You won't be disappointed!

Truly Dreadful Film

Sorry, this movie sucks

Memorable, crazy movie

For whatever reason when J. Arthur Rank decided to remake Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece The 39 Steps he opted for a much lighter approach. When Robert Donat essayed Richard Hannay in the original you were watching a most desperate man thrown together with Madeline Carroll running from the cops.Kenneth More apparently decided he was Cary Grant and played it the way Grant did his last Hitchcock film North By Northwest. But what worked for Cary Grant did not work for Kenneth More. And Taina Elg was no Madeline Carroll, few women have ever been that beautiful.Best in this rather tepid remake is Brenda Da Banzie as a most horny women who keeps dropping hints at More who seems completely oblivious.This version of The 39 Steps isn't a patch on what Hitchcock did though it has its moments.

This is a good film, bringing up to date the previous Robert Donat version. Kenneth More, who seemed to appear in every British film I watched in the 1950s, is excellent as Richard Hannay. What I like about this film is the interlacing of humour as well as the sinister threatening of the enemy. The fact that we are never really told who the "enemy" is adds to the tension and the mystery, but the real strength lies in the humour - the impersonation of the whistling milk man, the handcuffing together of Hannay and Fisher, and the way that the landlady identifies with the "runaway couple" reminding "McDougal" of their own courting days. The climax in the theatre is a little unbelievable with the audience watching dancing girls minutes after the Memory Man has been shot, for example, and we are not told how Hannay and Fisher managed to get from Perthshire to London with every policeman in Great Britain after them! The authentic Scottish scenery, especially Waverley Station and the Forth Bridge, adds to the film. I first saw this film in about 1960; I have seen it about a dozen times since, and I keep enjoying it!

The Christopher Reeve version of Rear Window was alright, and the Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho was rubbish, so I dubious about seeing another remake of a popular Hitchcock film, but I gave it a chance anyway. Basically it follows the same plot as the original, Richard Hannay (Kenneth More) meets a spy who tells him something she shouldn't of, and is murdered soon after, putting Richard in the frame and on the frame. He follows her instructions and something about a guy with little finger missing all the way to Scotland to find out more about something called The Thirty-Nine Steps. As Richard does all this, both the police and the real murderers are trying to catch him, and a woman called Nellie Lumsden (Brenda De Banzie) ends up coming along too. It still has the same ending also, with Mr. Memory (James Hayter) being the one with all the answers, but with an extra little bit afterwards where Richard and Nellie are together like a couple. Also starring Taina Elg as Fisher, Barry Jones as Professor Logan, Reginald Beckwith as Lumsden, Faith Brook as Nannie, Michael Goodliffe as Brown, Duncan Lamont as Kennedy, Jameson Clark as McDougal, Andrew Cruickshank as Sheriff, Leslie Dwyer as Milkman, Betty Henderson as Mrs. McDougal, Joan Hickson as Miss Dobson and Sid James as Perce. I will admit I did get a little caught in the film with its new extra material, like one or two chase and chatty sequences, but I can see why the critics would give this less interesting version two stars. Okay!

The only advantage this film has over the Hitchcock version is that it is in colour. However, it is poorly acted and poorly shot. There is a total lack of excitement. It is thus not even a shadow of either the Hitchcock original or the 1970s costume drama.This was an opportunity to get rid of some of the excesses of the Hitchcock version, such as Mr Memory, a character that was not in Lord Tweedsmuir's novel.One inevitably compares Kenneth More's Hannay with Robert Donat and Robert Powell. More's Hannay is but an apology for a character. Taina Elg is not any better, and I got the impression that there was no intimate relationship between the two - acted or otherwise - and that the pair had to be catapulted together.You would not be missing anything if you ignored this film.