Here’s Leslie Nielsen before Airplane! changed the course of his career, in Night Train to Paris, a curio from 1964.
Nielsen plays a former spy dragged back into the game over a valuable computer program. Alan Hamilton’s task: to get the tape containing the program to Paris pdq. The impediment: so far, everyone who’s handled it has died at the hands of a fat assassin. Can Alan succeed where everyone else has failed? And will exotic beauty Catherine Carrel (Aliza Gur) be able to help him?
I remember making the same journey, London Victoria to Gare du Nord in Paris, and if this film does one great service, it helps explain why that seemingly normal train was always referred to as the “boat train”. Did it arrive at the south coast, leave the rails and plunge into the sea? No, not the train I was on anyway – we arrived at Folkestone, got off the train and walked onto the ferry, then got off the ferry in Calais and got on another train. But when this film was made, in 1964, the train carriages rolled onto the ferry at one end and rolled off at the other. No need for the passengers to leave their seat if they didn’t want to.
As far as the producers of this film are concerned, this “boat train” is a godsend. It makes for cheap film-making – the bulk of a film shot on one set, a train set!
But back to the story. Once Hamilton and Carrel have been apprised of the gravity of the situation, they board the train to Paris, which happens to be full of revellers warming up for New Year’s Eve. Also on board, the fat assassin (Eric Pohlmann, who was the voice of Blofeld in early Bond movies) and several fashion models going to Paris for a fashion shoot. Alan and Catherine, lots of drunk people swaying about, pretty young women, an assassin. And the police, let’s not forget them.
For the rest of the film, quite a lot of Alan and Catherine charging about up and down the train, with models and drunken party animals getting in the way, the fat assassin trying to do his thing and the police trying to do theirs.
Nielsen’s acting is over-precise and his way with a reaction shot is all his own. He’d starred in Forbidden Planet in 1956 but his career after that was one of guest appearances on TV shows like The Fugitive and Wagon Train, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Columbo. Then came Airplane! in 1980, followed by Police Squad, in which he played Lieutenant Frank Drebin, after which The Naked Gun movies and 20 years of gooning about.
You can see all that here, or more exactly you can see what the Zucker/Abrahams guys behind Airplane! and The Naked Gun saw in Nielsen that made them want him. He’s funny when he’s not trying to be, but funny also when it is called for – especially when Alan gets into fancy dress to blend into the revels.
Nielsen gives the whole film a shunt away from seriousness. We’re not exactly in Pink Panther territory of larky criminality but we’re on the way. Also, this is 1964, and though London would be declared to be “Swinging” the following year, only months earlier here we are in an more monochrome era. There are a lot of men in knitwear, and the sense is of an old world that’s about to die.
This comes home most obviously in the finale, during which Alan climbs over vast mounds of coal before the (exciting) big finish, which takes place in a huge factory full of old industrial revolution machinery.
Is it good? It has its moments but not really. But it is fascinating. Gur is a bit flat but emblematic of the whole thing – intriguing but with a touch of the exotic in a world crying out for it. And this is a short film – 65 minutes. The world needs more of those.
Night Train to Paris – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
