NIGHT TRAIN TO PARIS (1964)

The excitement begins and ends with two men exchanging wrapped deli sandwiches...er...a reel tape and cash at a phone booth. The guy with the cash never makes it home. The other guy retains a fake reel as a deception. Ending in an appropriate sixty-five minutes, this film’s lackluster direction by actor, Robert Douglas, never becomes an exciting spy yarn, hinting that he should stay in the television medium where he was best suited to direct. The repeated filming of the same sequences only lengthens the film. He uses a momentary rocking camera motion only for the train’s first interior set to my annoyance.

An opening jazz score by the modest British composer, Kenny Graham assumes a treat ahead as if to mimic Henry Mancini. The underlying cartoon train graphic—I expected the Pink Panther as engineer—shaves any dangerous edges off the film. So one might anticipate a little humor and it does not go beyond that. Unlike a secure day train, only on a night train does one experience death. Filmed by Shepperton Studios in London, it was released by Twentieth Century Fox. It assumes a cool caper television pilot that the networks passed on.

The scene shifts to the office of an airline travel agency and its public relations man, Leslie Nielson, former intelligence officer in the OSS. He is charming and flippant but not convincing whether serious or comedic. Squeezing laughs out of an unfunny script by Harry Spalding is not easy. At this stage in his career, Nielson is not a notable star, yet the average television viewer in America at the time might recognize his face if not his name. For any fan of Nielson's comedic career crescendo, it may be difficult to entirely remove him from his Lt. Frank Drebin character. 

Arriving at his office in a modest tribute hairstyle to the bride of Frankenstein is Alizia Gur in all her exotic allure. A frequent guest star on many American television shows during the period, her acting has not matured since her single Bond film appearance. She arranges a meeting between Nielson and Hugh Latimer—credited as playing Jules Lemoine—fellow OSS officer who wants his pal off to Paris for a secret mission to deliver the (real) tape containing defense information. But Latimer's fake reel becomes his fatal drawback. Upon discovering his body, Nielson gathers unknown material from his apartment for a tedious waste of film. Without any music score, it seems even longer.

Nielson poses as an assistant to a professional photographer and to further the gambit they take along two models, one of which turns out to be an impostor. Gur fills in as a third model. But even before packing for the special New Year’s Eve Bear Ski Club train, the photographer is stabbed in the back by the short-spiked end of a ski pole. I might have believed his immediate demise had he been struck in a carotid artery. With Gur as his companion, Nielson arrives at the costume party in a “Groucho Marx” type prop— Drebin undercover. By midnight, the party is in full swing with era music and “ants in your pants” dancing.

On board is the large, high cholesterol, Eric Pohlmann, responsible for all the deaths in the film. The ski club has an inebriated bear mascot that interacts with Nielson for no apparent reason. The mascot gets a throttling as well and after the boat docks, Pohlmann dons the bear costume to the unknowing travel agent. Their confrontation in Dunkirk is pretty silly but it was not meant to be. He is able to beat the bear costume into submission with repeated blows to the stomach. Meanwhile, Gur’s been busy with her own plan for the tape and her inept pursuit of Nielson is preposterously dull. Nielson ends the film with a lighthearted, freeze-framed expression in “Police Squad” episode fashion.

Notes: Hugh Latimer is credited with playing Jules Lemoine. Adding some confusion, he is introduced to Gur as Georges Freneau. She claimed to be a friend of Lemoine yet, oddly, she never flinches when his undercover name is mentioned.

Finally, back in the day, a ferry shuttled specialty trains from Great Britain to France across the English Channel. Once docked in Dunkirk, the train would continue on to Paris and Switzerland’s slopes. Despite the film’s title neither the audience nor cast ever gets to see Paris. Perhaps a more accurate, but less intriguing title, “The Dunkirk Night Ferry.”