Night Train to Paris

Leslie Nielsen stars as Alan Holiday, a former O.S.S. agent who now works as a P.R. man for an airline in London. One New Years' Eve, a beautiful young woman (Aliza Gur) walks into his life, wanting passage to Paris. Also involved is Alans' old friend Jules Lamoine (Hugh Latimer). He gets them on board a ski train, where they will be pretend to be a model, and an assistant to fashion photographer Louis Vernay (Andre Maranne). It's all in the name of national security, and making sure that a disc containing all-important information is delivered to the proper personage.

As long as you know ahead of time not to expect a serious thriller, it's possible to derive some entertainment out of this. In reality, it's a rather goofy, hip comic twist on the spy genre that had simply exploded with the arrival of "Dr. No" two years previous. It requires Nielsen to sport one of the most ridiculous of disguises, one of those eyeglasses-fake nose-fake mustache deals. And, just to give you a further idea of what to expect, a helpful partygoer in a bear suit, whom Alan refers to as "Smokey", figures into the plot. There's no real suspense, and no real action. Even though a character dies, everything is given a light touch.

The casting of Nielsen makes perfect sense given the tone of the movie, even though his career in comedy was still a good decade and a half away. He's likable enough, and the supporting cast is solid: Dorinda Stevens and Edina Ronay as models, Eric Pohlmann as a thug, Cyril Raymond as a police inspector. The female cast are all notably sexy, especially Ronay.

Decent light entertainment, forgettable but mildly amusing, and appreciably brief in length, at just an hour and five minutes.

Six out of 10.