|
Synopsis:
A train travelling through Cornwall suddenly comes to a screeching halt
as someone pulls the emergency brake. The passengers and the crew look
on in indignation as entertainer Tommy Gander (Arthur Askey) runs back
down the track to claim his dislodged hat. As the train starts up again,
Gander is admonished and threatened with fines. Unabashed, he eludes the
crewmembers by intruding himself into the first-class compartment of
sportsman R.G. Winthrop (Peter Murray-Hill) and his lovely young cousin,
Jackie (Carole Lynne). Winthrop is infuriated by Gander’s gall – and
even more so when fellow passenger Teddy Deakin (Richard Murdoch), who
is already smitten by Jackie, also forces his way in. Jackie is amused
by the antics of the two, but the disgusted Winthrop throws them out.
The train arrives at Fal Vale junction, where the alighting passengers –
including secret drinker Dr Sterling (Morland Graham), spinster Miss
Bourne (Kathleen Harrison), and engaged couple Edna (Betty Jardine) and
Herbert (Stuart Latham) – are horrified to learn that thanks to Gander’s
stopping of the train, they have missed their connection. Moreover,
there will not be another train until the following morning. It starts
to rain heavily. Everyone takes shelter in the waiting-room, from where,
despite the strenuous objections of stationmaster Saul Hodgkins (Herbert
Lomas), they refuse to budge. Winthrop argues that it must be possible
to arrange the hire of a conveyance to take them all to the nearest
village. Hodgkins agrees to try, but due to the storm, the phone-line
drops out. Unable to convince the intruders to leave voluntarily,
Hodgkins reveals the reason for his agitation: the junction is haunted….
Undaunted by his listeners’ frank disbelief, the stationmaster relates
the grim tale. Forty-three years ago that night – the night of the
Diamond Jubilee – a chartered special was heading towards the junction
on a now-abandoned section of the line that once crossed the river. The
driver called ahead to the then stationmaster, Ted Holmes, to have the
bridge closed to allow for the passing of the train. But the dangerously
ill Holmes collapsed and died before he could carry out the task. The
speeding train crashed into the river, with all lives lost but that of
the driver, Ben Isaacs (D.J. Williams), who lost his mind…. Ever since,
upon certain nights, the signal bell can be heard ringing, and a phantom
train comes hurtling through the junction; and those that look upon it
are doomed to die. With this final warning, Hodgkins departs….
Comments:
It speaks volumes for the sheer witlessness of The Headless Ghost
that, watching The Ghost Train back to back with that
feeble effort, I actually found a few laughs in this old chestnut – and
a shiver or two, as well. The Ghost Train started life as a play
penned by Arthur Ridley. Ridley, who these days is probably best known
for his role as Private Godfrey in the series Dad’s Army, enjoyed
a long and varied career as writer, actor and director. “The Ghost
Train”, his best known work, has gone through even more permutations.
First staged in 1925, the play was transferred to the screen as a silent
UK-German co-production in 1927, then re-made in Hungary in 1929. This
silent version was subsequently given a soundtrack and then re-released.
The first true sound version of the story was made in Britain in 1931;
warmly received by the critics of the time, only a portion of it still
exists today. In 1937, a production of “The Ghost Train” was broadcast
live on English television; it was filmed again in Germany in 1939; and,
remarkably, once more in Denmark, as late as 1976. (The 1937 Will Hayes
film Oh Mr Porter!, which had the same three screenwriters as
this version of The Ghost Train, also looks very much like an
uncredited re-make, despite being officially based upon a story by Frank
Launder.)
