TERROR ON A TRAIN (TIME BOMB)
UK, 1952, 72 minutes, Black and white.
Glenn Ford, Anne Vernon, Maurice Denham, Harcourt Williams, Harold Warrender, Bill Fraser, John Horsley. Victor Maddern.
Directed by Ted Tetzlaff.
Terror on a train is an enjoyable and exciting small action adventure. Today it would be the material for an episode in a television series. However, made in the early '50s, it was an M.G.M. production, an English American co-production. Director Ted Tetzlaff had made some interesting films including the thriller The Window. Music is by John Addison and the photography by Freddie Young, both to have later successful and award winning careers. The setting is the British Midlands, the focus on a saboteur and a Canadian bomb disposal expert trying to find the bomb and defuse it. The screenplay has a second crisis which adds to the tension of the film. Glenn Ford is efficient in the central role, French actress Anne Vernon is the heroine. There is an excellent British supporting cast.
1. An entertaining thriller of the '50s? The perennial interest of this kind of crisis? Action adventure? Hero. villain, split-second crisis?
2. British production, American M.G.M. values? Black and white photography. location photography, musical score? Special effects? Editing and pace?
3. Conventional material, well presented? The hero and his dedication? The tension with his wife? Officials and their co-operation, demands? The saboteur? Familiar material but presented excitingly?
4. The plausibility of the plot? Post-war England? Trains, bombs. saboteurs, the police, the expert? The plausibility of the marriage background? A sense of realism with the locations?
5. Peter Lyncourt as hero? Glenn Ford's easy style? Canadian in England? His credentials. personality. marital background and the relationship with his wife, their scenes together? His expertise? Relationship with the British? The repetition of the plot with the second crisis and his coping?
6. The background of British officials, experts, the law, officialdom? The British character actors and their skill in creating characters briefly?
7. The heroine - the background of the marriage. her dilemma as regards leaving her husband, the crisis and its effect on her reaction?
8. The portrait of the saboteur - personality. skills. motivation?
9. The importance of tension and audience identification? The relief at the solving of the first crisis? The second race against time? A satisfying thriller?
