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Post by BATouttaheck on Nov 3, 2019 2:34:00 GMT
The Invisible Man (1933) Dr. Jack Griffin (Claude Rains) is one of the most bloodthirsty villains of the old Universal horror films, with a total of four murders depicted directly on-screen, the murders of eighteen search-party members off-screen, and the derailment of a train which results in one hundred deaths. In total, Dr. Griffin kills 122 people before he is killed.
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Post by london777 on Nov 11, 2019 17:33:04 GMT
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) is a portmanteau film in which Dr Terror (Peter Cushing) foretells in turn the putative futures of the five other occupants of his train compartment. There are opening scenes of the protagonists boarding the train at Euston, and a closing scenes after they have alighted in the next world. Very mild horror. Nothing you could not show the children. The five tales are utterly derivative: a werewolf tale, a voracious plant story, a severed hand, a voodoo curse and a vampire tale. Two of the victims are a young Donald Sutherland and Christopher Lee, but the other three are disc jockey Alan Freeman, comic Roy Castle, and a bland Canadian called Neil McCallum who mainly worked in TV. The supporting cast is above average for this sort of fluff, with the too-rarely-seen Max Adrian a stand-out. Direction by Freddy Francis and camerawork by Alan Hume are also good, while the score is by heavyweight classical composer Elisabeth Lutyens. The train is former LMS stock. I could not find a nice exterior shot of the train, but here are the compartment and the ticket collector at their final destination:
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Post by london777 on Dec 25, 2019 3:41:38 GMT
Two Romanian films from director Sergiu Nicolaescu, Cu Mâinile Curate (1972) and its sequel Ultimul Cartus (1973), contain violent scenes in marshalling yards. In the first, a police commissioner is ambushed by criminals and crushed to death by a locomotive. In the second there is a no-holds-barred firefight between police and criminals, in which machine-guns, bazookas and grenades are used and a train loaded with supplies for a Moldavian orphanage is totally destroyed.
The first film has a sort of trashy self-confidence, but what I found interesting is the period in which it is set. The war is still raging as the allies close in on Berlin, but the front has long since moved on from Romania, and the war does not directly affect the action. In fact, the only reference to it I noticed was when the hero, a communist partisan who is put in charge of the police to fight various criminal gangs because he is considered incorruptible and, of course, politically sound, warns a thug that they are still operating under martial law, so not to expect too much in the way of human rights or procedures.
The film is set before the Communists took power. All factions are jostling for influence and the Reds do not yet have things all their own way. The country is awash with weapons and each faction has its armed supporters. One gang of bank-robbers even uses a tank.
I was surprised at some strong criticism of the Communists, until I remembered that when the film was made Ceauᶊescu was sucking up to the West and strongly disassociating his regime from that of his Stalinist predecessors.
The second film is boring rubbish. A gang has captured an SS intelligence officer and are auctioning him off to the Allies, the Russians, or back to his Nazi employers. They are hiding him in an Orthodox monastery. Various competing groups disguised as monks join the monastery to seek him out, but as they all have identical full-face beards and robes, it is impossible to know who is who or what is going on unless you speak Romanian.
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Post by london777 on Mar 8, 2020 0:38:22 GMT
Pánico en el Transiberiano (1972) dir: Eugenio Martin Starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, so presumably an Iberian equivalent of a Hammer Horror. IMDb says: An English anthropologist has discovered a frozen monster in the frozen wastes of Manchuria which he believes may be the Missing Link. He brings the creature back to Europe aboard a trans-Siberian express, but during the trip the monster thaws out and starts to butcher the passengers one by one. In the Anglophone world, released as:
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Post by london777 on Apr 13, 2020 21:41:31 GMT
Stalker (1979) dir: Andrei Tarkovsky, and his companions sneak into the Zone on their Jeep by following the supply train through the gates. They venture further into the Zone on a motorized railed service trolley.
