Take Me to Paris

This is one of a number of films made in the early fifties which featured Englishmen going to France,and treating it as if it was England with foreign people.

This is a b picture which cant quite decide if its a comedy or thriller. In any event it ends up as neither. As entertaining as watching Boycott play a straight bat to a full toss.

Because the horse scheduled to go to France for a race is down, Thunderbolt and his trainer/jockey Albert Modley over. It's all part of a scheme to smuggle counterfeit banknotes; Albert has no idea of course, and when obvious gangsters start pursuing him and the animal, he finds refuge with the inhabitants of a bar in the banlieus.

It's a rare movie role and even rarer starring role for the music hall Yorkshireman. It's a decent but unexceptional comedy, with a couple of setpiece gags, like Modley getting involved in an Apache dance, and a race up the stairs of the Eiffel Tower - don't they know there's an elevator? It's competently directed by Jack Raymond, who had directed comedies for Hepworth. He would helm two more movies and die in 1953, aged 61.

There's really nothing to this movie to make it stand out, despite its bare competence. Modley is another norther who succeeds by sheer persistence, finding love and success when events swing his way. Eh.