The Lady Vanishes

I haven't seen the original but I watched this with 1 hour delay on two channels simultaneously, I was at home with a cold at the time and feeling very sorry for myself. Anyway, if you would just put the two leads aside for a moment (although Eliot Gould was SO cute in the movie and Cybil Shepperd did the visual pun of Marilyn Monroe on the air vent very well when she gets out of the train...) The thing I really liked about this film were the characters of Charters and Caldicott - they made me laugh hysterically - there they are drinking tea - understating this understating that - then suddenly.....they are really terrific minor characters. I would love a whole film on those two. Very affectionate look at English manners. ARTHUR LOWE MADE ME FORGET HOW ILL I FELT!

The story is silly -- well, preposterous really, but it's great fun.

I agree that the Shepherd and Gould are a bit tiresome and overdone, but in fact, on the whole, they're fun too.

The best feature of the film is Angela Lansbury. She is brilliant as the nanny, catching every nuance with perfection, and should have had some kind of award for her performance.

The cricket fans are good and Gerald Harper is also convincing and chilling as the hard-hearted adulterer.

It is refreshing to see a film where there are no computer effects, and where real locations are used. I don't think we'll see too many films made this way again.

Hammer's lamentable remake of a Hitchcock classic and unsurprisingly the studio's last picture – at least until their recent reinvention as a purveyor of horror fare. THE LADY VANISHES is an odd film indeed, one that veers unevenly between comedy, mystery and thrills and never really succeeds in any of those fields: the comedy's unfunny, the mystery's obvious and the thrills muted. It doesn't help that the lead actress – Cybill Shepherd – is horribly miscast, giving a performance so awful that some viewers may turn off because of her alone.

Then again, Shepherd may not be entirely at fault – I struggle to think of an alternative actress who could have brought her shrill, screechy character to life. I generally enjoy films set aboard trains, planes, boats etc. but this one never makes good use of the location and the constant moving between carriages and compartments becomes repetitive in the extreme (although a late stage train-climbing stunt sequence is breathtakingly good).

Elliott Gould seems distinctly embarrassed by his presence here and can do nothing with his character, while Angela Lansbury seems to think she's still in BEDKNOBS & BROOMSTICKS and gives a patronising turn. It's left to the Arthur Lowe and Ian Carmichael to supply some genuine humour, although sadly their characters are ill-utilised and kept off-screen for the most part. THE LADY VANISHES marks an ignoble end for a once-fine studio and languishes today as a deservedly forgotten oddity.

Remake of a British 1938 Michael Redgrave film with Dame Mae Witty and Margaret Lockwood. The 1979 version, done as a Cybill Shepherd and Elliott Gould vehicle, pushes mainly its comedic/farcical elements instead of it being s legitimate mystery itself. The political intrigues and treacheries of the years between the First and Second World Wars made a better basis for the 1938 film than the 1979 film had. Alfred Hitchcock had still been in Britain when his 1938 film was made. Hitchcock had a sure hand utilizing the looming dangers and unease of the time, just one year prior to Britain's actual 1939 entry into WWII. The 1979 film isn't rotten but it simply doesn't hold up when weighed against Hitchcock's original. If you watch the 1979 movie, do so expecting a comedy not a mystery, and do so before you ever have seen the Hitchcock version.

Its inevitable that this would be compared to Hitchcock's 1938 original but for me there are many pleasures to be had in this elegant comedy-thriller. Douglas Slocombe's Panavision photography is wonderful and the playing of all involved is beautifully poised. George Axelrod's reworking of Sidney Gilliat's screenplay adds a nice screwball touch with his one-liners and Ian Carmichael and Arthur Lowe as the cricket-obsessed British tourists add humanity to their chauvinistic bullishness. And as a self-confessed Angela Lansbury fan I of course relished her depiction of Miss Froy. On a big cinema screen this looks terrific.