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Post by london777 on Jun 1, 2020 1:20:00 GMT
As a child I accompanied my parents to the cinema once a weekand later, when 11 years old or more, twice a week. This was from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, (which was coincidentally the heyday of Film Noir and explains my love of that "genre"). Fragments of some of those movies haunted my brain ever since as "ghosts", and in recent years I have gradually laid these ghosts by identifying the films. I think I have laid the last of them tonight. It was a memory of the hero on a train at night, seeing the headlight of an approaching train on the same track. He is convinced they will collide head-on. Tonight I found out that that movie was Crack-Up (1946) dir: Irving Reis and the brief suburban train journey that the hero makes twice plays a big part in the plot and denouement. It is not very good. Pat O'Brien is a stodgy hero and Claire Trevor is wasted. But it is a real Noir, with lots of nights scenes, flashbacks, and lost or confused memories. There is a treacherous female, but too lightweight to be called a femme fatale. Cool Brit Herbert Marshall sorts all the Yanks out (naturally). I thought I had already laid that same ghost last year when I re-watched The Interrupted Journey (1949) dir: Daniel Birt, which also hinges on a train wreck. Things were not exactly as I remembered them, but I wrongly assumed I had misremembered after 70 years. This is a slightly better Noir, with a good twist halfway to keep us interested, and stars Richard Todd and Valerie Hobson (like Claire Trevor wasted in a nothing role as supportive female), but runs out of steam towards the end. Incidentally, the score of Crack-up borrows snatches of the already established hit song "The First Time I Saw You", which is used extensively in the greatest of all Film Noirs, Out of the Past, the following year. It is interesting how in the 'forties so many major movies would use an existing hit as their theme song rather than have a new song written.
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jun 2, 2020 1:12:11 GMT
The Tall Target (1951) Dir. Anthony Mann. On board Dick Powell stars as police sergeant John Kennedy who follows up a rumoured assassination plot on Abraham Lincoln . Based on true accounts The Baltimore Plot was an alleged conspiracy in late February 1861 to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln en route by train to his inauguration...
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jun 2, 2020 23:20:12 GMT
Whispering Smith (1948) Dir. by Leslie Fenton. Stars Alan Ladd as a railroad detective assigned to stop a gang of train robbers. A Technicolor Western a solid drama with plenty of train set action, an excellent lead from Ladd, supporting cast includes Robert Preston and Brenda Marshall... On the job Railroad Detective ... Luke "Whispering" Smith
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jun 2, 2020 23:40:27 GMT
Man of the West (1958) Dir. Anthony Mann . An Outstanding Drama...Former outlaw Link Jones (Gary Cooper) travels from his small town to Crosscut Texas to catch a train to Fort Worth, cashed up he is on an errand to hire the town’s first schoolteacher. When his train stops for fuel along the way, they are set upon by ruthless armed robbers, the train eventually pulls away leaving behind Jones, the fast-talking gambler Sam Beasley (Arthur O'Connell) and saloon singer Billie Ellis (Julie London) pic below... First timer Link is a bit unsure about the "iron horse"
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Post by london777 on Jun 19, 2020 15:50:10 GMT
La bête humaine (1938) dir: Jean Renoir In 1954 Fritz Lang made another version of the same Emile Zola story: Human Desire. It stars Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Broderick Crawford. It is probably the "trainiest" movie here and contains everything spider could wish for. Shots of trains passing, inside the engineer's cab, inside the cars, details of the mechanisms, depots, marshalling yards, repair shops, etc. Even the scenes inside homes and hotel rooms are permeated by the sound of passing trains and their hooters. Just as, a little earlier, cinema was beginning to feel the pain from the spread of TV, and films often included a jab at TV, now the railroads were suffering from the rapid spread of air transport. When a character comments that a murder in a train car is bad publicity for the railroad company, Ford agrees, saying "Why could it not have been on an airplane?" It is 100% Noir in its story, but stylistically is more 'fifties with that clear, spare camerawork, and uncluttered sets and set in a small town rather than a crowded city. I think it is excellent, and much under-rated with believable psychology. Grahame is both femme fatale and pitiable. She gets a raw deal here, while Ford is not entirely sympathetic.
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Post by bravomailer on Jun 19, 2020 21:12:41 GMT
Elliott Gould in the very dark comedy Little Murders
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jun 19, 2020 23:13:18 GMT
#2 Kigeki: Kyûkô ressha , "Express Train" (1967) Dir. Masaharu Segawa Before he became a national icon through his popular Tora-san series actor Kiyoshi Atsumi starred in three Train featured comedies. Dedicated to his job, to his fellow travellers his #1 priority, they come before all else... With a beaming smile & a marvellous range of comic expression, Atsumi plays animated Udea, the kind hearted train conductor, the central character of this excellent little known film series... also... #1 Kigeki: Dantai ressha , Travelling In Party (1967) #3 Kigeki hatsumoude resha , New Year Trip (1968)
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Post by london777 on Jun 19, 2020 23:40:45 GMT
Dedicated to his job, his fellow travellers his #1 priority, they come before all else... In a thread on Harikomi ( The Stakeout) 1958 directed by Yoshitarô Nomura, I wrote this: ... when the little local bus pulls up to the stop, the ticket-seller politely thanks everyone for waiting, then later thanks each passenger for travelling with them as they alight after a ten cents ride.It seems to have been part of the Japanese mentality. I wonder if it still is?
