Oh, Mr. Porter!

I saw this film in 1937 when I was 10. I am now 76 and can remember almost the entire plot. I would list this amongst my top 10 films together with The Quiet Man, Dr. Strangelove, Random Harvest and a few others including The Grapes of Wrath.

If anyone out there still "does the ironing", this is a perfect movie to watch while doing so. Time flies and so does the ironing! This and Arthur Askey's Ghost Train. Great and innocent FUN! Even if slightly dimwitted!I wish they still made comedies like this today.

It's very difficult to describe the comedy of Will Hay . He was very popular in Britain in the thirties, on radio, the music hall and in film. He looked shabby, seedy and shifty and usually played not very pleasant characters who can only be described as failed con artists, but funny he was. This is probably his best movie and it holds up very well. The plot owns something to that British classic of the theater THE GHOST TRAIN.

Interesting trivia point. This and many of these very British comedies, including some of the George Formbies were directed by a Frenchman Marcel Varnel.

This is a bit of trivia for the benefit of all train spotters out there. Presumably as a result of the film being made on Southern Railway, several miles to the north of Southampton, the credits incorporate a few unacknowledged shots of Southampton. Most obviously, the station that's shown on emerging from a tunnel is the old Southampton West station, now Southampton Central, in the form it took before Hermann Goering radically reshaped it. Perhaps the shots were intended as part of the final reel. If so, they count as outtakes, recycled in the credits.

Say something about the film, must I? Well, of course, it's sheer genius. Surely that doesn't need saying. I can't wait for the day that Quentin Tarantino discovers it.

A much loved member of my "favourite films of all time" list. I first saw it on Saturday morning pictures for sixpence in the early fifties and thought it was brilliant. Got it on DVD and would still sit down and watch it if it came on the telly. Some films are like classical music, you're always pleased to come across them. This is one of mine.No need for CGI, no need for colour, no need for Hollywood window dressing and mega hype, its a taste of a different world, a different era and with less sophistication. Will Hay pompously fumbles and struts his way through one disaster after another, aided by his two lieutenants and a good time is had by all.