The Lady Vanishes

(UK)

Hammer. Director Anthony Page; Producer Tom Sachs; Screenplay George Axelrod; Camera Douglas Slocombe; Editor Russell Lloyd; Music Richard Hartley; Art Director Wilfrid Shingleton

Elliott Gould
Cybill Shepherd
Angela Lansbury
Herbert Lom
Ian Carmichael
Arthur Lowe

The Lady Vanishes is a midatlantic mish-mash with some moderately amusing moments but no cohesive style.

The production has Cybill Shepherd as a madcap Yank heiress and Elliott Gould as a Life mag photographer foiling a political conspiracy aboard a train outbound from prewar Germany. Slapstick suspense and mystery elements that will fool almost no one add up to a heavy-handed affair. The script from an Ethel Lina White novel is best when dwelling on English eccentricity to make the film's most endearing impression.

Shepherd and Gould stack up as contrived cliches, characters that jar rather than complement.

Alfred Hitchcock's original version, circa 1938, had pretty much everything the remake doesn't.

(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1979. Running time: 99 MIN.

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