Night Ferry

This is one of the lesser known Children's Film Foundation titles.

Night Ferry stars Bernard Cribbins as a leader of a gang of thieves who is also a master of disguise.

He has robbed a priceless Egyptian sarcophagus and has an ingenious plan to take it out of Britain to France on the night ferry.

Jeff is the boy who stumbles on to the plan. He and his friends try to stop the Egyptian sarcophagus to be taken out of the country.

There is a lot of location filming in various parts of London. The film is passable but it is a little too basic.

Like a other kids own adventures, the various children band together to stop the robbers and enlist the help of adults who will believes them.

Cribbins enjoys himself as the cunning and ruthless robber.

I will post a review of any film that I've seen, that at time of my posting lacks one, what follows is my brief note I made when I saw the film on Aug 14th 1993 on Irish TV (RTE2)...

Watchable CFF (children's film foundation) film in which a few kids attempt to foil a plan to steal an Egyptian mummy and sneak it out of the country.

I can't add anything now almost 20 years on I don't recall it, I would point out that though it may have been used as part of a TV series in the USA these CFF films were made for and shown in the cinema in the UK. If you think that I have written too much that is about my review, rather than the review itself, then I agree but for reasons I don't understand IMDb insist that reviews be a minimum of 10 lines! Why?

It's a simple story, but for me this is also a fascinating record of the way things were on British Rail in the 1970s. The film gets off to a great start, with a young lad trespassing in a railway yard to try and find his model aeroplane. It's a hump yard, where wagons are sorted by pushing them over a low hill and letting them run down into different sidings. He has no idea of the danger he's put himself into but fast cutting makes it all very real and alarming, for me at any rate. Ducking between wagons, even when they're stationary, can have tragic consequences.

The actual story, of smuggling on the London to Paris Night Ferry train, is of less interest but no doubt entertained the film's intended audience. Older viewers will appreciate seeing the late Bernard Cribbins playing a much more menacing character than Mr Perks in The Railway Children, and going through a wide variety of costumes and accents to avoid detection. And he has the last words in the film, a great one-liner.

The film was "made entirely on location", and the railway settings are all genuine (made with the co-operation of British Rail and the Wagons-Lits company, say the credits). There always seems to be a train passing in the background: even the breakdown train with its rail-borne crane makes an appearance. Continuity is good, with no use of unrelated stock footage - though the loco that brings the sleeping cars into Dover disappears rather abruptly, just before the final chase sequence. It's just a pity that we don't see those carriages being shunted onto the ferry.

All the actors, children included, put in credible performances, though of course it's Cribbins and Morris who steal the show.

The CFF had been making films with this sort of plot for 25 years. The comedy just doesn't come off..The only points are of seeing the Victoria area as it was in the seventies and the long defunct boat train service to Paris..The children seem to get on and off trains with impugnity.

Another CFF film ticked off my list to see all them and this was a great one. Plenty going on with no dull sections and nice to see cars from the 1970s and before moving and parked in glorious colour.