Der Geisterzug

At only 58 minutes, there appears to be something missing from this available print of the Anglo-German production directed by Geza von Bolvary and based on the play by Arnold Ridley (misspelled as Redley) in the elaborate and artsy opening credits.

A disparate group of travelers are stranded in a railway station on a dark and stormy night. There's no haunted house in this story, and one is not needed since the train depot is haunted by a stationmaster who was run over by a train that doesn't exist.

As with all of these stories where people are thrown together unexpectedly, we soon learn that they are perhaps not what they at first appear to be. There's a bickering married couple, another couple on their honeymoon, an old temperance woman, a bizarre bearded man, the current station master, and later a mysterious woman and her pursuers.

Although a silent film, the imaginative special effects and and animated titles cards more than make up for the lack of train sounds and certainly hold the viewer's attention.

Ilse Bois (sister of Curt Bois) plays the old maid who is tempted to taste the evil whiskey she has campaigned against. The results are very funny. Guy Newall, the English actor, plays the bearded man who seems to be a total fool. The other actors are all good in their roles.

This proved to be Bois' final film. She eventually fled Germany and worked in theater. Newall transitioned to talkies but died in 1937