But it is the 1941
version that remains the best known one, in which the material was
re-worked to provide a vehicle for the popular contemporary comedian,
Arthur Askey. Askey got his start as a music-hall comedian, then moved
to radio, where he formed an engaging partnership with Richard Murdoch
(with Murdoch billed there, as indeed he is here, as Richard ‘Stinker’
Murdoch!). Their show, “Band Waggon”, was so successful, it was in time
adapted to become one of the earliest series on BBC television. A
further move by Askey and Murdoch into motion pictures inevitably
followed. For viewers today, the way in which they react to The Ghost
Train will undoubtedly be governed by their reaction to Askey’s
particular brand of humour. I might as well confess up front that I find
him well nigh unbearable. I can – kind of – understand why he was
popular at the time, and I can imagine his routine working well enough
when he had a live audience to play off, or was let loose in the
unstructured world of radio. However, in The Ghost Train the
unnecessary shoehorning of Askey and his non-stop capering into the
proceedings never ceases to be annoyingly apparent; and most of his
alleged witticisms fall as flat as lead pancakes. In fact, the way in
which Askey is used here is most peculiar. We B-movie fans are all too
familiar with the Informed Attribute©, which sees film-makers
choosing to have supporting characters tell the viewer just how
beautiful/smart/talented/deadly the central character is; so much
easier than showing us, right? A few weeks ago, conversely, I
discussed the far rarer phenomenon of the Non-Informed Attribute, in
which the character in question turns out to live up to their rave
reviews. But what we have here is something different again, the – uh –
Attribute? Right throughout, the other characters of The Ghost Train
are just as irritated by Askey’s alter-ego, Tommy Gander, as the viewing
audience is likely to be. “Oh, shut up, you idiot!” is the first direct
response to his clowning, courtesy of R.G. Winthrop, and similar
sentiments are forthcoming throughout. He’s not funny, and no-one
pretends he is. It’s remarkably refreshing.
But wait! Didn’t I say
that I got a laugh or two out of The Ghost Train? So I did and, I
admit, one of them was courtesy of Arthur Askey. The early antics
of Tommy Gander and Teddy Deakin, intended to catch the eye of pretty
Jackie Winthrop, did get a grin out of me, mostly because of the
interaction – very practised, and obviously highly enjoyable to both –
between Askey and his long-time side-kick Murdoch. Apart from that---
Well, “Shut up, you idiot!” does seem the most fitting reaction;
although admittedly, Tommy Gander’s sheer pathetic-ness is rather
the point. Murdoch himself, generally Askey’s straight-man, ultimately
garners more laughs than his more famous partner; actually, almost
everyone else does! (In other words – if only this film’s star
would sit down and shut up, we could all have a very good time! In this
respect, the film that The Ghost Train puts me most in mind of is
the 1939 version of The Gorilla, which is a sufficiently
agreeable piece of nonsense so long as Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill and
Patsy Kelly are allowed to do their stuff, but which feels compelled to
come to a painful screeching halt every five to ten minutes so that the
top-billed Ritz Brothers can torment the audience.) In the end, Kathleen
Harrison comes off best of all as the parrot-toting Miss Bourne; while,
since there’s nothing my perverse little heart likes better than a truly
obscure reference (obscure now, that is, certainly not in 1941),
I also get a laugh out of Jackie Winthrop’s dismissal of her stuffy,
stiff-necked cousin, when she tells him that he sounds like “something
out of ‘East Lynne’!”
So much for the laughs
in The Ghost Train – what about those shivers? These come
primarily courtesy of stationmaster Saul Hodgkins. Unwelcoming from the
start, but unable to force the stranded passengers to leave the
junction’s waiting-room, Hodgkins finally breaks down and tells the
story of the tragedy that occurred so many years ago. (The Ghost
Train is unusually specific as to dates, with the action unfolding
on the night of 22nd June, 1940, forty-three years exactly
after the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.) This part of the film is
played absolutely straight, and rightly so. Wisely, the screenplay
banishes Tommy Gander to a back room before Saul Hodgkins begins his
grim narrative; there is no place at all in this sequence for any
levity. The telling of the tale – intercut with footage showing the
disaster – is enough to sober the sceptical passengers; and if they do
not entirely believe Hodgkins’ description of the phantom train that
“comes a-screaming and a-tearing through the station”, on a line that
has been closed ever since the night of the tragedy, the
station-master’s tone of utter conviction is at least enough to give
them pause. Hodgkins then warns the group that they are in grave danger
if they insist upon staying at the junction: in the past, everyone who
has dared look upon the ghost train has been found dead shortly
afterwards. With this final warning, Hodgkins departs – leaving the
nervous passengers to assure one another that they don’t believe a word
of it; but--- But, but, but….
After horror, alas,
comes comedy – or at least, “comedy” – as Tommy Gander returns with a
vengeance, and dedicates himself to annoying the absolute hell out of
all the poor damned souls condemned to being trapped with him in a
confined space. How this sequence fails to end in slow, painful, bloody
murder---well, let’s just say that I emerged from this viewing of The
Ghost Train with a whole new respect for British endurance. After
eighty minutes of Arthur Askey in full flight, the Blitz must have
seemed like a doddle. This tortuously drawn-out episode is finally,
mercifully, terminated, and in a most dramatic way: with the return of
Saul Hodgkins, who falls through the door of the waiting-room and
collapses onto the floor; on the exact same spot, as it happens, where
the doomed Ted Holmes died some forty-three years earlier. The men carry
Hodgkins into a back room, where he is pronounced dead by Dr Sterling.
