BY ROD BARNETT
The
Warner Archive continues to serve film fans very well by remastering and
releasing a continual stream of little-known and under-appreciated movies from
their huge vault. Terror on a Train (1953) (titled Time Bomb for its UK release)
certainly fits the “little-known†category and once it's seen by more people I
think it will be quite well appreciated by fans of tight B cinema.
The
film takes place in England where a sharp-eyed police officer catches a man
skulking about a train yard at night. The fellow assaults the cop and runs off
leaving behind a bag with the components of a bomb. Quickly the police realize
that the escaped man must have planted a bomb on the munitions train he was
seen near. Looking over the train's schedule they surmise the bomb must be on a
timer and would probably be set to explode when the train reached the most
populous spot on its trip - the Royal Navy Yard in Portsmouth.
Inquirers
for a demolitions expert lead the authorities to Canadian national Peter
Lyncort (Glenn Ford) who was trained in World War II as a explosives defuser
and his help is enlisted even though he tells the government men he is not at
his best, as his wife Has just walked out on him minutes before! The railway authorities
divert the train onto a line in a residential area and the people nearby are
evacuated as Lyncort tries to find and disassemble the explosives hidden among
the dozens of large mines before the time bomb will explode. At the same time,
the cop who was assaulted by the saboteur is allowed to play a hunch that the
bomber might want to observe his handiwork. He goes to the train station in
Portsmouth in the hopes of spotting the man and possibly getting more
information out of him about the bomb's location. Will Lyncort succeed or will
all his marital problems be solved in a loud ka-boom?
This
is a short, sharp thriller that moves along very quickly and maintains interest
throughout its 72 minute runtime. Although the film has a pretty good score it
is used very sparingly until the end. The tension of the film is built through
good editing and direction (by Ted Tetzlaff) instead of musical stings and the
movie is the better for it. Many films are undercut by layering the score over
every scene but here the natural, ambient sounds of the hunt for both the bomb
and the saboteur are used to make things more realistic. It could be argued
that the martial discord story element is superfluous but I enjoyed the tension
it added to the ending as Mrs. Lyncort realizes that it is her husband that is
risking his life to defuse the explosives. The film was shot on location and
that adds verisimilitude to the proceedings as does the inclusion of several
nice eccentric characters who seem to mainstays of British cinema from this era.
The
Warner Archive DVD presents the film in its original aspect ratio looking and
sounding crisp and clean. The only extra offered is the trailer which might
best be skipped until the feature has been enjoyed so that spoilers are
avoided.
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