The Lady Vanishes is a 1979 British mystery comedy film directed by Anthony Page and written by George Axelrod, based on the screenplay of 1938's The Lady Vanishes by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, in turn based on Ethel Lina White's 1936 novel The Wheel Spins.

The film stars Elliott Gould, Cybill Shepherd, Angela Lansbury, Herbert Lom, and Arthur Lowe and Ian Carmichael.

In August 1939, a motley group of travellers find themselves in a small hotel in Bavaria, awaiting a delayed train to Switzerland.

The following morning, badly hungover, she finds herself in a train compartment with Miss Froy, an elderly governess, and Baroness Kisling with her servants.

Miss Froy chooses this moment to confess that she is in fact a courier with a vital coded message (she hums a tune to them) that must be delivered to a senior official in London.

Condon, Charters and Caldicot contrive to take over the engine and drive the train back to the main line and over the Swiss border.

[6] Axelrod's involvement resulted from ABC TV wanting him to write a version of Murder on the Orient Express (1974) – he suggested they buy the rights to Night Train or The Lady Vanishes.

[6] Among Axelrod's changes to the original were setting the new film in 1939 Germany, and altering the hero to a photographer from Life Magazine and the heroine to be a screwball "rompy, Carole Lombard character.

[11] Geoff Andrew of Time Out notes that "Comparisons are odious, but this remake of Hitchcock's thriller continually begs them by trampling heavily over its predecessor".

[13] Variety magazine notes that the script is "best when dwelling on English eccentricity to make the film's most endearing impression...Shepherd and Gould stack up as contrived cliches, characters that jar rather than complement.

"[14] Film4's review agrees, writing that the two leads are "ruthlessly upstaged by loveable old coves Arthur Lowe and Ian Carmichael as cricket-mad Charters and Caldicott".