Friday the Thirteenth (1933) User Reviews

More depth than Sean Cunningham could come up with in multiple lifetimes!

[uds3 · 8/10 · 19 November 2001]

Absolute grabber of a movie, and given its age, years ahead of its time. I first saw this the week my dad came home with a neighbor's TV, that the guy had thrown on the scrap heap. A tinkerer with all things electrical, dad had it working inside two days. This was July 1955...and then probably only the third house in the street to HAVE television! Pretty much the first thing we ever saw on that grainy and flickering old 12-inch screen was THIS film. "It's pretty OLD dear," I recall my mom telling me!

Almost 50 years on, and it doesn't seem any older - rather like World War I in that respect! Terrific little fantasy about a London omnibus carrying thirteen passengers, that crashes, killing one of their number. Then, in flashback we pick up on the lives of these people and what brought them to being on this bus that very day.

Returning to the crash at the end of the film, the victim's identity is revealed, perhaps the inspiration behind the 1960 movie THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER.

If ever you come across this little gem, I suggest you watch it!

A lovely bit of early thirties melodrama

[rod-76 · 8/10 · 8 February 2000]

This film has an excellent premise and is really crying out to be turned into a Hollywood blockbuster. As I recall (and it's a few years since I've seen the film) the action starts with a London omnibus filled with people. There is an horrific crash and one passenger dies. The rest of the film is then told in flashback, with 13 characters who were on the bus getting their recent lives explored in intricate detail. At the end of the film we return to the crash and find out which of these chirpy, vivid characters has met a gruesome end. Great stuff, a little like a good tabloid news story fleshed out in precise, even handed detail. If only it were available on video...

Neat & Tidy Triumph of 1930's British Cinema.

[ronevickers · 8/10 · 23 February 2008]

Despite its age, this film retains its undoubted charm and attraction, and is a fine, surviving example of early British cinema. It has an underlying air of eeriness, interspersed with shafts of humour which are not out of place, and serve to demonstrate the assured direction & production values involved. So many episodic type films are disjointed and untidy, but this is not one of them. The standard of acting helps a great deal, and the various disparate characters come across as interesting and believable. All in all, this long-forgotten little gem is well worth anyone's attention, in spite of the one jarring note in the film which, surprisingly, escaped the censor's attention!

Dubliners

[tedg · 1 June 2010]

I urge you to see this. You will enjoy it for its tight writing within each ministory; but there are greater joys in the construction as a whole. The characters are united spatially — they all end up on a bus that has an event. But they are interwoven in a deeper way, as the eye skips from one story to the other. Rather than being separate and requiring work to keep them straight, each event in each story adds to a tone of the movie as a whole. It surrounds a whole people and provides a more universal insight into humanity than any single story could.

It is not profound; the writer knows not to be overly ambitious. It is about as perfect as screen writing gets, and in 1933! This is where "Short Cuts" comes from.

One story satisfies my notion of folding: a young couple is in love. He is a "professor," she a showgirl. The tension between them has to do with his problems in accepting her appeal being exposed as part of what is called here "the business," meaning the business of theater. London in that era was the world center for the theater and between the wars also the center of thinking about what this new medium of film would bring in terms of constraints and opportunities. The central issues are reflected in this little story — which ends happily for the couple, and us.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

slices of peoples lives before a bus crash.

[kidboots · 7/10 · 9 November 2006]

Why Jessie Matthews, one of Britains top musical stars, was in this movie in between her sparkling "The Good Companions" and the classic "Evergreen" is a good question? When I first saw it I was really disappointed. I wanted to see her sing and dance - she was billed as "Millie - the non - stop variety girl" but there was more stop than variety.

Now I see it as a good little drama.

It is about a bus crash and the stories, leading up to it, of the people on the bus.

Apart from Jessie Matthews, who is great as Millie - Sir Ralph Richardson plays her fiancée ( yes, that's right).

Edmund Gwenn - who went to Hollywood to co-star in Lassie movies and also with Natalie Wood in "Miracle on 34th Street", plays a grumpy businessman. Gordon Harker is his very annoying partner.

