I just watched this for the first time -- I taped it off TCM a couple months ago. Made in 1934, it's a B-movie -- but it's an *MGM* B-movie, meaning it was made on a budget that probably would have bankrupted the average B-studio. And to my surprise (and delight), it comes close to being a horror-comedy -- I think if it had been set in an old dark house, it WOULD be known to horror fans. But instead it's set on a speeding train! Mary Carlisle, L.A. telephone receptionist who doesn't know who her parents were, is notified that she's really the daughter of a railroad tycoon (in other words, $he's rich!). Of course, strange things start happening right away -- Other People are after her money. She and her friend Una Merkel are notified to be on such-and-such a train (a private car) to go East to meet her dad -- but the dad didn't send the message, it's a trap. The private car is an old dark house on wheels -- there are mysterious voices ("You have eight hours to live!"), a storm is raging outside, a clutching hand reaches through a secret panel a la CAT AND THE CANARY, a man is mysteriously murdered with no sign of violence (it turns out he was stabbed in the eye and then the eyelid pulled down over the wound!), etc. Now, all of this is weird enough ... but at one point, just to make things even weirder, there's a totally-unrelated-to-the-rest-of-the-movie tangent in which the train has to make a brief stop because circus wagons have been involved in an accident and they block the track, and during the delay, a gorilla (Ray Corrigan!) gets on the train. Once the train gets going again, the gorilla menaces the girls, Charlie Ruggles and (this being a 1934 movie) the human character who interests the gorilla the most, a scared black porter (played by Snowflake!). Making a lunge for Snowflake, the ape runs through a glass door, out onto the rear observation platform, over the railing -- then we see (in an exterior shot) a gorilla dummy flying off the back of a speeding train, bouncing along a trestle roadbed and then plummeting into a river far below!! Next, a la Lugosi's house in THE RAVEN and Karloff's in MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG, iron shutters seal over the car's doors and windows, trapping all the characters inside as the car, which is loaded with dynamite or nitro, is unlatched from the rest of the train so that it'll zoom to an explosive finish. This has got to be one of the most bizarre B-movies I've seen in years.







