Le drame du terminus

Mary Newland is running away with Leslie Perrins, but is having second thoughts. By the time her husband, John Loder, shows up. she's thoroughly disenchanted. Loder assaults Perrins, gets his tickets for the Channel train and demands Mary's letters. When they're disembarking in France, he hasn't got a key for the big trunk he says isn't theirs. When it is opened, Perrins' body is inside. Good thing Peter Haddon, aka Lord Peter Wimsey is there.

It's a well-written short mystery. That's hardly surprising, because Dorothy Sayers wrote an original story for this, her sole original venture into screenwriting. I do have some issues with the casting. Buntner is too old, and too much the trained butler, and Haddon, although he makes a good stab at Wimsey, lacks the character's diffidence. I have long thought that he should have been played by someone like Claude Hulbert, or some other silly-ass British comedian; in one novel, he's said to look like Ralph Lynn.

Casting aside, it's a good quota quicky. the lack of other original stories indicates that Miss Sayers didn't enjoy the experience much. She was moving out of detective fiction anyway, into plays and more academic writing.

This "The Silent Passenger" (1935), with nine missing minutes, is an Alpha video so do not expect anything to be fixed or updated. No subtitles. There are online versions with subtitles. A double plus is that there is no annoying background music.

The opening credits show which actor plays which character. However, it does not match the character to a picture.

Stilted dialog. There is an attempt at humor. Give it some time and the movie will grow on you. It starts with Mr. Windermere being truncated.

Lord Peter (Peter Haddon) wearing an ascot, does not try to match the book description. We do not have to worry about matching Ian Carmichael or Edward Petherbridge or even Robert Montgomery, as he was the first actor in a script that is not a book.

Quite polished for the British pre WW2 Edgar Wallace era, with globe trotting Czech Jan (Ekstase, Le Golem) Stalich's lighting and solid looking, uncredited decors as assets.

It's still a formula British crime piece, apparently the first movie Dorothy L. Sayers adaptation, with Silly Ass Haddon's Lord Peter Wimsey getting billed below presentable lovers Loder and Oldland/Newland, drawn into a seedy blackmail plot that spirals into murder. The support cast is familiar faces. Director Denham and Donald Wolfit worked together at this time and this is interesting to watch.

Standard elements,trains and "the Yard of Scotland," as the frog customs man calls it, provide enough interest and the climax in the rail maintenance shed, with a runaway locomotive crashing through the closed door, is an agreeable pay off that outclasses the talk bound activity preceding it.

This is the first film based on a story by Dorothy L. Sayers, the murder mystery writer, and involves her character, the amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey. It is not based on one of the Wimsey novels, but merely a story. Unfortunately Wimsey is here played by Peter Haddon as a 'silly ass' to such an outrageous extent that the film becomes entirely ridiculous. There is not much acting talent in this film, and even the young Donald Wolfit as a villain hams it up and over-acts. The title refers to a dead man in a trunk who is a 'silent passenger' on a train. So this is a 'trunk murder' mystery, to use a popular phrase of yesteryear. The film is billed as starring John Loder, a well known young actor of the period, but he is not strictly speaking the lead actor. The worst acting is probably by Lilian Oldland, who plays Loder's wife. She retired from the screen the same year, and no wonder. There are some exciting scenes in the latter part of this film set in a London railway maintenance yard, or 'repair shop' as they call it. In one scene, two men are fighting on the tracks and trying to kill one another while a steam engine is slowly moving towards them. In fact, there are very many excellent and interesting shots and scenes involving trains and a station which, though never seen in a wide shot so that one can be certain, appears to be St. Pancras. Throughout the story, people keep getting on and off of trains, and anyone interested in the trains being used in 1935, both inside and out, will have plenty to see. Anyone interested in Lord Peter Wimsey should definitely take a sedative before sitting through this travesty, however.

In what is probably one of the earliest film adaptations of a Lord Peter Wimsey novel we have the great detective in action on a night time train. You'll forgive the lack of detail as to the plot, but the film is so dull that other than bodies ending up in baskets or trunks, I've drawn a blank as to what actually occurred.

This is not a particularly good film and is so bland that unless I had noticed that this was based on a Wimsey book I would scarcely have suspected it.Obviously this film did little to popularize the detective, and happily it didn't kill his career either.

I can suggest you recommend this film since this is not a time killer but a time waster.