Emlyn Williams - who wrote "Night Must Fall" was the black - mailing villain and Frank Lawton, who went to Hollywood and appeared in "David Copperfield" and "The Devil Doll" is the young man in trouble. Sonnie Hale who was married to Jessie Matthews at the time played the bus conductor.

Don't know the actors, but this is a ripping yarn, well presented

[ddbanddtt · 6/10 · 14 October 2006]

Even the younger actors have long since left the stage. This was filmed when the crossover from vaudeville productions was not complete. These people know how to portray character to an audience. The writers knew how to construct a good story too. The accident. The rewind showing the lead in to the now inevitable, followed by a denouement that blossoms as the petals fall. All connected, interconnected and ironic. We are an older world than they were. Average age in UK is approximately 40 now, but must have been mid 20's then. It's nice to see younger people with legitimate young peoples issues. A newly engaged couple must transcend their separate lives .. without experience to guide them. Nowadays, there are experienced prevaricators with different issues.

Enjoy this film. Don't expect modern hoopla, but allow yourself to enjoy. I give you permission :D

Surprisingly polished early British sound film

[past47 · 9/10 · 26 June 2003]

So many early British sound films that I've seen on video suffer from either poor print transfer quality or poor sound or both. Fortunately, I was able to obtain a copy of this movie on a video of excellent quality, enabling me to focus on the story itself.

And, an excellent story it was. At first sight, the passengers on the ill-fated bus looked like a pretty boring lot (except for the always lovely Jessie Matthews). But, as the film went back to show each passenger's story on the day before the accident, I discovered that the cast, contrary to initial appearance, was a talented group of performers, skillfully directed so as to bring a real individuality to their distinctive characterizations.

Viewers may have different preferences as to which two passengers are going to meet a tragic end and which ones will survive. But, the movie holds your interest as it keeps you guessing. This film deserves a much wider audience - a real gem of early British Cinema.

Struck by the fickle finger of fate.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 17 December 2013]

There's something to be said for the dozens of methods of public transportation and the billions of stories which arise out of them every day in every city lucky enough to have them. For the dozen or so people on the London bus just before midnight ironically on Friday the Thirteenth during a horrible thunderstorm, their fates will all be questioned with the sudden collapse of a construction crane.

Like the oft-filmed "The Bridge of San Luis Rey", this flashes back to the last 24 hours of their lives up to this point, but here, there were only two fatalities and only a few injuries. An all-star cast of British actors (some familiar to American audiences from later films) run the gamut of types from sleazy blackmailer, busy businessman, an ex-con, sexy chorus girl, philandering husband and a dizzy wife who keeps forgetting to re-order the marmalade. Moods swing from light comedy to heavy drama and other sequences hold the interest more than others.

Mary Jerrold is adorable as the sweet businessman's wife who spends most of the film fretting over a letter she forgot to deliver. Future "Santa" Edmund Gwenn is the frustrated husband tired of his aging wife's forgetfulness who doesn't realize that with the strike of lightning and the nearing strike of the Tower of London's clock at midnight, fate might strike a blow to his life which would change the course of his life. Musical comedy favorite Jessie Matthews gets a few delicious wisecracks as a basically innocent chorus girl who still knows a few things about men to keep them in line.

Fortunately, if you forget about the opening sequence just before the accident, you will have the opportunity to re-visit it with more details once you get to know who is who. The end is one of those great moments of coincidence, a tag-line involving two characters who were not a part of the accident, and a view of what the real definition of fate really is.

Excellent movie, actors

[htrm · 10/10 · 10 March 2008]

This is an exceptional film. It is part comedy, part drama, part suspense. The dialog is exquisite. Most of the actors and actresses were very famous in their time, and for good reason. You will probably recognize someone, even if you don't usually watch older movies. They are also each in a role that particularly suits their talents.

One correction to make on another users comment is that two people, not one, are announced to die in the accident. Maybe the unlucky two are a reflection of what the writer considers important in life. The movie is too engaging to worry about who it is until it happens.

The story is ahead of its time, but it does not lose the quality of an older movie. Time and effort was spent perfecting the camera's view and the soundtrack, something modern movie makers tend to forget.

Pretty good for it's time - even without Jason and his mum

[holmescj80 · 7/10 · 13 December 2005]

This movie pops up now and again on the ABC in Australia at about 3 am in the morning.

