This film from tiny Mascot Pictures is very much like a super-low budget variation on "Grand Hotel". It's made up of several stories and many characters who are traveling cross-country on a brand-new super speedy train. The main tale stars Victor Jory and Evelyn Venable and it's a pleasant little story about a Broadway producer following his diva aboard, as she's giving up her career to get married--and he wants to somehow woo her back to the show. In addition, there are various crooks, a nervous man and a story about an affair that round all this out. While none of it is brilliant and it is a bit derivative, it is pleasant and generally well-acted as well as entertaining---provided you like old films. If you don't, then try something a bit better--as old movies are often wonderfully entertaining (such as "Grand Hotel" or "Dinner at Eight"--two of the best of this genre) . Worth seeing but far from a must-see.
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RobW17 November 2001An odd little curiousity of a film. An assortment of unlikely characters take an express train from New York to California, the main plot revolves around a stage director in pursuit of his leading lady (the same plot that was used much more successfully in Twentieth Century the year before) and a crook on the run from the police who engages in a little robbery and blackmail en route (he fails and is exposed by the stage director).
As a film its very stagey, the acting is too - they all make their entrances and exits as if they're treading the boards. Mainly of interest for the train itself, as a 1930s idea of what rail travel should be like. This is a double deck, 160mph monorail, luxuriously fitted out like an art deco ocean liner! -
boblipton22 July 2017A motley assortment of well-to-do people get aboard the Streamline Express, a new luxurious train, New York to California, non-stop in 20 hours. Victor Jory wants to get Evelyn Venable back for his new stage production; she has just walked out on dress rehearsals and is traveling with Ralph Forbes to get married in Santa Barbara. Erin O'Brien-Moore wants to get husband Clay Clement back from Esther Ralston, who is being blackmailed by Sidney Blackmer.
And so forth. The actors put in good performances, particularly the first triangle in a comic plot that suggests the previous year's screwball 20TH CENTURY, but the whole movie has a cobbled-together feeling and the interior of the train is oddly commodious for something that has to fit on a rail line. The overall effect is of an ambitious but cheap-and-hasty production that is too erratic to maintain interest. -
didi-54 May 2004Little seen but fast moving comedy with Evelyn Venable (the original Columbia lady with the torch') and Victor Jory. The express of the title is a train, somewhat similar to the Twentieth Century' a year earlier.
The plot is somewhat forgettable but seems to hinge on Venable being tamed by her man after leading him a merry dance. Ralph Forbes is in there again but doesn't have much more to do than he did in 'Twentieth Century'. Venable and Jory are good value though and keep the interest of the viewer. The other back stories of the train passengers are amusing but they really are very stagey caricatures.
Coming in at little over an hour, this movie certainly lives up to the implied speed of its title. Sadly it isn't likely to inspire many return journeys and seems to have fallen out of even the list of vaguely remembered 30s movies. -
Poverty row studios are known best for their cheap westerns, murder mysteries and espionage thrillers. What they were not experts at were comedies, although there are a few good ones among them. This is the little engine that could, a nice bit of screwball comedy obviously influenced by the 1934 John Barrymore/Carole Lombard version of the Broadway play "Twentieth Century". While the stars of this film were not huge box office draws like Barrymore and Lombard, they were well known enough as either A list character actors or B stars at the major studios, and add a nice touch of class to this. Evelyn Venable is a leading lady on a Broadway play who walks out on the rehearsals for her latest show to go out west to get married, and is followed by agent Victor Jory who pretends to be a valet in order to get aboard the train and convince her to fulfill her contract. Also aboard is a newly divorced man (Clay Clement) and his fiancee (Esther Ralston), followed by his ex-wife (Erin O'Brien-Moore). Confusion ensues regarding a stolen necklace which somehow Jory ends up with. A drunk (Ralph Forbes) and a father-to-be (Vince Barnett) add some dry humor as they interject themselves with the other characters.
At 70 minutes, this sophisticated looking screwball comedy doesn't appear to come from a studio on poverty row like Mascot. The train they are on is lavishly made up, and the costumes for the women are pretty glamorous as well. Jory's character gets some good laughs, but one sequence where he pulls on the ear of Venable's black maid (Libby Taylor), in order to get him to tell her where Venable is, is a bit disturbing. But there are some nice twists and turns, and a sequence where each of the passengers is searched for the missing piece of jewelry is cleverly staged. Barnett, a whispy looking man whose unseen wife is having the baby, looks unlike any father to be I've ever seen, and his plot device (his wife must give birth in California so he can receive an inheritance) is amusing with a clever twist at the end. All in all, not bad for a low budget poverty row comedy, reminding film historians that just because something didn't come with the benefits of a big studio behind it doesn't mean that it isn't worth looking at over 80 years later. -
richardchatten10 November 2020Featuring a shockingly youthful Victor Jory & Sidney Blackmer. Leonard Fields not surprisingly never directed another film after this very poor man's 'Twentieth Century' that feels as if it had been sitting on the shelf for about five years; both for it's technical primitiveness (the model shots of the train are unbelievable, for the wrong reasons) and it's sometimes off-colour humour, the script evidently written preCode.
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cbonaire13 February 2011Expecting to enjoy a very cool train film, I wound up being greatly disappointed with this movie. For starters, the train in the title turns out to be a most unconvincing model which, after its christening, is little seen the rest of the film, save for brief shots of it speeding along. According to the script, it travels on a special monorail across the country, the construction of which presumably rivaled the laying of the transcontinental railroad tracks back in the day. At any rate, the film is shot in interior sets that could have been in any hotel, and a drab one at that.
On to the plot, of which there is little. In fact, I am convinced it is a leftover hash-up from some other project coupled with a super-train angle to give it some box office appeal. Previous reviewers have detailed the story, what there is of it, but there is not one interesting scene in the picture. The characters are cardboard, the dialog stilted and the pace tedious.
I give this film my lowest rating. Another record-setting-train film, "The Silver Streak" (1934) is "Citizen Kane" by comparison. I advise anyone who loves trains or good films to avoid this disappointing mess. -
JoeytheBrit23 April 2020A forgettable low-budget riff on Twentieth Century. It's made well enough, but is entirely disposable.
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Cristi_Ciopron7 December 2015This jolly farce from '35 is the purest screwball, one of the funniest and most lighthearted, it has even the customary spanking (of Evelyn Venable, by Jory), and a cheerful dynamism; it's neither a Sci Fi Movie, nor a mystery one, although there's a funny futuristic toy and fancy sets (most of the storyline happens on a futuristic train) and a crime subplot (but as part of the farce: a concealed, hidden jewel, in a comedy of remarriage ). Jory has the leading role, and he's stunning and irresistible, Evelyn Venable is his lady, vastly endearing. The story follows three couples, and a delightful drunkard who sips anything. What matters, all the cast seems to enjoy doing this movie.
There are some equivocal lines, of adult humor.
Fred Arnold plays a character named Forbes, an unfaithful husband won back by his wife. (So, there aren't two Arnolds in the script, a Freddy and a Fred, why should they be, but one character has the name of another character's actor. Honestly.) Moreover, Ralph Forbes plays Freddy Arnold, so the character named after the actor who plays the runaway husband.
E. Ralston looked a bit androgynous for the tempting younger woman. But this is in keeping with the farce.
Leonard Fields, whom as of yet I know nothing about, directed the thing.
Here, Jory rose to humorous heights that will only be available to O'Toole.