Crook's Tour

Charters and Caldicott, those delightfully self-absorbed cricket fans of Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes" and Reed's "Night Train to Munich" return in a film all their own. The very British pair of gents are traveling through the Middle East, when their tour bus runs out of gas. Quite annoyed to spend a night in the middle of the desert, the quite proper Englishmen do not even have a change of clothes for dinner. When they reach Baghdad, the pair come into possession of a phonograph record with a coded message and unwittingly become involved with a nest of German spies. Blithely unaware of their predicament, they bumble along to Istanbul and barely escape falling into the river through a hole in the floor behind a hotel door marked "Bathroom." Caldicott is miffed of course; the door should be marked "Bosphorus." The plot is light with enough holes to shame Swiss cheese and irrelevant to the fun, which lies with the witty dead-pan interplay between Basil Radford as Charters and Naughton Wayne as Caldicott. International politics are of no concern to the pair, especially when compared to cricket scores, and their travels are just a journey from one pesky inconvenience to another. Charters and Caldicott are the tourists who should never leave home, because foreign countries are so full of people who neither speak English nor understand the importance of cricket.

Charters and Caldicott are like a droll Abbott and Costello, minus the slapstick, and "Crook's Tour" resembles an Abbott and Costello movie. Like Abbott, Caldicott is a magnet for attractive women; despite his unlikely engagement to Charters's horse-faced sister, he returns the flirtatious interest of blonde Greta Gynt as La Palermo. Unfortunately, the movie also resembles the Abbott and Costello flicks with unwelcome musical intrusions, and, although the film is a relatively short 80 minutes long, La Palermo warbles a couple forgettable tunes that only slow down the action and take screen time from the stars. Despite the amusing leads, director John Baxter is no Hitchcock or Reed, and the film is more routine programmer than classic. However, the team of Radford and Wayne make the trip worthwhile.

1st watched 7/24/2016 : Whimsical at best, and un-eventful comedy-spy movie using the Charters & Coldecott characters originally created in the Hitchcock movie "The Lady Vanishes." The story is kind of a "Road To"-like plot similar to the Crosby/Hope series of movies where an un-involved duo gets pulled into International intrigue by mistake. In the film - the main characters, played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, are mistakenly identified as spys because they order the same items off a menu as the actual Spys are supposed to, and are handed a phonograph with secret plans instead of a recording of a singer they have just watched. This begins a crazy set of ever-changing circumstances that sends the duo everywhere from Northwest Africa to the European nations, than eventually back to England. There are some laughs if you listen closely, and some musical moments from looker Greta Gynt, but other than that - the movie is just an excuse to plop these characters into a story that makes no sense and tries to get some laughs. Coldicott's character even has a fiancee who is Charter's sister, and of course, he is tempted by the owl-dancing singer mentioned earlier and others --- showing us, at least, that we are not dealing with a gay couple - thwarting the rumors from "The Lady Vanishes." I almost wish they were - the movie might be funnier. Anywho - not a lot of reason to have this movie - it doesn't really do much for these characters - probably better off if they had been just in the one movie.

Coldecot & Charters ride again in a brisk romp through the desert and Europe. The production values are strictly "B-" but that's all part of the fun. Greta Gynt, sings well, acts well, and is gorgeous as the femme fatale who is some sort of agent - but for which side? The other supporting roles are also quite well played. Coldecot's fiancé is very funny in each of her scenes. My favorite scene is when Charters accidentally knocks a fellow he had presumed to be Charters into the Bosperous straits as a door in their hotel marked bathroom is really a deathtrap leading to the water below. Coldecot argues that the door should be marked Bosperous, not bathroom. That type of humour abounds throughout - taking the absurd and the dangerous in stride and bantering about it as if it were normal. I found this movie a lot of fun and a highly enjoyable way to spend my time.

After finally alighting from the Night Train to Munich, Charters & Caldicot continued their travels abroad (obviously without leaving Elstree) to much less amusing effect tangling with slinky blonde femme fatale Greta Gynt in Budapest.

It's a tedious, garrulous affair with annoying continuous music on the soundtrack which makes it even more of a trial; and the boys went back to their previous hilarious selves during the rest of the war in guest cameos instead (although they later showed they still could carry a feature in the much funnier postwar production 'It's Not Cricket').

Charters (Basil Radford) and Caldicott (Naunton Wayne) were delightful in "The Lady Vanishes" (1938) as two unflappable British tourists, as part of a large ensemble cast, an ingenious plot, and Alfred Hitchcock's expert direction. In "Crook's Tour" (1941), lacking all of those things, they are asked to carry the movie basically on their own, and it's too heavy a burden. It might have worked as a short, but at feature-length there simply aren't enough laughs. The supposed globetrotting is unconvincing - it is quite clear that nobody ever left the studios. Greta Gynt is stunning and has a lovely singing voice, one which perhaps we hear a little too much of. ** out of 4.