It starts off with the scene of a bus crash in London.

The films has got flashbacks of each character as the film progresses, plus the lapsed photography of Big Ben winding back, to symbolise what events occurred thirteen hours ago, up until the bus crash.

It took me a while to understand it, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

If Sean Cunningham and Quentin Tarrantino got together and made a film, this may be the result - due to the flashbacks and small stories tying in, and deaths.

I am unsure of the main characters, as it has been a while since I have seen it, but a rare gem indeed.

Jessie Matthews is great - as for the rest of this...

[1930s_Time_Machine · 5/10 · 8 January 2023]

Sidney Gilliat wrote loads of excellent stories and screenplays including THE LADY VANISHES, WATERLOO ROAD, Will Hay's ASK A POLICEMAN .....and this. This is definitely not one of his best but at the time it was an original idea to have several little unconnected stories all eventually converging - in the case of this film, a bus crash. Viewed in that context does make this films historically interesting but as a piece of entertainment, it's not the most enthralling. It just about keeps your interest but some of the mini-stories are much less interesting than others.

That you know from the onset however that they're all going to board the ill-fated bus, you do eventually start to hope that some of them make it out alive and hope to yourself that the really irritating ones don't.

The only reason I can think of watching this is to see lovely Jessie Matthews in a non-singing role. I know she was regarded as a fabulous singer but I cannot stand that style of singing so it's a treat watch her acting without having to endure her warbling. (Americans who are unfamiliar with her, think Jeanette MacDonald). Fortunately Jessie Matthews not not just a pretty face - she was a really fabulous and believable actress as well although because she is so good, she does highlight the inadequacies of some of her fellow cast members ( a few of which are pretty awful).

She was perfectly cast in the role of the flirty showgirl considering 'playing away' from her dull boyfriend (a young Ralph Richardson) as she had recently been involved in a similar real-life scandal where she was 'the other woman.' Back then of course adultery was never the man's fault(!) and the judge in the subsequent divorce case had the audacity to describe her as 'odious' She'd been persona non gratis for a while, so good on her for coming back and playing a role like this - and also alongside her new husband (Sonnie Hale - the bus conductor) whom she took from his previous wife.

Odious! Damn cheek, I cannot think of many 1930s actresses sweeter and lovelier....and indeed, as her outfits get more and more revealing as the film progresses, sexier! Apart from benefiting from her not singing, it's not her best film. A few months earlier she'd worked with the same team (again directed by Victor Saville) in THE GOOD COMPANIONS and a year later in FIRST A GIRL - both better.

And finally - Max Miller! How on earth did he become such a massive star? Why did people find him funny - was something wrong with them?

My brief review of the film

[sol- · 10/10 · 3 April 2005]

An early connecting lives film, much like a 1930s 'Pulp Fiction' without all the vulgar language and violence, it is very well done in most aspects, and considering when it was made, it is well ahead of its time. The film editing and the acting - especially from Gordon Harker and Robertson Hare - are particularly strong points of the film, and the overall product is engaging the whole time through. Arguably there are at least one too many characters, which complexes the film much more than is necessary, however this hardly subtracts from this very unique and highly interesting, but too often forgotten, early British film.

Perhaps the first "portmanteau" film

[brendan-36-949960 · 7/10 · 7 January 2017]

I recently saw this ancient British film again after a 30 year hiatus.

Luckily it was the recent DVD from NETWORK with possibly the best surviving print that I saw. I won't repeat the complex plot (every reviewer on IMDb seems compelled to reprise film plots for some reason), apart from saying that the narrative binds together a group of disparate characters over a 24 hour period, each with his/her own story, much like the later films TALES OF MANHATTAN (1942) FLESH AND FANTASY (1943) DEAD OF NIGHT (1945) BOND STREET (1948) etc. This film is probably the first talkie to use such a device and its cast is stuffed with famous stars of the early 1930s. Which makes spotting familiar faces (if you are a film buff) part of the fun of watching this.

Its main attraction for me though, is that it offers a tantalizing glimpse of London as it was almost 90 years ago, a London and a way of life in Britain that has vanished completely. The street and railway station scenes, the atmosphere on a typical London bus of that time with a conductor, and the whole ambiance of the film are priceless.

