West Bound Limited (1937)

Director:

Ford Beebe

Writers:

Ford Beebe (story)
Maurice Geraghty (screenplay)

Release Date:

11 July 1937 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure

Plot Keywords:

Train | Railway

Cast

  (Credited cast)

Lyle Talbot	...	Dave Tolliver aka Bob Kirk
Polly Rowles	...	Janet Martin
Frank Reicher	...	Pop Martin
Henry Brandon	...	Joe Forbes
Henry Hunter	...	Howard
William Lundigan	...	Dispatcher

Runtime:

USA:66 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Universal Pictures

Soundtrack:

I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen

Modest B-movie with one or two point of interest

Beebe's modest film is made neatly, photographed well, and contains few longeurs. Unfortunately less can be said for his co-written screen play, which shows all the characteristic signs of being written in haste.

This is a film which might have been better entitled 'Railroaded'. It begins and ends with a struggle between Dave and the villain, in a signal box, during a rainy night's crisis. Dave is wrongly convicted of criminal negligence after the first encounter and sentenced to five years in the pen. He escapes and after a heavily montaged period of tramping and lumberjacking, re establishes himself reasonably close to the original incident, helping out the ailing signal man 'Pops'. Pop's daughter is being menaced in a very sexually suggestive way by Joe Forbes (Henry Brandon - better known to film fans as a very effective Chief Scar in Ford's 'The Searchers').

Dave has been railroaded into a prison sentence by his last employer who disbelieved his tale of a struggle with an intruder (despite considerable physical evidence in his favour, but we will let that pass). In the hands of a director like Fritz Lang (I'm thinking of his 'Human Desire') a rail track can be an effective means of expressing unavoidable fate and destiny. Not so here, although Joe is railroaded *again* by Pops who sets him up with his daughter. There's a neatness about this continued process which is pleasing to the viewer(Joe explicitly alludes to his hatred of "railroaders" at one point), even though it is carried out in very crude dramatic terms. The grouchy Pops and the caddish Joe, the pressed-but-honest Dave & all are stereotypes which require fresher treatment than they receive here.

Similarly there's another neat echo in the film, this time of Dave's opening struggle with the man who attempts to nab the mine's payroll, an event which triggers the crash. Dave has chased the robber and shot at him out in the rain and dark, injuring him and rescuing the money. Later on there's a comment made about Dave's evident success with the daughter - a realisation which is said to have hit Joe, brooding on his fading chances "like a shot in the dark".

A few neat touches like this aside, the film has little of interest. Lyle Talbot, who was later to find a burly, wooden niche in exploitation pics and worked with the cult auteur Ed Wood (notably in 'Glen or Glenda') is too amiable and pleasant here in role which demands consistent bitterness and fear. His transformation under the warming influence of the daughter, suddenly from gloomy fugitive to cheerful helper-out at the signal box, reveals too suddenly an-all round nice guy. This failure to convince seriously undermines the threat of exposure, the dwelling on injustice, on which the film attempts to revolve.

The best scenes are undoubtedly those at the beginning. The coffin arriving in the rain, the mysterious figure emerging to menace Dave's back, the struggle, the chase and the wreck. Although these moments could have come straight out of a serial, they are still effective and introduce some tension. An ominous, shiny shape, Beebe's coffin device creates a vague and gothic feeling of dread, which, however slight, is entirely missing elsewhere.

One to watch if you're bored or curious about Talbot's early career, and not much else.