Passenger to London

A very solid and relatively short British espionage film. A government agent is returning from France with secret blueprints that were stolen from his government. On the train ride home, thieves break into his compartment and murder him. But the agent anticipated his attackers and managed to hide the blueprints.

The British government sends out another agent, this time Frank Drayton (John Warwick) tries to recover the missing blueprints. The viewer knows the blueprints have been hidden in the luggage of a female passenger on the train. While Drayton works to recover the documents he also sets out to learn who murdered his fellow agent.

Made at Fox Studios in Wembley which would become the television studios of ARTV in 1955 when they started broadcasting in London.This film is a routine quota quickiemail which still has its moments nonetheless.The sort of double act between landlady Dorothy Deerhurst and elderly guest Sybil Brooke is rather endearing.

This low budget spy thriller about the murder of an agent who had retrieved some stolen blueprints which he hid in the luggage of an unsuspecting fellow train passenger just minutes before being murdered is quite entertaining and zips along at a good pace. This is due in no small part to the engaging lead actors, John Warwick and Jenny Laird. I had not heard of these actors before but evidently they went on to pretty solid television careers. Laird appeared in some TV shows (Morse and Midsomer Murders) that I am sure I've seen. The residential hotel setting was interesting and the minor subplot of the exchanges between the hotel manager and an irritating and daffy guest were amusing. Watching this is a pleasant way to spend 57 minutes.

If a James Bond film were written by a public schoolboy who had just seen Hitchcock's 39 STEPS, this would be the result. This splendid ripping yarn is a fabulous, fast-moving spy picture that's so gloriously corny and clichéd you can't help loving it.

Obviously it lacks the finesse and style you'd get from a Hitchcock or Carol Reed film or indeed originality, believability, tension...or indeed anything you'd expect from a professional...but it's such rip-roaring fun it's almost fantastic. As an example of filmmaking, on one hand it's cheap and amateurish but on the other, it's so entertaining, ticking all the boxes, you have to conclude that it does what it sets out to do so must therefore actually be good!

Whether this appeals to you depends on whether or not you want to soak up gallons and gallons of authentic 1937 atmosphere. This really transports you back in time - you could almost be living there wondering why Edward VIII had to give up the throne, why he was visiting that curious Mr Hitler and whether that new thing the BBC had called television would ever catch on.

The cast are hardly convincing but 32 year old John Warwick (why did young English men look so old in the 30s?) and pretty Jenny Laird make a very personable duo. They're perfect for a film like this. I know I shouldn't but I loved this!

An early quickie made for Fox British in which director Lawrence Huntingdon shows nascent promise in the scene in the train between Neufchâtel and Dieppe played out without music, relying for suspense largely on just the noise of the train; on which a couple of extremely mean-looking foreign spies played by Ivan Wilmot and Paul Neville are at large, the latter (who carries a flick knife) even looking a bit like Eric Pohlmann (then still resident in Vienna).

The fatalistic line "One government's as good as another. I don't know what all the fuss is about!" sadly still resonates eight decades later.