The Silk Express

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.

"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.

... 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.

The Silk Express is a fast moving crime story loaded with Warners' supporting actor regulars: Guy Kibbee, Robert Barrat, Harold Huber, Allen Jenkins and Arthur Hohl. For train fans, there are scenes of an actual train filmed for the movie, along with stock footage of a train going through a snow storm on the way to New York. If the basis of the screen story seems odd, about importing a load of silk to break the "corner" a speculator has on silk supplies, at least the story is different. Warner Bros. in 1933 had an unequaled team of professionals who could turn out polished movies on the cheap. There are probably as many scenes in this 62 minute movie as a 90 minute movie now. And, just like in another Warners crime movie, Fog Over Frisco, when someone receives a telegram, you see an authentic looking telegram on the screen. The only things out of place in The Silk Express are the leads, Neil Hamilton and Sheila Terry, apparently brought in on a trial basis to see if they were Warners material. They did not stick around at Warners. Soon they would have company, as Jack Warner's cost cutting at the studio caused a migration of acting talent to other studios (among them Loretta Young and William Powell). The Silk Express is an example of the quality that Warner Bros. routinely put on the screen from 1931 to 1934, movies set in the Depression-era present that have not dated as badly as the studio product from MGM and other studios.

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.