It also provides Max Miller with perhaps his best screen role, allowing him to demonstrate his astonishing facility for rapid-fire dialogue that would not have been out of place at Warner Brothers in the mid 1930s.

Think Pat O'Brien and James Cagney in such films as BOY MEETS GIRL and CEILING ZERO and then watch Max do his stuff. He's terrific and easily competes with them.

Some scenes creak today as one would expect, but for the most part, this is a vivid, highly entertaining little film that deserves to be far better known than it is.

Fascinating slice of 1930s life

[Charlot47 · 10 October 2010]

No need to praise this little gem, as previous reviewers have done so already.

There is a nicely democratic air about the piece, looking at a wide range of people going about their daily lives. We see the hardworking souls at the bottom of the heap such as the stall-holder in the street market, the bus crew at the depot (and at the races), attendants at the Turkish baths, office workers, teachers and entertainers. Then there are the more parodic pictures of idler, stupider and richer folk.

Not only does the film draw you into the lives of the people on the bus up to the moment of the crash, but it also gives you resolutions for the problems they were facing. For example, the chorus girl realises she was foolish to head for the lecherous agent's flat and that she'll be better off marrying her dull but loving schoolmaster.

Also, the two deaths are in fact blessings. One is undeserved, but it means that the victim never knows the unfaithful wife he loves has left him, even though the faithful dog waiting for him in the empty home tears our hearts. The other is richly deserved, ridding the earth of a useless villain, despite him doing a good deed seconds before he dies, and freeing his victims to marry in peace.

Matrimony is celebrated, despite its flaws, as the great social cement. Extra-marital sex, whether achieved or just wished for, is corrosive (yet all the behind the scenes shots of the chorus girls, while titillating, are fun.) And I must have a juvenile sense of humour because I found Jessie Matthew's posh voice discussing knickers hilarious.

Appropriately, the 13th comment

[Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki · 7/10 · 13 April 2012]

Interesting mix of Hitchcock-type of mystery and early film noir has a London bus careering down the road, on a rainy Friday the 13th, at 11.59pm, when lightning strikes causing an accident which kills two on board. Big Ben winds backward, and we're taken back to Thursday the 12th and shown (in far too much detail?) the lives of the people involved in said bus accident. This series of vignettes ties together each individual's story, placing them together on this doomed bus ride. The mystery comes from wondering which of the two passengers perish in the accident.

A bit of fun is had along the way at the expense of ridiculous clichés and superstitions (seven years back luck, throwing salt over one's shoulder, the film's date of occurrence) and the last scene, with the small boy and the old lady, is most amusing.

Unlucky For Some

[writers_reign · 7/10 · 31 July 2010]

Journeyman director Victor Saville has turned out an excellent programmer here with fine ensemble playing from some of the top names in British stage and screen at the time. In most cases they're just building on their 'image' so that Max Miller is a fast-talking con man, Robertson Hare a bumbling innocent abroad and Jessie Matthews a pert chorus girl etc but somehow Saville gets the blend to work. Emlyn William's screenplay calls for a bus full of passengers to crash on the inauspicious day of the title and two of the cast to perish and then we flashback to their individual stories and just what led them to take this particular bus. Pleasant diversion.

Brilliant multi-story drama with lots of London location shooting

[robert-temple-1 · 9/10 · 15 February 2015]