The Ghost Train picks up the pace after that, with the sudden
arrival out of the now-raging storm of Julia Price (played by the lovely
Linden Travers, she of the impossibly square jaw) and her brother. Julia
begs the passengers for assistance, insisting that her brother is
persecuting her. He, in turn, asserts that she is suffering a form of
mental disturbance, and must be kept confined for her own good. (Price
is played by Raymond Huntley, so naturally we don’t trust him.) It
emerges that Julia is dangerously obsessed with the legend of the
phantom train. Learning that the passengers heard the story from Saul
Hodgkins, Price demands to see him, forcing the others to break the news
of the stationmaster’s sudden demise. As suspicious of the passengers as
they are of him, Price demands to see the body….only to find that it has
disappeared from the locked back room.
Hearing the
circumstances of Hodgkins’ death, an increasingly hysterical Julia
insists that the dead man was not Hodgkins at all, but the ghost of the
late Ted Holmes. The others scoff, until they hear that their
description of Hodgkins does not fit the incumbent stationmaster – and
until they must admit that Julia is right, when she guesses that
“Hodgkins” died at eleven o’clock precisely, the time of Holmes’ tragic
demise so many years before. The passengers still do not believe in the
phantom train, but they are nevertheless increasingly unnerved by
Julia’s ravings – and by her panicked insistence that if they want to
save their own lives, they must leave before the train comes.
Suddenly, the lights in the waiting-room dim and flicker out….a distant
whistle is heard down the train line….and the terrified passengers
discover that all the doors of the waiting-room are locked, and that
they cannot escape….
The unseen passing of
the phantom train, a deafening nightmare of flashing lights and
screaming whistles, is the highlight of The Ghost Train. From
this point, sadly but not unexpectedly, the story settles into
all-too-familiar lines, as the apparently supernatural events that we
have witnessed are revealed as part of an elaborate hoax; a hoax so
very elaborate, in fact, that a phantom train and an undead
stationmaster would have been a lot easier to believe. Of course, given
the lengthy history of the play on which this film was based, it is hard
to imagine that audiences of 1941 were very surprised by this revelation
– or even (as modern audiences may perhaps be) by the flurry of
unmaskings that concludes the action, with a great many of the
characters turning out to be somebody quite different from who they
appeared to be. What is different about this version of the
venerable tale is that it has been updated to fit in with the times in
which it was produced. In the original play, and the earlier filmed
versions, the “ghost train” is revealed to be a cover for the activities
of a gang of smugglers; here, the bad guys are nothing less than a group
of gun-running fifth columnists.
And this is, I believe,
where The Ghost Train continues to maintain its interest for
modern audiences: not in the identity of its villains, necessarily, but
in the wartime marginalia scattered about the edges of its story.
Contemporary audiences would have taken this stuff for granted, of
course, but there is something quite fascinating in the film’s details,
and the matter-of-fact way in which they are presented: the obsessive
checking of the train passengers’ tickets, for instance; the removal of
the place name signs from the train platforms; the references to
blackouts, and to rationing; and the willingness of these strangers to
pitch in and share their limited resources with one another. The
Ghost Train was a wartime film in every sense of the expression. It
was shot at studios in London at the very height of the Blitz – the
actors’ dressing-rooms were positioned handy to the bomb-shelters,
just in case – and its attitude is entirely typical for a British
film of the time. Certainly, there’s a war going on; but you won’t find
the characters of The Ghost Train letting that control
their lives. There’s no grandstanding here, no compulsion to make a
speech; just the quiet determination of a group of ordinary people, all
of them set upon going about their normal business for as long as they
are able. In the course of the film we see these people angry,
irritable, argumentative, frightened, panicky….yet when the
circumstances call for it, they are able to pull themselves together
and, despite the danger, fight back against the enemies confronting them
– even Tommy Gander. Yes, even Tommy Gander. If there’s a moral in this
version of The Ghost Train, it’s that even a pathetic, annoying,
essentially useless little twerp like Tommy Gander can, when the
necessity confronts him, find a store of buried courage, rise to the
occasion, and do his bit in the defence of his country: for British
audiences of 1941, a comforting and reassuring message. |
Director: