Night Train to Murder

Night Train to Murder is a 1985 British comedy film directed by Joseph McGrath and starring Morecambe and Wise. It was the last work that Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise worked on together before Eric's death in 1984, Morecambe being in poor health at the time of filming. It was written as a pastiche of the works of various writers including Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace and is set in 1946, featuring Morecambe and Wise ostensibly as 1940s versions of themselves. The duo's move from the BBC to Thames in 1978 was a much publicised media event, and one of the main reasons for their move was to make films and move away from the format of the Morecambe & Wise Show that had proved so popular in the last decade. The film was completed in late 1983 but not shown until after Morecambe's death, the following year. It was originally made with a laughter track but when shown, and later released on both VHS and DVD, this was absent. The film features a plot of family members dying in strange circumstances and the two leads are drawn into this when Eric's niece Kathy (Lysette Anthony) is visited by the family's lawyer, played by Fulton Mackay. It was made largely on location, produced on video tape and was originally broadcast on ITV on 3 January 1985. The closing moments of the film see Eric and Ernie walking off together, onto the next gig, making it their final screen image together.