The Thirty Nine Steps (1978)

The Thirty Nine Steps is set during 1914 & starts in London late one night as three men discuss a potential threat to world peace & England, retired secret agent Scudder (John Mills) tells Sir Hugh & Lord Harkness (William Squire) about a plan by three Prussian enemy agents to assassinate the Greek prime minister who is on an official visit to London & plunge all of Europe into a war. Soon after the meeting both Hugh & Harkness are murdered & Scudder know's he is next so he ask's his neighbour Richard Hannay (Robert Powell) for help & to shelter him until he can work out the details of the Prussain's plans, collect proof &prevent the start of a World War. However the Prussain agents find Scudder & murder him, Hannay is blamed for the murder & goes on the run to clear his name, follow up Scudder's leads & try to stop the war himself, but no-one seems to want to believe Hannay & Scudder's notebook is missing...This British production was directed by Don Sharp & was the third time that the novel The 39 Steps by John Buchan had been adapted for the silver screen following Alfred Hitchcock's original The 39 Steps (1935) & the remake The 39 Steps (1959), while I have not read the book nor seen Hictchcock's take on it I have seen the 1959 version before & I have to say I much prefer this one & I think it's superior in just about every way although still not perfect by any means. While watching this it's clear that while the general feel of the film is similar & many of the same character's appear the basic story is different & the ending also is very different & thankfully ditches the awful idea of Mr. Memory being an agent for evil & instead has a nice, if somewhat short, little set-piece in & outside of London landmark Big Ben. The two killers chasing Hannay, the meeting & murder of a British agent in his flat, the train journey to Scotland, the bridge dangling scene, the hike across the moors, the attractive female Hannay meets, the police Inspector on Hannay's trail & even a scene in which Hannay has to give a speech in a case of mistaken identity. At an hour & forty odd minutes the pace drops occasionally & maybe this isn't as action packed as some may want but it's a pretty solid story of mystery & enemy agents & assassination plots with good character's (although Alex doesn't seem bothered by the murder of her fiancé at all) although the bad guy Appleton doesn't get a big speech to try & justify what he is doing & the ending is rather abrupt. The script is gripping, the mystery aspects work well enough & there's enough incident to keep one interested throughout. I liked it quite a bit actually.While the 1959 version of The 39 Steps was bright & colourful this one is far more gritty & grey which suits the Victorian period setting very well, the moors actually look like rough terrain rather than pretty fields & the special effects are obviously better this time around as well. The production design is great, the costumes, sets & props all look authentic & add character to the visual style of it, the Big Ben ending feels a little silly as Hannay just decides to dangle hundreds of feet in the air without even thinking about it & the sequence doesn't really lead to anything spectacular. Relying on story & boyish adventure there's no real violence or gore & no profanity so this is one all the family could watch.Filmed on location in London & Scotland. The production values are great & this is a fine looking film. The acting is good from a solid Brisith cast including Powell, David Warner, Sir John Mills & George Baker.The Thirty Nine Steps is a cracking little Saturday afternoon spy adventure film with an attractive period setting & a pretty solid & suspenseful script that goes up & down the country & ends on a lofty set-piece in & outside Big Ben. A good way to pass a couple of hours, you could do a lot worse.

It is said that it is hard for a remake to reach the level of its original counterpart, but this film is the rare exception. It reaches the level of the 1935 Hitchcock film and vastly surpasses it. Instead of the restricting in-studio black and white shots, this film offers the realm of colour and the expansive location shooting of the Scotland hills.Set in 1914 before World War 1, Thirty Nine Steps follows the story of Richard Hannay (Richard Powell) on the run from London after being framed for the murder of a spy (Sir John Mills), and being pursued across the Scottish landscape by both the police and the real murderers, led by the scheming villain, Edmund Appleton (David Warner).Appleton plans to assassinate someone of great importance at a certain time back in London,and it is up to Hannay to interpret the clues the murdered spy has left behind, evade his hunters, and return to England. This leads to one of the most fantastic climaxes the cinema has ever seen.

R Houghton's review claims that "...with this version, we finally get the story as it was written." This is a very long way from true. To note only three departures, the thirty-nine steps of the original text do not refer to the steps leading up to Beg Ben, but to a staircase leading from a house in Bradgate down to the sea; in the original text, Scudder is knifed in Hannay's flat; and the scene of Hannay clinging to the hands of the clock appears nowhere in Buchan's novel.But all that said, this production is a fine piece of work in its own right, having great pace, style and atmosphere, and with some first-class acting from Robert Powell.

I'm not a big fan of remakes. In particular, the act of remaking a film that is already considered a classic seems pointless. If the original is so good that everyone speaks highly of it, what's the point in trying to retell the story again? Surely a better idea would be for the remake brigade to pick films that had good potential first time round but didn't quite come off as well as they might. This 1978 adaptation of The Thirty Nine Steps is one of the few films, I think, that has valid justification for revisiting a story that had already found critical and commercial success in an earlier version. Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 version of the story was a truly outstanding film cinematically-speaking, but it was not a very faithful rendition of John Buchan's source book. The 1959 remake, with Kenneth More, merely copied the Hitchcock version. This third stab at the story, directed by Don Sharp and scripted by Michael Robson, is the first to go back to the novel and attempt to use the original plot closely and faithfully. For once, we have a remake that exists for a purpose:- to tell the story as envisioned by Buchan.Mining engineer Richard Hannay (Robert Powell) befriends a man named Scudder (John Mills) who is on the run from enemy agents in 1914 London. Scudder is murdered for his troubles, but not before passing a notebook on to Hannay and giving him a few clues as to the nature of the enemy. Hannay finds himself suspected of the murder and is forced to flee by train to the north, eventually eluding his pursuers by hiding from them in the rolling slopes of the Scottish wilderness. After various adventures, Hannay discovers that his enemies are actually German spies plotting a terrible atrocity in London. Aided by a lady he has picked up during his escapades, Alex Mackenzie (Karen Dotrice), Hannay attempts to foil the sinister plot, culminating in a terrifying fight on the face of Big Ben as the clock ticks towards a catastrophic disaster.Powell is excellent as the hero, and isn't upstaged (as one might expect) by the stellar supporting cast. (In fact, Powell went on to portray the character in a successful series on British TV a few years later). Good character work is provided by the likes of Eric Porter, David Warner, George Baker and John Mills, while Dotrice makes an agreeable leading lady. The period detail is evoked reasonably well throughout. The climax on the face of Big Ben has been frequently criticised - it is one of the only parts of the film that differs significantly from the events in the book, which is perhaps why purists have been quick to "knock" the sequence. However, I find the Big Ben sequence to be both exciting and memorable. If anything, the film's weakness is a lack of urgency during the opening half-hour or so. For those who make it past the slightly stodgy opening act, this emerges a very enjoyable and worthwhile retelling of Buchan's celebrated novel.