While travelling by rail in interwar Nazi Germany, a young socialite finds that a fellow female passenger has disappeared from the train, but nobody else remembers her having been on board.While travelling by rail in interwar Nazi Germany, a young socialite finds that a fellow female passenger has disappeared from the train, but nobody else remembers her having been on board.While travelling by rail in interwar Nazi Germany, a young socialite finds that a fellow female passenger has disappeared from the train, but nobody else remembers her having been on board.
Gary McDermott
- Baroness's Manservant
- (as Garry McDermott)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThough Cybill Shepherd only wears one costume in the movie, (a bias-cut white satin dress), the costume department made nine identical copies to facilitate filming.
- GoofsNear the end of the movie, when the train is backed up to the yard, and Amanda has switched the points, she runs towards the train as it is leaving. The track they pass over passes the locomotive when the camera shows Robert reaching for her, but when the camera shows her running, she has yet to run over the track until the end, when Robert picks her up.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Siskel & Ebert: Hail, Hail, Black and White (1989)
Featured review
Film that never works out what it wants to be
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.
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.
helpful•116
- Leofwine_draca
- Aug 29, 2011
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- The Doomsday Express
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- £2,500,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 35 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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