The Silk Express

The Silk Express (1933)

** (out of 4)

A rather bizarre murder/mystery about a businessman who makes the price of silk go sky high on the market so Donald Kilgore (Neil Hamilton) calls him into his office and threatens that if he doesn't bring the price down everyone's going to start importing from Japan. The business owners decide to import the product so it boards a train in Seatle and makes the journey to New York but along a way a murder occurs and it's clear someone doesn't want the train to arrive. Whenever one of these murder/mysteries show up on Turner Classic Movies I try to watch them and quite often it appears that most of them are working off the same formula so I'll at least give THE SILK EXPRESS some credit because I can't think of another movie where the battle is over imported silk. Outside of that there's very little in this film that works because it really drags along with a poor pace even at just 61-miutes. I think the biggest problem is the actual story and that includes the silk. While this might be an original topic I can't say it's an entertaining one. The entire time it's hard to get caught up in the story simply because you really don't care about what's at the heart of it. Even worse is that there's simply not enough reason to care about who the killer is and the number of red herrings is more than the actual running time. Hamilton is energetic in the lead but he's not given much to do. Arthur Byron plays the part as if he's angry at the world. Sheila Terry is the quick love interest. Guy Kibbee plays a redneck detective who is exited at finally getting to solve a murder. Several other Warner contract players show up but the most interesting casting is that of Allen Jenkins. I won't spoil what he plays but it's quite a twist and especially the look he has going for himself.

"The Silk Express" is a strange little B mystery from Warner Brothers. It's also not all that good. It begins with some manufacturers needing silk for their clothing BUT some jerks have control of all the domestic supplies of silk--and they naturally want to way overcharge for the material. So, Kilgore (Neil Hamilton) personally goes to arrange for the silk to be sent by train from the West Coast to the East. But the jerks who control the silk market will stop at NOTHING to stop the shipment--even if it means killing in order to stop that train. Along the way, murders start happening and soon a cop comes aboard and threatens to stop the shipment.

This film has so many dopey clichés--a paralyzed man who is 100% frozen except for his eyes is about to use them to identify the killer when HE is murdered, a black guy called 'Snowflake' (uggh!) and much more that make this seem like an ultra-low budget Agatha Christie knock-off. None of it is particularly inspired or well written. The only thing that interested me in the least was seeing Guy Kibbee playing a person who wasn't stupid--a real departure for this character actor! Silly non-sense.

With advance information that all the designers will be using silk for their spring lines, Arthur Hohl corners the commodity. Industry leader Neil Hamilton arranges for a major shipment from Japan. But when it arrives in San Francisco, it still has a train journey to the silk mills in New York. If Hamilton can get through, Hohl will be ruined. If not, Hamilton. Hohl has an agent aboard the train. Hamilton has the train's staff, Dudley Digges, whose scleroderma is turning him to stone, Digges' daughter Sheila Terry, and doctor Vernon Steele, and his lawyer. With railroad detective Guy Kibbee coming aboard to investigate a murder, can the train get through?

It's a highly imaginative set-up for a murder mystery, with the motive apparent from the beginning. It also deals with the motionless of many a mystery by putting it aboard a moving train, ably realized by Ray Enright. He was one of Warners' workhorse directors. He was able to turn out a musical or a war movie on demand. Studio directors like him are not held in such high esteem as 'auteurs', whose styles and themes are instantly recognizable. But directors who worked in a large variety of genres had the advantage of letting the well of creativity fill up a bit between, say westerns, while they worked on a comedy. They might not be possessed of a singular voice, but they turned out solid work and kept the standards of film making high. This improbably plotted movie is a good example of that sort of work.

With Arthur Byron, Allen Jenkins, and Vernon Steele.

One can count on one hand, nay, one finger, the number of Hollywood movies that deal with the importation of silk from Asia. This may be the only one and it goes way back to the beginning of talkies. Using this subject as the basis for a fairly good mystery that involves murder aboard a fast-moving train is rare indeed. The cast consists mainly of well known character actors under contract to Warner Brothers. Guy Kibbee plays Railway Detective McDuff who wants to slow the train down. Since the silk traders must get their shipment to New York within a certain time frame, the railway detective must be dealt with by the entrepreneurs. Competitors are also at work trying to sabotage the entire operation to make sure the train does not reach New York on schedule. They will stop at nothing including murder to stop the train so they can corner the market on silk. Kibbee did well when his role was limited to a few lines. When given a large role as in this movie, his loud banter becomes irritating at times rather than amusing. It is good to see the antics of Allen Jenkins toned down. He is actually a fairly decent actor when given the right role as in this film. He too tended to overact outrageously when given the opportunity. The rest of the cast including the two leads are adequate for their parts. The result is an entertaining little whodunit. And you may be surprised at the end unless you pay really close attention to detail.

... because this is a film about getting silk to the New York mills in time for the latest Paris fashions to hit the market on schedule. In 1933 a quarter of Americans were unemployed, and it's not like the cargo is something vital to life like baby formula or iron lungs. I can't see how you are going to get an audience worked up about a shipment of silk. But I digress.

So think of the silk as a McGuffin. Donald Kilgore (Neil Hamilton) is head of the New York mills protective association. Bad guy Wallace Myton (Arthur Hoyl) has bought up all of the silk he can lay his hands on and is price gouging. Kilgore can get a huge shipment sitting on the docks at Seattle on a train and back to the east coast in three days. Myton says if the association does that he won't sell them silk at any price. They refuse his offer and go with Kilgore's plan. So Myton does everything in his power to sabotage Kilgore's mission and stop that silk from getting to New York, and that includes murder.

Kilgore is aware of this possible threat, and brings on a transportation attorney to help with any legal snags (Robert Barrat as Calhoun). Also on board is a man with a rare form of sleeping sickness who will die in three days if he can't get to New York and the only clinic that can treat him. Accompanying him is his doctor and his grown daughter. Along the way there are two murders. And we already know from the scenes with Myton that he has three men on the train. Two are common criminals, but the third is an elite criminal who never fails. That is the set-up for this transcontinental trip.

The man with sleeping sickness and the urgency of his situation was probably inserted to A. Get a pretty young lady into the cast B. Inject some human interest rather than making this all about silk. It's a taut little film, running at a fast paced 61 minutes. It gives both Allen Jenkins and Guy Kibbee a chance to be something more than just the comic relief for a change, with Kibbee being a railroad officer and Jenkins an erudite boxcar tramp. That's the nice thing about these WB precodes. Each player always played a certain type. For example, you see Arthur Hoyl and you know right away his character is probably a slimy little weasel. You don't have to waste script space showing the audience he is a slimy little weasel.

This was a good little precode era film with nothing precode about it. WB should have used it as a model on how to make comedy in the production code era that would pass the censors but, alas, they did not.