The Silk Express

"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.

"The Silk Express" was a pretty exciting movie. I think it adds an element of excitement when a murder mystery occurs on a moving vehicle as opposed to the standard mansion.

Donald Kilgore (Neil Hamilton) and his silk consortium needed to get a silk shipment from Seattle to New York in three days or less. The entire train was at Kilgore's disposal. At the same time an unscrupulous businessman named Wallace Myton (Arthur Hohl) was trying to prevent that train from ever reaching New York. He and his consortium of businessmen purchased all the available silk in the area which gave them a monopoly on the product. Silk clothing manufacturers would have to buy from them at their price or have no silk at all. The only way around Myton was to buy from Japan and have it shipped to New York. Of course, that takes time and ran the risk of Kilgore not fulfilling his contracts which meant financial ruin.

What it came down to was one set of businessmen versus another set of businessmen. Wealthy businessmen are not necessarily the ideal protagonists which is one of the two quibbles I had with this movie. The other had to do with the ending and the feeling that it was unresolved.

As viewers we knew that Myton had a few agents of his on the train to either prevent it from reaching New York or disrupt it so that it didn't reach New York on time. What we didn't know was who the three agents were. Two of them were readily identified while the third, his ace up his sleeve, was unknown.

As things happened (even a murder) it wasn't clear who was causing the disruptions. It could've been any number of people. There was Clark (Arthur Byron), the conductor, Prof. Axel Nyberg (Dudley Digges) who was supposedly suffering from sleeping sickness, Dr. Harold Rolph (Vernon Steele), the professor's doctor, Robert Griffith (Allen Jenkins), the tramp, or Mr. Calhoun (Robert Barrat), the attorney hired by Kilgore. It was hard to know who was working for Myton which made the movie interesting.

Also of note in the movie were Sheila Terry and Guy Kibbee. Sheila Terry played the daughter of the professor and Guy Kibbee played McDuff, a railway detective who was aboard the train to investigate a murder. He was only doing his job, but he was a direct impedance to Kilgore's progress.

I liked this murder mystery because of the added element of the timeline. Sure, there was a murder to solve, but at the same time the train had to reach New York by a certain time to avoid a financial catastrophe.

Free on Internet Archive.

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.

There was a time when lousy movies were entertaining. And "The Silk Express," released in 1933 when films were just learning to talk, is a prime example. First, you gotta' believe that a criminal syndicate has cornered the entire American silk market and unless a trainload of silk from the Orient reaches New York within three days, the nation's fashion industry will collapse. A mysterious criminal mastermind has been planted aboard the silk express to stop it in its tracks. But who is he? The paralyzed scholar being rushed to New York for emergency surgery? His beautiful daughter? The doctor who doesn't seem to know as much as he should about medicine? The erudite hobo? The smooth-talking lawyer? It couldn't possibly be the bellowing railroad detective played by Guy Kibbee, could it? This ain't Agatha Christie. But the dialogue's crisp, the pace never lags and the solution to the mystery actually comes as a surprise.

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.