The Flying Scot is a neat little B-movie:
The Flying Scot aka
The Mail Bag Robbery is an excellent but pretty much completely forgotten 1957 British quota quickie from the producer and writer of the Carry On films Peter Rogers and Norman Hudis and The Seventh Veil director Compton Bennett that kicks off with a dialogue free sequence of cool, calm and professional Canadian crooks Lee Paterson and Kay Callard and American safecracker Alan Gifford carrying out a perfectly planned dream of robbery on a mail train that goes like clockwork. Only problem: it is a dream, and even after breaking down the obvious flaws in the plan when the less than great train robbers try to pull the job for real, everything that can go wrong does go wrong - the plan doesn't work and they have to improvise, Gifford's stomach ulcer is about to painfully burst (“Way I see it, if you’ve got a pain there at least it shows you’ve got guts. How about provin’ it?”), a drunk and an irritating kid who wants to know why just married couples pull the blinds down on trains keep on intruding and threatening to upset the apple cart - and it's anything but cool. He may be effortlessly in charge in his dream, running each stage of the plan with precision and a mere click of his fingers but in real life Patterson is constantly on the verge of losing it even before the train gets underway and as Gifford’s condition worsens (as much of the suspense comes from whether he’ll make it through the job as it does from whether they’ll pull it off) and, only Callard, regarded as the least important part of the caper, keeps her cool throughout.
There are some clever little touches, like the café the gang meet in being a cheap mirror of the expensive South American hotel Patterson dreams of, the economically written character vignettes with the few other passengers on the night run work surprisingly well (Kerry Jordan’s drunk particularly) and despite some heavy hints it’s no one thing that gives away the robbery in progress but a combination of neatly placed details. Running a very tight seven reels, it’s surprisingly well acted, really atmospherically photographed by Peter Hennessy (The Savage Innocents) and well edited by John Trumper (The Italian Job) and definitely deserves to be better known, while Jan Read (Jason and the Argonauts) and Ralph Smart (Danger Man) deserve credit for coming up with a few decent spins of the wheel with their original story. And for train buffs there’s also striking (probably stock) footage of the steam train racing through the night that Anglo Amalgamated would use the very next year in almost exactly the same order in
Six-Five Special. One of the best discoveries of the year for me.
Network’s UK PAL DVD offers a for the most part excellent fullframe transfer (the only minor niggle are a couple of dark shots as their accomplice sets out to wait for them under the bridge) but the only extra is the alternate title sequence.
A couple of other terrific train movies in the sale:
From the original pressbook adverts included on Network’s Blu-ray, Gaumont British didn’t spare the hyperbole when pitching their first major picture shot at their new Shepherd’s Bush Studio, 1932’s
Rome Express, not only selling it as Grand Hotel on rails with an all-star cast but ‘one of the greatest pictures ever made.’ The stars may have faded with time but surprisingly the picture does a good job of living up to the claims thanks to a smart script by Sidney Gilliat that has hints of his later work on The Lady Vanishes and superb direction by Walter Forde that’s full of energy and visual invention. The opening sequence as the camera darts and tracks through a Paris railway station discovering and introducing some of the ensemble is a wonderfully invigorating bit of filmmaking and even when everyone’s aboard he finds ways to keep the pace from flagging through Günther Krampf’s terrifically kinetic camerawork and smart crosscutting that never feels like he’s just showing off.
On the passenger list: Esther Ralston’s movie star with a past (“One gets suspicious of old friends who know things”) and her huckster of a press agent Finlay Currie, sporting a very decent American accent (“Don’t forget, I was once press agent to Tom Mix’s horse!”); Cedric Hardwicke’s pompous businessman chasing a knighthood with big charitable donations while short-changing a waiter’s tip and begrudging his secretary Eliot Makeham eight francs for a taxi ride; Gordon Harker, looking and sounding for all the world like Lionel Jeffries in First Men in the Moon as the gossipy neighbour and golf bore who just would be on the same train as married (but not to each other) couple Harold Huth and Joan Barry; Muriel Aked’s pessimistic spinster (“I always go through life expecting the very worst. It’s so nice if it doesn’t happen”); Frank Vosper’s bug hunting French bore whose day job shakes things up; and, most importantly, Donald Calthrop’s art thief with a stolen Van Dyke in his briefcase trying to dodge his double-crossed partners in crime Hugh Williams and a banana-munching Conrad Veidt, who wants to arrange for him to take a long holiday….
Naturally almost everyone has a secret and some connection to each other, with possession of the painting and Calthrop’s increasing desperation as he jumps out of the frying pan and into the fire driving the plot as it twists and turns like a twisty turny thing with plenty of black wit: the scene where Harker assembles a poker party is a particular gem, but its constantly throwing one damn enjoyable thing after another into the mix. Everyone ends up getting what they deserve, and generally in the most entertaining way in a film that definitely deserves more of a reputation than it enjoys today.
