Thirty-Nine Steps, The/The Lady Vanishes (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Oct 15, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Don Sharp/Anthony PageRelease Date(s)
1978/1979 (August 27, 2025)Studio(s)
Norfolk International Pictures/Hammer Film Productions (Imprint Films/Via Vision Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A
Review
[Editor's Note: This is a Region-Free Australian Blu-ray import.]
Two British remakes of classic Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1978) and The Lady Vanishes (1979) were barely released in the United States and there remain largely unknown and unseen. The Thirty-Nine Steps was, however, a big critical and commercial success in Britain, while The Lady Vanishes was unjustly reviled and bombed at the box-office everywhere it played. Its failure seems to have been a reaction to its use of two American stars rather than the film itself which, overall, quality-wise is about on the same level as the former.
The Australian label Imprint has done both pictures justice. The region-free discs offer superb transfers, particularly The Lady Vanishes, an outstanding transfer, and loaded both films with scads of extra features, packing everything into an attractive, sturdy box. The set is limited to 1,500 copies.
The Thirty-Nine Steps was commended at the time for being more faithful, in spirit at least, to John Buchan’s 1915 novel than was Hitchcock’s 1935 original or the first remake, directed by Ralph Thomas, starring Kenneth More and released in 1959. Like the novel this remake is set just prior to the outbreak of World War I, when Imperial German spies infiltrated the highest levels of the British Government. Retired British Intelligence officer Col. Scudder (John Mills) tries in vain to convince his former superiors of a plot to assassinate the Royal Greek prime minister. Though war in Europe seems inevitable, preventing the assassination would allow the British more time to prepare for the all but certain conflict.
Stalked by German spies, Scudder turns to neighbor Richard Hannay (Robert Powell), a mining engineer from South Africa visiting London. Prussian agents chase Scudder to St Pancras Station, fatally stabbing him, but before expiring gives Hannay an incoherent message and attempts to give him a codebook. Mistaken for Scudder’s killer, Hannay flees to Scotland, sought by both the police and the Prussian spies.
The film benefits from the work of director Don Sharp, both a good action director but also something of an expert at giving low- and lower-budgeted films an authentic period atmosphere, most notably in his fast-paced, super-low-budgeted The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), by far the best of the Harry Allan Towers-Christopher Lee series. Given its considerable scope, The Thirty-Nine Steps likewise accomplishes much with its modest $2 million budget. It’s not as slickly-made as The Lady Vanishes, but better in terms of its period detail.
The cast is also exceptional, with David Warner as the leader of the Prussian spies, Eric Porter as the Chief Superintendent chasing after Hannay, Karen Dotrice (of Mary Poppins) as a love interest, George Baker as a diplomat (curiously dubbed in at least one scene), Andrew Keir as a Scottish lord, and on and on.
Not in Buchan’s book is the film’s memorable climax, a shootout inside the works of Big Ben, with Hannay pulling a Harold Lloyd and clinging to the minute hand of its enormous clock face. Producer Greg Smith claimed, “the Hitchcock version was about 20 percent Buchan and 80 percent Hitchcock. Our goal was to turn it around and make the film 80 percent Buchan and 20 percent invention.” And that pretty much describes this enjoyable thriller.
The success of The Thirty-Nine Steps no doubt fueled another Hitchcock remake, The Lady Vanishes, released by Rank but notable as the last production of the original incarnation of Hammer Films, the company best-known for its horror films, often with Christopher Lee and/or Peter Cushing. Undoubtedly another influence was Murder on the Orient Express (1974), a huge international hit.
Unlike Thirty-Nine steps, this remake is remarkably faithful to Hitchcock’s original film, albeit with American leads. In August 1939, one month before the start of World War II in Europe, madcap heiress Amanda Metcalf-Mdivani-Von Hoffsteader-Kelly (Cybil Shepherd) and American news photographer Robert Condon (Elliott Gould) are among a group of travelers stuck in Nazi-controlled Bavaria, awaiting a delayed train to Switzerland.
