Oh, Mr. Porter! is one of the very best of the Will Hay films. Certainly it illustrates well the welding of British music-hall humor with the more sophisticated styles of Keaton and Fields. Another Hay trademark: the genial poking fun at the British love of antiquity and dislike of change. Although the film was shot on an unused stretch of the Southern Railway near Basingstoke, it is tactfully supposed to be located in Ireland. Nevertheless, the operation of Buggleskelly Station is by no means a total exaggeration, as any of you who have been trapped at rural English stations will be able to confirm! Incidently, the Hay-Moffat-Marriott comedies were unique in never using leading ladies or romantic sub-plots of any kind.... The
dialogue is often funny, albeit with the static back-and-forth quality of radio or music-halls, but the emphasis on pure sight-gag humor increases as the film progresses, coming to a spectacular climax with a haunted mill episode and a long and zany locomotive chase....” W.K.E.