This film is a splendid achievement, weaving together satisfactorily as it does the stories of a group of people preceding their coming together one fatal evening on a London Number 134 bus. The evening is that of Friday the thirteenth, and disaster occurs, as lightning strikes a crane and causes it to come crashing down onto the bus. Two people are killed, but we are not allowed to know which two until the end of the film's multiple flashbacks. Numerous well known actors of the period appear in this ensemble drama. One character, a slippery and unctuous crook named Blake who 'lives by his wits', is superbly played by Emlyn Williams, who also wrote the electric and crackling dialogue for this film. The wit and quickness of the complex dialogue helps to give this film a much deeper dimension. The young female lead is played by Jessie Matthews, who is as charming as her audience at the time would have expected, considering how popular she was then, and indeed deserved to be. The film is wonderfully directed by Victor Saville. He had already worked with Matthews and would do so again, as he would with Emlyn Williams the following year. The multi-stories are really well-structured and take place in a variety of locations. This gives us a treat, for we are able to see many areas of London as they were in 1932. I noticed for instance that the price of a payphone call at that time was only tuppence. And on the bus itself, someone asks for 'a penny ticket' but then realizes he has been robbed of all his money before boarding the bus, so Emlyn Williams, feeling flush after a blackmail payoff, holds up a single copper and gives it to the bus conductor. Yes, bus conductors! And how we miss them! They were always good for a laugh and some banter, as well as useful advice on which was really the best stop, and how to change, and how long everything would take. I am only surprised that bus conductors, although long gone, have not also been replaced by call centres in India so that people are asked on their mobile phones to press 1, 2, 3, or 4, for their travel advice nowadays, since humans have gone out of fashion. There are many fine performances in the film, such as by Ralph Richardson and Max Miller the music hall comedian. We see extensive shots of the old Caledonian Market at its original site off Caledonian Road in Islington, which closed when the Second World War began. (After the War it reopened at Bermondsey.) There is indeed a great deal to see of Pre-War London, and a great deal to enjoy from a very fine film.

Their bad luck, our (suitable) entertainment

[I_Ailurophile · 7/10 · 14 August 2021]

'Friday the thirteenth' feels distinctly like a precursor to more contemporary pictures of a similar narrative flow. The film showcases a disparate group of people with no connections to one another, save for that the converging point of their stories is a deadly bus crash in which they're all involved. In the meanwhile, we get glimpses of their daily lives in the hours preceding that event. This is a movie that's not especially remarkable in the grand scheme of things, but it's sufficiently entertaining.

It's a broad cast of characters of widely varying class, morality, disposition, and occupation. None necessarily stand out above the others in the film overall, but each shine in the disconnected, hopscotch recounting of their day. There's also a measure of comedy in each portrait owing to exaggerated characterizations, misunderstandings, and clashes of personality. More than that, there's inherent drama in the knowledge of the feature's culmination, and in the mundanity of these lives that will be upended. There's a dramatic flair, too, in the individualized course of events, and as the movie climbs toward its climax, this aspect becomes dominant. It's not the most outstanding feature around, but it's duly engaging, and keeps us watching.

Whatever their station, characters are all well-dressed, and the swell costume design reflects it. Set design seems a bit more austere, but then after all, 'Friday the thirteenth' is more about story than artistry. In a similar vein, camerawork is unexceptional, and lighting. Writing feels straightforward with direct intent of telling a tale, and the roles are rather open and shut. Even so, the assembled cast bring their parts to life with a hint of vigor befitting their distinct temperaments.

What it ultimately comes down to is that this is enjoyable, but it's not necessarily a film to go out of your way to see. Neither the lighthearted humor nor the more dramatic beats are heavily emphasized in a screenplay that just wants its story to be told, and that's a fair reflection on the movie's craft as a whole. Why, there is only ever fleeting mention of the date (the title), or the associated superstitions, and its employment seems more like an intended marketing ploy than a plot device.

Still, whatever its deficiencies, 'Friday the thirteenth' is a reasonable way to pass the time. It's worth watching if you come across it, and is so decidedly inoffensive that it's a fair watch for an all-ages general audience.

Entertaining fatalism, determinism, morality and fortune

[Spondonman · 8/10 · 6 January 2014]

Actually Friday the thirteenth was a lucky date for Jessie Matthews – that was the night in February 1925 in Toronto that she became a leading lady of the stage at 17 years old after understudying Gertrude Lawrence. I hadn't seen this little film gem since the '90's - UK Channel 4 used to screen a good quality copy - but remembered it word for word. Plenty of British films from the early '30's are either thoughtful or entertaining, this managed to be both although technologically (and logically) as primitive as usual.

