Spy Train

The B-picture industry had a lot of material to work with during WWII.

Spy Train shows how a lot of story can be done with a small budget. The romance and mystery aboard a train serves as a great backdrop for Nazi spies, a dashing leading man(Richard Travis), his comical sidekick(Chick Chandler)and a good supporting cast. The tension of the ticking bomb in the baggage car and the race to stop the spies makes for an entertaining hour! I like Travis' line when the conductor held him for the stabbing of his pal: "..are you blowing your top?.." The only blooper noticeable is the sound of a diesel locomotive horn on a steam train.

"Spy Train" opens in the train station with two reporters talking about getting the scoop on a famous rich girl. Then we overhear a conversation between a gang of thugs planning trouble at 10:22 that night. Catherine Craig plays Jane Thornwall, the girl that the reporters are chasing, while Richard Travis is Bruce Grant, traveler and author. They all get on the train, and the bodies start piling up. No real big names in this Monogram Pictures shorty (61 minutes) a spy thriller from 1943. Keep an eye out for Thelma White (plays Millie the maid)... who had played Mae in Reefer Madness. At one point, the author has to look up something in one of his own books while trying to solve the crime... a little strange. With a little spiffing up, this could easily be a Hitchcock film. and that darn horn on the train.... it was tooting almost the entire 61 minutes... for those who hadn't ridden a train before, one might think the horn had to be tooting in order for it to move... and at another point, someone magically decodes a secret message, although we don't know just how they did it. If you overlook some of these little quirks, one can easily buy into the plot of spies and international intrigue which was all the rage in the early 1940s. Looks like they don't show this one very often; as of April 2008, not even five votes yet on the star-rating in IMDb.

Perhaps it can be chalked up to the wartime shortages - all the good actors were fighting WWII, as were all the good directors, screenwriters, set builders, sound recorders, etc. They started with a bad story containing far too many contrivances, requiring the first ten minutes to be non-stop exposition which then had to be repeated a few times throughout the film to make sure we all understood. Then they brought in the uninspiring leading man, and the blocky staging by the director, and put them on a minimal set (a train's dining car and sleeping car). Add a few shuffling black porters and some classic wartime German stereotypes, and not a lot of imagination, and the result is this time-filler.

Spy Train is a World War II era where reporter Richard Travis and sidekick photographer Chick Chandler are pursuing heiress Catherine Craig and maid Thelma White on a cross country train where most of the film is set. Craig is the daughter of newspaper publisher Herbert Hayes who was until recently publishing expose articles from Travis about Nazi Germany and has stopped without reason and is holed up on his estate.

At the same time some Nazis are aboard the train played by Paul McVey and Evelyn Brent and they've got a pair of suitcases on their. But when you trust Warren Hymer to do a job you've got to expect the inevitable results. One contains a bomb, an act of terrorism more familiar with today's times and the second a list of underground contacts in the USA.

Now McVey and Brent have to stop the bomb until they can get the baggage with the list. As for Travis, he's seen those two before, but it takes him the whole film to remember where and when.

Everybody just goes through the motions here. What can I say, cheap sets, sloppy editing, and perfunctory performances. A typical Monogram Picture.

I've watched a lot of movies lately that were made during WWII and deal with Nazis and spies. Some are clever and engaging; this one is a by-the-numbers plot with the cheap production values you've come to expect from Monogram.

The "McGuffin" of the plot is a bomb in a suitcase, which has been mistakenly switched with a suitcase full of Nazi spy information. Of course, the bomb ends up on a moving train, which the director reminds us of incessantly with shots of the bomb-laden suitcase superimposed over a moving train. There is little actual tension on board; it's more like a commedia dell'arte farce with people moving in and out of various rooms, carrying suitcases, tying people up, etc.

The Nazi spy ring is full of dopey-looking American actors. How can we tell that they are Nazis? Why, they use the required words "dummkopf" and "schweinhund," and do a lot of bossing other people around.

The B-grade cast has virtually no chemistry. The "romances" and "buddy plot" never really click. There are so many GOOD WWII spy films; don't waste your time on this predictable potboiler.