Inspector Hornleigh Goes To It [Mail Train] **** (1940, Gordon Harker, Alastair Sim, Phyllis Calvert, Phyllis Calvert, Edward Chapman, Charles Oliver, Raymond Huntley) – Classic Movie Review 6570

The third and last cheap and cheerful comedy thriller in the series is enlivened by the star performances of Gordon Harker and Alastair Sim working with an ideal script by comedy thriller experts Frank Launder, Val Guest and J O C Orton.

As with the second film Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday (1939), there is again more well-aimed comedy, and this time an even better, wittier screenplay as Inspector Hornleigh (Gordon Harker) and Sergeant Bingham (Alastair Sim) go to it in disguise on the trail of undercover Nazis over-running wartime Britain when they are set on a mundane case of army-store thefts.

Inspector Hornleigh Goes To It provides plenty of comedy thriller entertainment, based on BBC radio’s Monday Night at Eight (by Hans Wolfgang Priwin), and it is taken at breakneck speed by expert comedy director Walter Ford.

It is a bit of a vintage British comedy classic thanks to the delightfully amusing stars, the top character actor support and a usefully funny script that ends the way you somehow feel it should – on a speeding train (hence the American title of Mail Train) – as Hornleigh tries to sort out the spies. Phyllis Calvert has a key role as the mysterious Mrs Wilkinson.

It is shot in black and white by John J Cox and Arthur Crabtree, produced by Edward Black and scored by Louis Levy.

Also in the cast are Edward Chapman, Charles Oliver, Raymond Huntley, Percy Walsh, David Horne, Peter Gawthorne, Wally Patch, Betty Jardine, O B Clarence, John Salew, Cyril Cusack, Bill Shine, Sylvia Cecil, Edward Underdown, E Turner, Marie Makine and Richard Cooper.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6570

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