Network’s Blu-ray comes from the BFI’s restoration, and it’s only fair to say the film doesn’t look like it was made yesterday: it looks like it was shot 80 years ago and the elements weren’t always as well looked after as they could be and needed to be pieced together from a variety of sources. But it’s equally fair to say that they’ve done a good job with what they had to work with and that this is the best it’s ever likely to look, and certainly better than it has looked for a long time despite the occasional bit of print damage (no dropped frames but some visible tears and scratches) and the odd contrast issue losing some but not all detail in a few shots, with the soundtrack pretty decently cleaned up but still offering optional subtitles (a rarity on Network’s discs) for those lines where the early sound recording presents a problem. Aside from the still and pressbook gallery there’s also a lengthy booklet with an excellent and well-researched appreciation by Neil Sinyard that covers the making of the film and its breakthrough success in the USA. All in all it’s well worth it, especially at the budget price – a first class film for less than a second-class return train fare to London, let alone Paris to Rome!
1936’s British comedy-thriller
Seven Sinners aka
Doomed Cargo plays like the missing link between
The Thin Man and
The Lady Vanishes. There’s certainly more than a touch of the Nick and Noras about Edmund Lowe and Constance Cummings as the two bantering investigators caught up in the hunt for a madman with a penchant for staging train crashes on both sides of the English Channel to hide his murders (“Who’d look for a single leaf in a forest?”), and despite the American leads there’s more than a hint of Hitchcock to come in Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat’s screenplay (with additional input from Austin Melford and the wondrously named L. du Garde Peach).
Adapted from a play by Arnold Ridley, author of
The Ghost Train but better known today as Godfrey from
Dad’s Army, and Bernard Merivale, it had already been filmed before as 1929’s silent
The Wrecker, which staged a real train crash for its big setpiece, outtakes from which feature in this version as well. Moving along at a brisk 67 minutes and directed with polish by the forgotten Albert de Courville, it may lack star power for modern audiences, but it’s an enjoyable diversion that doesn’t take itself too seriously and throws in a sly Maguffin involving a peace movement. One small caveat: there only seem to be six sinners – unless you count the hero and heroine, which would make eight. No extras on the DVD, but definitely worth a punt at £2.
The original version, The Wrecker, isn't in the bonkers sale (it was part of Network's very abruptly terminated distribution deal for Strike Force) but is currently going for £3.99 on Amazon:
Based on a play co-written (with Bernard Merivale) by Arnold Ridley, best remembered for playing Private Godfrey in
Dad’s Army, 1929’s
The Wrecker was originally announced as Britain’s first talkie, but it took so long to convert the silent film to sound (and then it was mostly sound effects rather than dialogue) that Hitchcock and
Blackmail beat it to the punch. Future Hitchcock screenwriter Angus MacPhail made his debut with this film, though there’s little to hint at his impressive subsequent work. It’s a rather silly potboiler about an evil bus operator wrecking trains in spectacular crashes to boost his business while retired cricket hero Joseph Striker tries to flush out his identity and stop him while wooing Benita Hume along the way. It’s formulaic stuff, but what makes it stand out are the crash sequences, for which the producers really did wreck a locomotive and set it on fire. The same crash shot from multiple angles is used for all the film’s crashes, but the angles are varied enough to give each a different look and character, and the film does a particularly vivid job of portraying the aftermath of one of them. The wonderfully named director Geza von Bolvary is rather better with steam and speed with people: no-one particularly embarrasses themselves, though Leonard Thompson’s comic relief detective Rameses Ratchett is neither particularly comic or much of a relief, but Carlyle Blackwell’s treacherous railway employee earns his top billing with a more convincing performance than you might expect. It’s no classic but it is a decent enough entertainment. Oh, and look out for the shadow of the cameraman hand-cranking away on one of the passing trains.
The film was massively reworked into the much more enjoyable 1936 comedy thriller
Seven Sinners which left in little but the train crash (using the same footage) while changing the motive – in the latter version it was to hide a single murder – but this doesn’t outstay its welcome at seven reels and will probably be manna from heaven to railway buffs with its plethora of vintage locomotives and scenes set in Waterloo Station. Network/Strike Force’s UK DVD has more than decent picture quality - the version that survives only has one moment of sound - and is complimented by an impressive array of extras, including brief archive footage of one of ‘Head-On’ Joe Connelly’s head-on train crashes that he staged at state fairs in the US in the 1930s and a look at the location of the crash scene from the film: the Wrecker’s evil plan to destroy the railway in favor of road transport may have failed in the film, but in reality the branch line was closed and turned into a road less than a decade later!
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Linear Mode
