THE LAST JOURNEY. Twickenham Films, UK, 1936. Godfrey Tearle, Hugh Williams, Judy Gunn, Mickey Brantford, Julien Mitchell, Olga Lindo, Michael Hogan, Frank Pettingell, Eliot Makeham, Eve Gray, Sydney Fairbrother, Sam Wilkinson, Viola Compton. Screenplay: H. Fowler Mear, based on an original story by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon. Director: Bernard Vorhaus.

   There are a lot of names there in the credits, I grant you, and most of them are total unknowns, but it’s an ensemble cast with lots of screen time for each of them, so I listed them all. Now if I could only mathc up the names with their faces!

   From what I’ve read, must of the British film industry in the 1930s was a vast wasteland, but if so, this has to be one of the better ones, by far. I’ve listed it in my Suspense and Espionage category, but you can forgot the spy part. It’s the story of a railroad engineer about to be railroaded into retirement. H’s not severely disgruntled about that, but he’s gotten into his head that the fireman on his train is having an affair with his wife.

   And as part of the confrontation he plans on having with his previously longtime friend, he plans to run the train as fast as it can until this last journey ends in utter disaster, a plan unknown to the oblivious passengers until train starts to pass through railway stops at breakneck speed without stopping.

   This may be one first “disaster” films of this type ever filmed. On the train are a young newly married couple, he unbeknownst to her a con man interested only in her money; and not on the train but in a motorcar trying to catch up with it her former boy friend; also a male and female pair of thieves trying to get their companion drunk enough to rob him; a well-known doctor whose specialty is hypnotism (this is important); a female abolitionist who wanders up and down the train handing out temperance cards; a stutterer who can’t find anyone who can answer his questions; and so on.

   What adds most to the excitement, including lots of action photography — on the train, on the road, and in the air, are the quick shifts of scenes, faster than most in 1936, as I recall, even in this country. I’d have to see the movie again to see sure I caught everything the first time, and if I decide to do so, I’m sure I won’t be wasting my time.