The Night Flyer (1928)
Jimmy Bradley, a fireman on the old locomotive No. 99, loves Kate Murphy, daughter of the proprietress of the local lunch counter. His rival, Bat Mullins, is engineer of the new mail train scheduled to make a competition run. When Mullins overturns the new train, Bradley completes the run and earns the contract for his company by delivering the mail in record time on No. 99. A promotion to engineer helps him win Kate.
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Good concept, poorly executed.
Did you people see the same film I saw?
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Pretty good railroad movie and starring William Boyd, who would not become famous as Hopalong Cassidy for another seven years. Here he is an engineer for a western railroad which is trying to get a government contract to deliver the mail between two mountain towns. But Medicine Bend Pass is very dangerous - is there an engineer good enough to negotiate it and bring in the mail ontime? That honor will go to Hoppy's archrival, Bat Mullins. Hoppy, it seems, is a hell-raiser and has incurred the wrath of the line's president."The Night Flyer" is a good-natured adventure story featuring the charismatic Boyd in a crowd-pleasing role as Jimmy Bradley and tiny Jobyna Ralston as his sweetheart, Kate Murphy. His rival, on the job and off, is played by Philo McCullough, with whom I was not familiar. Both he and Boyd showed surprising acting depth and gave a one-dimensional story added substance. No surprises, no plot twists, just an enjoyable, if predictable, picture.