London midnight bus crashes into a building to avoid a falling crane and two of its passengers are killed. A rather flimsy Big Ben rewinds to the morning and we begin to see retrospectively unfolding the various and varied lives of the people involved in the crash and what led to them being on the bus. It was a talkie remake of a 1929 film The Bridge At San Luis Rey regarding a collapsing bridge and the people who were either affected or killed. So, there's a good tight script flashing between all the characters, and what a set of characters! Jessie Matthews as a wide-eyed "non stop" hoofer and her then brand new husband Sonnie Hale as the cynical bus conductor, Ralph Richardson played her lover as an energetic school teacher (and they apparently got on very well on set too), babe in the park Robertson Hare, Edmund Gwenn, Max Miller with some of his fastest ever patter, Hartley Power, the film's co-scriptwriter Emlyn Williams as a sinister blackmailer, and many other British regulars were in attendance. You might have some fun trying to work out who might end up dead, but ultimately it all follows fairly conventional moral lines – one end just, the other bittersweet. If remade nowadays of course this film's probable ending would be that a character playing a mass-murdering pervert would be the only one to survive – and would not be meant as irony but as a happy ending.

Jessie had such a busy year in 1933 she collapsed with nervous exhaustion which made the commencement of the shooting of her classic Evergreen difficult – FTT turned out to be a different type of classic. It's a simple and perfectly packed potpourri of tales, to be sure it displays the mores, prejudices and snobbery of the time but the basic tales can all be still applied to today and are engrossing to watch from start to finish.

This movie called Friday the Thirteenth-from early British talkie cinema-has nothing to do with Jason Voorhees

[tavm · 8/10 · 13 September 2013]

With today being Friday, September 13, I decided to watch a movie called Friday the Thirteenth. Now, if you're reading this under the title heading, then you know I'm not reviewing the 1980 slasher flick, nor its sequels nor the remake from a few years ago, all involving the character of Jason Voorhees. No, what I'm reviewing here is an obscure British film that's about a bus crash on that particular day that then flashes back toward the beginning of that day in telling the passengers' lives beforehand. All I'll mention now is that a couple of deaths result but this is not a horror or suspense film but a comedy with some dramatic moments that entertained me quite a bit most of the way through. So on that note, I highly recommend Friday the Thirteenth.

Before they were famous

[Goingbegging · 8/10 · 11 September 2017]

This early British talkie is notable for the number of future star-names, most of them not well-established at the time - a galaxy of major talents, whom the film would undoubtedly have helped to promote. Ralph Richardson, Max Miller and Sonnie Hale, all at the dawn of their movie careers. Rare sightings of Ursula Jeans and Martita Hunt when young. And Jessie Matthews at the top of her form, even though she doesn't get to sing.

It is not quite clear why the ending (a bus-crash in the rain) has to be given away at the beginning, unless they were trying to reference Thornton Wilder's 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey', a recent best-seller already filmed by this time, where a fatal accident links together the lives of a group of total strangers. But this does not weaken the suspense, as we take up the thread of each of the sub-plots, one scene at a time. For me, it was Edmund Gwenn, desperately trying to follow-up a stock-market tip, that kept me on the edge of my seat. But there are plenty of other interesting cameos from the various social strata of pre-war London, from dodgy market-traders to smoothie con-men.

The casting also reflected a real-life drama, where Jessie Matthews had been vilified as a husband-stealer in the divorce court for luring Sonnie Hale away from his first wife (Evelyn Laye), whose soon-to-be second husband Frank Lawton is also in the present line-up.

On the whole, the film has not dated badly at all. There is only a little of that 'Shepperton cockney' that would later bulk-up embarrassingly, right into the 50's. And the opening shot of Big Ben chiming the hour had not become a cliché as early as this. Finally, the version I watched is seven minutes shorter than the original, so I may have missed out on a few other masterly contributions by screenwriter Sidney Gilliat.

Very well crafted.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 20 June 2018]

"Friday the Thirteenth" is an extremely well-crafted film--with some fine writing, acting and production values. This surprised me, as the film is in the public domain and often this means no one cared enough to renew the copyright on a film....and often that means the film is a dud. This, however, is no dud.

The story begins with some people on a bus in London during a rainstorm on Friday 13th. Suddenly, lightning strikes and there's an accident...two people are killed though you don't know which of the folks you've been introduced to perished. Then, the film backs up a day and you see the various passenger's lives and what led up to this tragedy.

The individual stories are very engaging and well written. Also, in one case the death is a blessing....and you'll have to see the film to see what I mean. Worth seeing and a film you can download for free from archive.org.