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A group of travellers - comedian Tommy (Arthur Askey), Teddy (Richard
Murdoch), Doctor Sterling (Morland Graham), Herbert (Stuart Latham) and
Edna (Betty Jardine), R.G. (Peter Murray-Hill) and Jackie (Carole Lynne),
& Miss Bourne (Kathleen Harrison) - are told to change trains at a
railway station in the middle of nowhere, but their train simply doen't
arrive, instead the stationmaster (Herbert Lomas) tells them an eerie
story about a train that was wrecked nearby years ago, and since then it
does come back to haunt people on certain nights - and this night is such
a night. And to make his point, he then leaves the travellers alone since
he doesn't want to be caught by the ghost train at the station. Soon
enough though, he returns, dead, giving our travellers quite a bit of a
shock.
Not long after that, Julia (Linden Travers) arrives, who seems to be
terribly frightened of the ghost train on one hand, but who wants to see
it with her own eyes on the other. Her brother Price (Raymond Huntley)
arrives soon afterwards and wants to take her back, telling everybody else
she's just fantasizing. When the corpse of the stationmaster has suddenly
disappeared, the others are not so sure anymore. Then too, the train
really does pass by, putting a terrible fright into everybody, and soon
enough, Price organizes a bus to take everybody away. But Tommy and Teddy
decide it's time to investigate, like a nearby drawbridge that is closed
when it's supposed to be open, and soon Tommy is set to solve the mystery
... but is knocked out by R.G.
When everybody is carted off by bus, it turns out that Price, Julia and
the Doctor are all fifth columnists using the train for gunrunning
purposes and covering up the whole thing by a local folk tale about a
ghost train - and Teddy is a undercover cop who uncover the whole thing -
until he was knocked out by R.G. for purely personal reasons. However,
everything is not lost because Tommy opened the drawbridge on a whim and
now it's going to its certain doom. With the train crashing on the bridge,
it is easy for Teddy and the others to overcome the fifth columnists, and
ultimately, Great Britain is saved ...
Basically, The Ghost Train is of course a propaganda movie,
however it contains enough creepy sequences to also work as a chiller (and
truth to be told, the propaganda element doesn't kick in until very late
into the film). Actually, the only aspects of the film that do not work
all that well are the comic ones (and that despite the fact that the movie
was marketed as a comedy), basically because top-billed Arthur Askey goes
over the top a few times too often and eventually becomes as annoying as
the other characters regard him to be (and treat him likewise).
Still, Askey aside, the film has its moments and is far from being a
complete waste of time.
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