On N List of Movie Reviews
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Night Train to Paris (1964)
Rate:
4
Viewed:
5/19
5/19:
Like oil and water, Leslie Nielsen and black-and-white murder mystery pictures don't mix.
The trouble with Leslie Nielsen is that he has the face of a fool. He pushes the envelope further by donning a
beaglepuss for Night Train to Paris. It proves to be the downfall of the ineptly directed film by Robert
Douglas, the only one of his career.
At the beginning, there's a long shot of a man walking toward the phone booth, but why can't it be more
interesting with some cuts? Then, a tape is passed to him from the male caller in the phone booth which can
be seen just about anyone in the vicinity.
The male caller walks out of the booth and passes by a fat man with glasses. Looking backwards, he sees him
before running away only to let himself be trapped in a cul-de-sac alley while the fat man takes his sweet
time. For somebody who deals with spy stuff, why is he so stupid? Why doesn't the fat man go
after the guy with the tape?
About ten minutes later, the receiver is killed by the fat man who subsequently knocks out Alan Holiday (Leslie
Nielsen), but why doesn't he kill him instead? What's the point of letting him loose? As soon as Alizia Gur, the
Miss Universe semifinalist from Israel, showed up in Holiday's office with the hideous beehive hairdo and all,
I had her pegged for a femme fatale which turns out to be correct. I guess her dark looks were meant to
be a dead giveaway, huh? Acting roles would dry up for Alizia Gur by 1973, and she never worked again.
On the train which looks like an inspiration for Trading Places with
Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, and Jamie Lee Curtis, whenever one is at either end of the corridor, he's never
noticed by somebody in the middle, but how can that be given the peripheral vision? And finally, we have the
mother of all: Holiday, in his terrible-looking black Christmas sweater, gives no thought to hiding the most
important possession behind the window curtain in his sleeping compartment. I guess it's going to be really
hard for anyone to find it, huh?
By the way, the movie poster features a tagline: "The survival of two continents depended on what happened on
the..." But the tape has nothing to do with two continents...just Europe.
All in all, as ably demonstrated by Night Train to Paris, sixty-five minutes should be the standard for
all bad films to follow.