Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

aa56 I was looking forward to a good old English ghost mystery, but this film is mostly like the title of my review. I was getting really close to switching it off, but the thought kept recurring that the English MUST have a good ghost story waiting to unfold.I was wrong. Most of this movie is vaudevillian prattle. The beginning has no plot development, just pointless comedic yakking. Arthur Askey's character Tommy Gander is even more annoying than Kevin Corcoran's Arliss Coates in "Old Yeller." I was so hoping he would die early.The "rule" is, if this is a ghost story, you had better scare the audience somehow within ten minutes, but this film doesn't become even mildly interesting until the stationmaster tells the ghost story. The highlights of this picture are the beautiful Linden Travers and the wonderful Kathleen Harrison, who would endear herself to American audiences as Mrs. Dilber in the 1951 movie "Scrooge."

mark.waltz OK, so Abbott and Costello aren't in this film, but there's lots of laughs here so American audiences can learn to appreciate, as I did, the comedy of someone we here in the states haven't had the pleasure of getting to know. Arthur Askey is a comic I discovered several years ago on TCM with a double showing of "The Band Waggon" and "Charley's Big-Hearted Aunt". I had heard of him before and seen movie stills of him, but hearing his voice and seeing him in his comic firm had not occurred until then. I was able to see this film, based upon an ancient British play, I too, had heard about, yet had never seen in any form."The Ghost Train" is just what the title implies: a train which, filled with ghosts, wants to add the living to their list of passengers. You see the train, you become one. This is the type of play that almost a hundred years ago toured around England and even the states, playing in community theaters (mostly converted barns) and giving audiences a chill much like Tod Slaughter was doing with his similar melodramas "Sweeney Todd" and "Murder in the Red Barn".Previously filmed in 1931, this remake got the comedy treatment with the Harold Lloyd like Askey, playing a ham actor who is stranded in a country station with a group of strangers. Through the station master, these lost folks learn the story of the mysterious train, which fell nearby through a bridge when the old stationmaster died before being able to close the bridge, sending everybody aboard to their deaths. The plot has been updated to the beginning of World War II to give it a sense of timeliness. It still retains the spooky atmosphere, gives Askey a cute song, a damsel in distress, and provides some comedy with a drunken female passenger who passes out and sleeps through the whole thing. Askey's in-your-face comedy is actually quite subtle; He's just a dude who likes to entertain and make people laugh, and some passengers like him more than others. What makes this more watchable for Americans is that there are few references to things we might not get, and the humor is more slapstick than droll.

Theo Robertson I remember THE GHOST TRAIN being shown on our regional television station STV on a fairly regular basis . No Christmas TV schedule or rainy bank holiday was complete without a showing on this movie . For some reason it abruptly disappeared from the schedules and can't recall it being broadcast on British television later than 1976 or 1977 . It's not a film I remember with any great affection either but it did stick out in my memory due to it being something of a scheduling institution in the 1970s along with certain scenes and I was curious as to how it would appear to my adult cynical self Many of the scenes I vividly recall still remain no better and no worse such as the title sequence which does have a low key effectiveness as we're shown the POV of train speeding along tracks as the unfocused credits rush towards screen . I also remember the sequence where Arthur Askey's character pulls faces in to a carriage trying to impress a young blonde woman . Unfortunately as so many people on this page have stated it's difficult to believe Arthur Askey was funny in 1941 , even more difficult to believe he'd be funny on a wet bank holiday in the 1970s and is painfully unfunny in 2012 and the all talking , all joking and all singing AA means the modern day audience will be on the side of Richard Winthorpe which I doubt was the object of the original play This is a pity because THE GHOST TRAIN whilst not being a classic is an effective take on the theme of THE OLD DARK HOUSE where a group of strangers fin themselves stuck in a remote rural railway station where they find themselves caught up in a mystery . It's hardly a classic but does have a certain degree of atmosphere especially when the station master relates the legend of the eponymous ghost train . This is however negated as the film becomes a star vehicle for Askey who feels the need to torture his new found companions and the audience with puns and pratfalls There other curiosity aspects to modern eyes .The acting style where very posh actors and actresses pretend to be working class by dropping the " H " from words which sticks out a mile . Likewise the attitudes of both mental illness and cigarettes and temperence is slightly different than you'd imagine to what it is today . There's also a war on which means rationing and the possibility of normal looking citizens being traitors which means being very dated THE GHOST TRAIN is a film not without interest

Michael_Elliott Ghost Train, The (1941) ** (out of 4) British comedy/horror film has comedians Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch among a group of people who misses their train at an old station. The group have to spend the night there when they learn of a mysterious ghost train, which apparently appears at night with the souls of people who were killed on it forty-years earlier. This is a rather strange film that once again follows that "old dark house" theme and tries to mix the horror and comedy elements. These types of films always depend on whether or not the comedians make you laugh and the team here didn't do that for me. For the most part Askey takes the lead with Murdoch only throwing in a few lines and it got to the point where it was really hard to tell that they were actually working as a team. Askey's brand of humor just wasn't for me, although I did find myself laughing at a few jokes but overall he just struck me as annoying. What does work however are the horror elements, which are pretty thick and contain some wonderfully dark atmosphere. The film reminded me a lot of the Val Lewton produced horror films that would follow within the next few years. The horror elements are all right on the mark but for the most part the film goes for all laughs. This certainly isn't a bad movie and I'm sure many will enjoy it but it didn't quite do the trick for me. Future director Val Guest is credited with the dialogue.