The Dawn Express

This film is SO bad I couldn't stop watching. If you watch it with this in mind you could be smiling and chuckling for an hour.

Even so-called "B" movies can be good - if they have a good plot, screenplay, sets and settings, and cast. Unfortunately, "The Dawn Express" is lacking in all of these. As much as one might want to have an interesting espionage thriller, this film just screams "amateur." The script is terrible, the plot and acting resemble the melodrama of silent films.

Most propaganda films are much better than this. The plot idea is a good one, but the story just didn't get a very good screenplay. Either that or the direction was terrible. More than likely, it was a combination of the two. Even the most die-hard war movie collectors will want to forget this poor film.

Michael Whalen and William Bakewell are research chemists at the same factory. Whalen is engaged to Bakewell's sister, Anne Neagle, who is a secretary at the plant. The men are working on a formula to make gasoline more powerful, which the plant's manager explains to a government man twice. Bakewell picks up Constance Worth in a bar. She says she's a Polish refugee. Actually, she's part of a German spy ring run by Hans von Twardowsk trying to get the formula. When a man trailing Bakewell is killed, Whalen is told to do what he thinks best. Meanwhile, a passenger plane spends the movie showing up in flight occasionally.

If they're relying on Whalen's judgment, the first thing I wonder about is relying on the judgment of a man who agreed to be in this shoddy and dull movie.I'm sure Twardowski, whose character says several times that he never makes mistakes, wondered the same thing. He had entered the theater in Germany in 1919, and had success on stage on screen through the 1920s. When the Nazis took power, he fled; they didn't like homosexuals. Throughout the War years, he made a decent living playing Nazis on the screen, but that evaporated after the war, and he went back to the stage. He died in 1958, aged 60.

While there is an airplane at the end of the film this film really has nothing to do with the cover artwork. This film deals with synthetic fuel (formula 311) developed by two scientists apart from each other as security measures. A love interest between the two stars adds to the story and intrigue. This is a slower paced film but I like the plot and the conclusion is surprising. The good news is it is available for free on the internet archive and their copy is watchable. The score by Lee Zahler is passable. Nothing stands out but it is passable. The number of people who were watching Norton was hilarious. The German Captain Gemmler in the picture somewhat reminds me Col. Klink in the television show "Hogan Heroes." I give this film a #100 ranking.

Stars Michael Whalen and Anne Nagel. Picture quality is pretty terrible, but the acting is so lame, it's unlikely this one will be restored anytime soon. The usual wartime flick, with the Nazi's of germany trying to steal the formula from workers who get knocked off one by one. The story line is actually pretty good, if formulaic. Acting and production values are pretty cardboard and stilted, but easy to follow. Written by Arthur St. Claire, who wrote a ton of stuff in the 1940s. Directed by Albert Herman... looks like he directed many, many shorties from the early days of silents, and jumped right in with full length features when the studios began with talkies. An M&A Production, which seems to stand for Merrick and Alexander, the producers.