Midnight Limited

In the 1930s and 40s, there were at least 6,000,004 B-mystery movies made...or so it seems. It was one of the most popular genres and while there were some excellent ones, the rest mostly fall in the category of Time Passers....and "Midnight Limited" is one such time passer.

The film is set mostly on trains, where a criminal genius keeps robbing folks of huge sums of money...and the police seem powerless to stop this. However, Val ('Dusty' King) promises to solve the case.

Dusty King was an actor known for B-westerns and action movies. In other words, he was pretty good at punching folks and the like....but wasn't the most charismatic or sexy actors. In fact, in this one he seems incredibly ordinary. He couldn't help it...he just wasn't a strong leading man type for this sort of film. Add to that the rather cheap look of the film and you've got a film that isn't bad...but isn't all that good either.

A fiend robs passengers on the train, then gets away. One of the victims, Marjorie Reynolds, saw the man, but no one will listen to her until she goes to the office of John 'Dusty' King, who's in charge of the department and agrees to let her help them in their investigation because otherwise, it would all be Mr. King declaiming his speeches like the boy stood on the burning deck. Miss Reynolds and the other actors are at least adequate when Mr. King is not around, but anytime anyone is in a conversation with him, suddenly they sound like they're telling him that curfew shall not ring tonight. Mr. King was not just a bad actor. He made other actors, good ones, bad.

It's surprising because the director of this movie was Howard Bretherton. He was not a great director, but he was among that brotherhood who graduated from the editing booth. He could turn out a cheap feature quickly and usually make them pretty watchable. Such directors rarely shot scenes that would be removed by the editor; the skill was called 'cutting in the camera'.

Against actors who can't speak in any way that makes sense, the best director struggles in vain. While Bretherton toiled mostly in B Westerns, he was on his way up from here, first to Republic and then Columbia. He would retire from the Big Screen in 1952, spend a few years directing TV and die in 1969, aged 79.

By the humble standards of Poverty Row, this is a fairly intriguing mystery offering, despite a script that often seems to be marking time rather than getting on with the plot. A major fault here is that none of the leading characters are so much as "filled in", let alone developed. At movie's end, we know as much about the leading man as we did at the beginning—namely zilch. True, a more appealing hero than John "Dusty" King would have certainly have helped. Edward Keane—in a rare, major role—proves no great shakes either.

The heroine is also little more than a cypher, but fortunately she is so charismatically played by charmingly vivacious Marjorie Reynolds that our almost total lack of any knowledge at all as to her likes and dislikes, her background and personality, seems not to matter. True, the script stratagem that cements her into the plot is most obtrusively unconvincing, but nonetheless I'm not complaining on this score. What does upset me is that an opportunity for a first-class little "B" has been thrown away by inadequate scripting.

Another minus is that all the exterior train footage is so obviously stock material—and rather ancient stock material at that! This lessens the movie's appeal for train buffs. And the usual racist "humor" with the eye-rolling porters doesn't help matters either. Tighter film editing was certainly called for. Any volunteers?

This movie was interesting but a little corny at times( when Val sings) They had to cram a lot in 61 minutes. the movie's movement had a little Dragnet to it.."just the facts'. The police characters seemed a little stiff and the mechanics of the railroad police etc was not very believable.( Adding Majorie to the force just because she said she would help) The addition of Willie the conductor was a nice a piece but the dialog with him was too simple and not as comic relief as it could have been... Majorie Reynolds was good and you can see her potential...remembering her as the wife to Chester a Riley is quite easy..The plot was good and could have been developed better but...All in all a good investment of your time far better that reruns on TV.....

John King one of Monogram's cowboy heroes got into modern dress as a railroad detective on the hunt for some robbers working the Midnight Limited from New York to Montreal.

It turns into a murder case when one King's men is killed. Marjorie Reynolds gets robbed as an afterthought. After that she joins forces with King.

Seems like this was a good plan that was only good for one or two scores. The crooks should have quit while they were ahead. Obviously there was an inside man.

John King even got to sing a song that wasn't a cowboy ballad.

Sets were cheap and shabby, some bad editing as well. Not the best mystery going.