When the train is ready to depart, the badly hungover Amanda is helped by middle-aged governess Miss Froy (Angela Lansbury). Amanda nods off, and when she awakens Miss Froy has disappeared into thin air, yet others in her compartment, including German Baroness Kisling (Jean Anderson), her servants and their children, insist no such woman ever existed. The determined Amanda refuses to accept this, making herself a bother to everyone but eventually convincing Robert that she’s not imagining things, though seemingly every trace of Miss Froy is gone, and various passengers who clearly saw her now deny her existence.
Beyond the casting of Shepherd and Gould, the main difference between this and Hitchcock’s original is that screenwriter George Axelrod transformed the witty, very British dialogue of Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave into something resembling the banter of a 1930s screwball comedy. Axelrod was no slouch, he having written such Broadway hits as The Seven-Year Itch and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, and whose screenplays include adaptations of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Manchurian Candidate. His dialogue is pithy, lightweight material but reasonably amusing, though the threat of real danger is diminished somewhat compared to the Hitchcock version, with Shepherd and Gould blithely unconcerned, she more than he, regarding the dangerous situation they find themselves in.
Both stars were on the downslide, with Gould’s schizophrenic career choices all over the map throughout the decade. The previous year, for instance, he had starred in the superb Canadian thriller The Silent Partner but also Matilda, the disastrous comedy about a boxing kangaroo, played by an actor in a completely unconvincing costume. Shepherd enjoyed early successes with The Last Picture Show and The Heartbreak Kid, but her relationship with director Peter Bogdanovich and his attempts to groom her into a big star with Daisy Miller and At Long Last Love nearly wrecked her career. The failure of The Lady Vanishes and, that same year, the awful Americathon all but ended her starring career in films, though the indefatigable actress soon bounced back on series television.
Shepherd is... okay in The Lady Vanishes. A limited actress, her approach to the character is to blithely never take things too seriously, as is Gould’s, though his part is slightly more credible and Gould’s a far better actor. The picture would have worked better without the screwball comedy aspects and with British actors in the leads, but it wounds the film only slightly.
Balancing everything out is its slick production values; the budget was slightly higher, and this helps, and the supporting cast is excellent, on the same plane as Hitchcock’s film. Herbert Lom, for instance, is fine as kindly physician Dr. Hartz (Paul Lukas in the original), while Arthur Lowe and Ian Carmichael are fine replacements for Basil Radford and Nauton Wayne as Charters and Caldicott, the two cricket-obsessed English twits. Unlike Hitchcock’s film, this version of The Lady Vanishes was shot almost entirely on location, which cinematographer Douglas Slocombe captures beautifully with his Panavision lensing.
Imprint’s video transfer of The Lady Vanishes, from a 2K scan of the original camera negative, is unusually good, the image notably razor-sharp with excellent color and contrast. The Thirty-Nine Steps also looks great and was also remastered in 2K, if less staggeringly so, and with early scenes set in heavily fog-shrouded London that put the high-def transfer to the test. Unlike Lady Vanishes, it’s in 1.85:1 flat widescreen. Oddly, The Thirty-Nine Steps is, technically, in LPCM 2.0 stereo surround, but this seems limited to the Rank’s iconic gong, very impressive with the surround effects, and maybe the main title music; the rest of the picture seems entirely mono, all audio coming from the front speakers. The Lady Vanishes is LPCM 2.0 mono. Each film offers optional English subtitles and gets its own, separate Blu-ray case, with both contained in that typically sturdy Imprint box.
Supplements abound. The Thirty-Nine Steps’ extras consist of three new interviews, with executive producer James Kenelm Clarke, stunt coordinator Colin Skeaping, and film historian Sergio Angelini. Also included is a vintage featurette, On Location with Robert Powell and a trailer. The Lady Vanishes includes a new interview with actor Elliott Gould and two featurettes: The Last of Hammer, featuring interviews with the production crew; and The End of the Line, also new. A teaser and theatrical trailer round out the extra features.
Excellent transfers and good supplements make these films, virtually unknown in the U.S., a pleasure to watch and the set is highly recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV