eight it would be £125K each. Nowadays, depending on which inflation index one uses, that would need to be, say, around £2.5 million and would need rather more than one suitcase each (see my later comment on a remake) but even the 1960 amount of physical cash would have posed difficult logistical problems for the robbers. Where to store it in the meantime and then how to deal with it, for instance. Even allowing for client confidentiality, banks and other financial institutions would, knowing that a huge robbery had taken place, be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at sudden appearances of large sums in previously threadbare or non-existent accounts. Few would mind the problem but it would need to be solved.

Others have criticised the film for not allowing the crime to succeed though most accept that the moral climate at the time would not have permitted it. I think that that is true but I also think that it was not the only reason. If the film had stopped at the post-heist party with "Oh well, thanks for everything, gentlemen, enjoy the money" THE END, it would hardly have met the need for a strong ending. Really they had to be caught if only for dramatic effect.

Finally, I can accept Colonel Hyde grubbing around in the sewers surrounding the bank (sadly, that manhole cover has gone now) in order to check on the subterranean situation but would he really have done so in evening dress and with his Rolls parked over the road advertising his presence? Oh, wait, though. He was very careless with his car numbers, wasn't he? Finally finally! I note the tediously inevitable call for a remake. For heaven's sake why? TLOG ain't perfect but what film is? PLEASE think of that ghastly remake of The Ladykillers and leave well alone.

I fell in love with Stop the World when I saw it in the West End, starring Anthony Newley and Anna Quayle, back in 1962. It told the story, through songs, speech and mime, of a man's life in a way which has rarely been bettered. Nearly half a century on I still enjoy the songs, on a battered LP, and treasure the memory of Newley's performance.

The film in my view does not measure up to the stage production. This is partly because Tony Tanner, while very good, is simply not Anthony Newley and partly because it is a film of a stage performance which, for some reason, never really seems to work. Theatre audiences are, I suppose, geared to accept the physical limitations of the stage while cinema audiences, even if composed of the same people, are similarly programmed to expect the very different techniques of film. StW makes little attempt to use the latter, basically pointing a camera (or a number of cameras) at the stage and leaving it at that. We are therefore left in a situation which is neither one thing nor the other.

For all that it is useful to have a record of what was a classic show and the film I do find enjoyable if not itself classic. I accept that others will hold different opinions. Even when the show first appeared I heard of several people who walked out because they could not understand its premise and failed to realise that the lack of 'reality' meant that they had to use their imaginations. They are , of course, fully entitled to their views. Nevertheless I find it difficult to accept the comments of a previous reviewer whom the film apparently induced to throw up.I have sat through many films which have bored me rigid but have never as a result felt the urge to vomit. Perhaps I could suggest that he or she see a doctor without delay to assess the cause of this clear over-reaction.

It is difficult to have spoilers for Columbo, where murderer and motive are usually known shortly after the start but, for what it's worth, what follows does contain a couple.

I agree with all the complimentary comments from other reviewers and thoroughly enjoyed the mental sparring between Abigail and our hero but two points did rather jar. The first, which concerns the artistic structure of the episode, is that we never found out whether the victim did in fact kill his wife. Certainly even if he had it would not excuse Abby taking the law into her own hands but proof of guilt would have at least provided a realistic if legally unjustifiable motive. As it is we have to assume that she acted purely on a supposition, which is not exactly the norm in these stories.

The second point is what I think is a weakness in the plot. Admittedly I am no expert in building law even in the UK let alone in the States but I have to say I found it surprising that a manufacturer would be allowed to build and sell a walk-in safe where the occupant could easily become trapped by accident,where no form of ventilation is provided and where, for no logical reason that I can think of, the whole thing is soundproofed. Presumably it was sold on the tag line "Buy our safe - ideal for your next murder!!".

Despite the bad press which this episode generally receives, I rather like it. The plot is a touch far-fetched to be sure and the collapse of the murderer (one of them in this instance)on the flimsiest of evidence is par for the Columbo course but I was held by it and enjoy it on repeats.

BUT.....there are a few faults, viz:

* Changing the scene from LA to London and using an almost entirely British cast is fine, so why then use an American actor(Richard Basehart) for one of the main roles and moreover playing an Englishman? He is clearly uncomfortable in the part and his accent, while not as bizarre as Dick van Dyke's, is still awful.Was it to give the episode some USAppeal?

* Possibly the murder of Tanner, which I have never seen, does feature in some versions but I am left perplexed as to how Nicholas managed to hang him in a way that looked like suicide. Killing him first, even strangling him with the rope and then doing so, would be altogether too easy for the police to detect. I can't imagine that he said something like "Would you mind standing on this chair with a rope round your neck, old boy. Nothing to worry about!". So how......?

* You always expect errors when American films are set in England (usually geographical - see '23 Paces to Baker Street' and 'Knock on Wood' for some real howlers) and others have covered some of them here. However there is a rather strange double error in the London Wax Museum (presumably they were not allowed to refer to Madame Tussaud)where the English Lilian refers to "drapes" and the American Columbo mentions "curtains". Someone seemed to know the correct respective terms but then got them confused.

* Other reviewers are correct. Some of the attitudes were silly and patronising - right at the end Durk actually says "By Jove!". I suppose someone just had to.

I like almost all the Columbo episodes and this is a good one, with perhaps his sexiest adversary. However there is, for me, one glaring inconsistency - which no other reviewers have pointed out, so I hope I'm not missing something.

Early in the episode Leslie telephones a friend, asking her to ring her at 1215 the following day and simply say the word "tennis" then immediately hang up, her alleged reason for this being that she has been forgetful lately and needs to be reminded of the planned game. When the friend does so, Leslie pretends, to the witnesses she has made sure are there, that the call is the first communication from the kidnapper.

Leaving aside the unlikelihood of the resourceful Leslie relying on such an uncertain device - I wonder how she could be confident that the friend would remember or would not be late or that nothing would occur to prevent her from making the call - I find it a rather stupid thing to do anyway. The call could have been investigated. Indeed in 'telephone call' situations in other episodes, Columbo can be relied upon to check on all relevant calls to see who made them and to whom. Had he done so here, he would quickly have found the originating number and a quick visit to the friend would have exposed Leslie as a liar.

Yet neither he nor the FBI performed this obvious routine task. The only possible reason has to be that, had they done so, the episode would have lasted about twenty minutes but that is hardly a good reason within the plot. It's wrong and for me it impaired the rest of the otherwise well-constructed film.

I was sad to see that Patricia Mattick, who played the spoilt step-daughter Margaret, died aged only 52 in 2003. I think her acting here was, if anything, too good as the character was, as others have mentioned, so obnoxious that I found myself siding with the vicious, selfish and cold-hearted murderess. Surely not the intention!

THDOYL has been one of my favourite films ever since I saw it, aged 9 or 10, when it was first released. It is witty, supremely well acted, especially by Alastair Sim, Margaret Rutherford and Joyce Grenfell, and above all human. I last saw it ten years ago on television in the United States and was enjoying it, despite long commercial breaks every few minutes, until just before the end when the station chose to show a long preview of a forthcoming programme and in consequence simply cut the last ten minutes or so. Anyone seeing it for the first time would have been deprived of its conclusion. Sacrilege.

However to me the plot of the film has always contained one enormous fault. Much as Pond and Miss Whitchurch dislike each other, they become allies in the effectively impossible task of convincing his governors and her group of parents that only one school is occupying the premises. Why? The fault is not theirs, it is that of the Ministry of Education for wrongly allotting a girls' school to a boys' school. Pond and Miss Whitchurch are the innocent victims of an incompetent bureaucracy and could simply have told their visitors as much. If anything there might well have been some kudos for both in dealing in as able a way as possible with a situation not of their making.

Of course if they had done so there would not have been much of a film and despite the weakness of the McGuffin the beautifully filmed efforts to replace girls with boys and vice versa at exactly the right moment are a joy. As is the performance of Richard Wattis for once not playing a stuffy bank manager/civil servant.

As others have said, if you've never seen this film, please do so. But preferably not on television in the States.