The plot is simple: A train driver, unable to accept retirement and wrongly imagining his wife is having an affair, hatches an idea in his fevered mind to give his last train passengers the ride of their lives.
The film develops a lickety-split pace once the train's eponymous journey begins, and doesn't let up, as character plots intermingle with typical B-movie haste, stirred up with brisk dialogue, editing and direction, while the mind of the troubled train driver unravels even quicker. Considering its age, the film-making is very sophisticated and the writer throws every type of thrill into the pot, many of which can be seen in movies forty + years hence:
--- spoiler alert (train chasing car - French Connection, Bi-Plane chasing train - Silver Streak, trusted husband loosing it and turning into murderous maniac - The Shining, unstoppable train - Silver Streak once more, character vignettes sketched in ahead of disaster - Poseidon Adventure) ---end spoiler alert.
Some of the camera-work employed in the car-train sequences would stand up in a Spielberg production. And all this in one short hour of B movie-making; B for "Blimey, what a little corker!"
The film develops a lickety-split pace once the train's eponymous journey begins, and doesn't let up, as character plots intermingle with typical B-movie haste, stirred up with brisk dialogue, editing and direction, while the mind of the troubled train driver unravels even quicker. Considering its age, the film-making is very sophisticated and the writer throws every type of thrill into the pot, many of which can be seen in movies forty + years hence:
--- spoiler alert (train chasing car - French Connection, Bi-Plane chasing train - Silver Streak, trusted husband loosing it and turning into murderous maniac - The Shining, unstoppable train - Silver Streak once more, character vignettes sketched in ahead of disaster - Poseidon Adventure) ---end spoiler alert.
Some of the camera-work employed in the car-train sequences would stand up in a Spielberg production. And all this in one short hour of B movie-making; B for "Blimey, what a little corker!"