The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery was the fourth entrant in the British St Trinian's film series. Made in 1966, it was also the first to be created in colour.
It was not the last in this series; the fifth and final instalment, The Wildcats of St Trinian's, came in 1980. People who've seen that final flick say it should never have been made. I feel the same about The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery.
The so-called 'comedy' is basically just a sequence of very unfunny slapstick. There's a new headmistress at St Trinian's, Miss Amber Spottiswood (Dora Bryan), who reassembles her teaching staff, pulling the French mistress away from giving her special French lessons, grabbing another teacher fresh from her sojourn in prison, and so on.
The old St Trinian's has been burnt down, but Amber finds a new mansion for her hellcats to inhabit. But little does she know that before the school moved in, a gang of thieves, led by Frankie Howerd, had hidden more than two million pounds under the floorboards of the Ladies College.
The money comes from a train robbery - and the interminable final sequence of the movie returns to the trains, as the schoolgirls and the criminals chase each other up and down the tracks.
The only cast member from the earlier movies is George Cole, still playing his Cockney-spiv Flash Harry role. He just seems to be going through the motions here - and the plotline has hardly any connection any more to the inspired schoolgirl creations of artist Ronald Searle, whose St Trinian's cartoons were the starting-point for the film series.
This is the third Universal DVD release from the St Trinian's series. The first, Belles of St Trinian's, was fairly faithful to the spirit of the cartoons. The second, Blue Murder at St Trinian's, had lost the plot somewhat, but was tolerable. The third instalment, The Pure Hell of St Trinian's, has not been released on DVD. The fourth, The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery should not have been.
The full screen transfer is soft in its image, and some of the colour seems to have been bleached out somewhat.
But there's no sign of print damage, just some odd colour values from time to time. It's not a brilliant transfer, but it's not poor enough to really merit complaint.