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jun 20, 2020 1:10:46 GMT
Exit Smiling (1926) Dir. Sam Taylor. Beatrice Lillie, the popular star of New York and London revues stars in her first (and only silent) film. The entertaining comedy film was also the debut of actor Franklin Pangborn. Lillie is cast as the wardrobe lady of a travelling acting troupe, a train touring theatrical named the Orlando Wainwright Repertory Company. With a fully equipped carriage of their own, a home away from home, the company perform a tawdry melodrama when stopping in towns along the line...
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Post by london777 on Jun 22, 2020 0:31:54 GMT
Rails & Ties (2007) dir: Alison Eastwood. The story of the aftermath of a fatal rail accident, with Kevin Bacon as the engineer responsible. Also starring Marcia Gay Harden.
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Post by london777 on Jun 26, 2020 0:29:24 GMT
Mail Train was the American re-titling of Inspector Hornleigh Goes to It (1941) dir: Walter Forde, one of a series of comedy/thrillers starring Gordon Harker as the (police) inspector and Alastair Sim as Sergeant Bingham. Much of the movie is set on a speeding train as the duo grapple with Nazi and British agents and counter-agents, and have trouble determining which are which. For starters, which side is Phyllis Calvert on? It is on YouTube but too gentle for me. No sex, violence or foul language. Good poster, though.
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Post by london777 on Jun 26, 2020 16:27:43 GMT
Three more "train" movies directed by Walter Forde (see previous post): Rome Express (1932). Conrad Veidt is looking for a stolen Van Dyck on the titular train. Gordon Harker appears, though not as Inspector Hornsleigh. The Ghost Train (1931) starring Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, and Ann Todd, was a "transitional" movie, part talkie but mostly silent. It was based on a popular play by Arnold Ridley. Forde directed The Ghost Train again in 1941 as an Arthur Askey vehicle with more emphasis on Askey's vaudeville humour. Gordon Harker appears again. I wonder if this is the most-filmed play ever (outside of the classics)? Other versions include: Der Geisterzug (1927) Trenul fantoma (1933) Kísértetek vonata (1933) The Ghost Train (1937) (TV Short) De spooktrein (1939) The Ghost Train (1948) (TV Movie) Der Geisterzug (1957) (TV Movie) Der Geisterzug (1963) (TV Movie)
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Post by london777 on Jun 27, 2020 16:08:48 GMT
Three more "train" movies directed by Walter Forde (see previous post): London, you are a veritable encyclopedia of train films! So many I'm not familiar with, but I can't thank you enough your posts. I have so many things to look forward to now. And I'm learning so much film history, from you, from manfromplanetx , and from all who've posted here. It's been a real pleasure, so thank you and everyone for all the contributions. Keep 'em coming. Got any suggestions for trains in Mongolian films? I would love that. Planetx is our Mongolian expert. I will get him on it right away.
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Post by manfromplanetx on Jun 27, 2020 23:49:38 GMT
LOL … Pechki-lavochki , Happy Go Lucky (1972) Soviet Union. Written, Directed by, & Starring Vasily Shukshin An EXCELLENT film tells the tale of a tractor driver Ivan and his wife Nyura ( Lidiya Fedoseyeva-Shukshina, Shuskin's wife) who travel away for the first time from their remote village. The scenic journey crosses thousands of kilometres via the Kazakh, Sothern Urals Railroad to a Black Sea resort and onto Moscow. On the train the wide-eye travellers are accosted by some smooth talking passengers who sense the vulnerability of the couple... The home village of Ivan & Nyura is in the Altay Mountains. It is a mountain range in Central and East Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan come together, and where the rivers Irtysh and Ob have their headwaters. Much of the sparsely populated region is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site... Inside the train , ...Highly Recommended !!
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Post by london777 on Jun 28, 2020 1:30:52 GMT
Pechki-lavochki , Happy Go Lucky (1972) Soviet Union. Written, Directed by, & Starring Vasily Shukshin Well done! Should satisfy spider unless he is really picky.
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