The Arizona Express

The opening credits of this superficial but well-crafted bubblegum silent western describe it (somewhat defensively) as "an honest melodrama", which doesn't make what follows any less improbable or entertaining. The cast includes a handsome railway mail sorter, a virtuous missionary daughter, her upstanding bachelor brother, a beautiful Mexican vamp, a den of murderous thieves, and the streamlined eponymous luxury train, all thrown together in a convoluted plot revolving (spinning out of control) around a bank heist, a cold blooded murder, a frantic race to the State Governor's office to save an innocent man from execution, and true love. Only the mantle of silence keeps it sane.

Seen at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California,on January 17, 1989, alongside excerpts from other silent Railroad films, most notably 'The Great K & A Train Robbery', an early Tom Mix adventure wherein our white-hatted hero foils a gang of desperadoes while performing various feats of daring-do, such as lassoing an imperiled hobo safely out from under a runaway freight train!