Busses Roar

Buses Roar (1942)

** (out of 4)

WWII propaganda from Warner about some German and Japanese spies who plot to put a bomb on a night bus so that it can blow up by an important stretch of road that will then hamper America's efforts in the war. Buses ROAR is actually a pretty interesting "B" movie but sadly there's just not enough suspense or drama in it to make it fully work. I thought a re-write of the screenplay and someone like Hitchcock could have made this an outright classic but sadly there are just way too many problems here. For starters, the lack of any real suspense is what puts the death nail in the coffin. The opening sequence shows us the bad guys talking about why they need this bomb to go off and this here actually builds up some interest. Instead of actually getting on the bus, for the next forty-minutes we get countless scenes inside the bus station where we're introduced to the large cast of characters. By the time we finally get on the bus we're just bored out of our minds from the countless dialogue sequence and director D. Ross Lederman just never gets our interest level up. When the bad guys finally show back up at the end it's more comical than anything else and especially with how over-the-top the foreign guys are shown. Richard Travis, Eleanor Parker, Charles Drake and Julie Biship are among the cast members and all deliver fine performances. Even Willie Best gets a somewhat decent role. Still, this "B" movie is mildly interesting for its subject matter but it just never rises to a higher level.

Except for the stereotypical portrayal that Willie Best does in Buses Roar of the misspelled title, the film is a typical wartime propaganda film, just some fodder for the homefront morale. This concerns a rather inept bunch of saboteurs, a joint German-Japanese operation to blow up a bus.

This is not a terrorist act per se, the idea is to plant a bomb on a bus and detonate when it's near some undisclosed valuable wartime site. The passengers would be considered collateral damage in today's terms.

The film marked Eleanor Parker's feature film debut though she's billed fourth in the cast as a bus ticket agent who has a couple of drivers panting hot and heavy for her. The real stars are Richard Travis and Julie Bishop as a marine on leave and a woman who's hoping to charm the price of a ticket out of San Diego.

The saboteurs who are led by Peter Whitney make three different attempts to get the bomb on the bus. Law enforcement isn't to swift either in this comedy of errors.

Still the film has a certain charm to it, sad it had to include Willie Best at his worst.

(How could they get this all the way out without someone realizing they had misspelled "Buses"?)

I loved this movie. You need to remember that in 1942, panic and hysteria were the order of the day along the West Coast, and in fact a Japanese submarine surfaced and shelled the Ellwood Oil Field off Santa Barbara on the night of 23 February. The next night, there was a mysterious episode in which gunners fired antiaircraft guns into the skies over LA, thinking there were unseen Japanese aircraft attacking them.

Even tho there were none, this came to be called The Battle of Los Angeles. Given the times, this movie is perfect.

"Busses (sic) Roar" is richly laced with fascinating characters, and as the movie unfolds, you begin to wonder where they are all going to come together.

The film succeeds in loading the bus with believable, identifiable people, and when peril ensues, you fear for them.

I caught this on TCM on 03 June 2013, and if it comes on again, I'll make it a point to watch.

Probably the most racial and gender stereotypes per foot of film than any other film. Something to offend everyone. Even making allowances for the early WWII hysteria it comes across poorly. One feels that the film makers weren't taking themselves seriously. There is a really gross jumpcut in one scene. Rather than try to hide it, the composer actually put a music sting on it. Maybe everyone thought they needed to do the film for the war effort.

This is a most enjoyable movie,catching the spirit of the enemy as depicted by Hollywood in early WWII. Such a movie would be "politically incorrect" these days, as would "Outrages of the Orient" which I recently purchased. I remembered it from childhood, but found it now to be trashy compared to "Buses Roar".