Steineded How sad is this?

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

masercot I was expecting a quick murder mystery set on a train. Instead, I got to see Charles Ruggles as a romantic lead. For those who don't know the man, he was Major Applegate in the farce Bringing up Baby.But, in this movie, he was a little less formal, but with the same halting delivery. He spends the better part of this movie successfully seducing one of the women. And, why not? Mild-mannered people have to reproduce as well.Plot-wise, this movie is kind of confusing. I got the impression that the movie just kind of stopped because they ran out of film or one of the actors had to go on vacation or something. It definitely wasn't bad.And, it definitely wasn't great, either.

blanche-2 "Murder in the Private Car" is from 1934, right at the beginning of the production code.A pretty switchboard operator, Ruth (Mary Carlisle) is told by detectives that she is the long-lost daughter of a wealthy man. Her coworker (Una Merkel) accompanies her in a private train car ordered for her to take her to her father. But somebody -- a disembodied voice, in fact - wants her dead -- and tells her she has only hours to live.A man on the train, Godfrey Scott (Charles Ruggles) is on the train. He is a "deflector," one who stops crimes before they start. Ruth's long- time boyfriend is also on the train. Soon people start being murdered, and it's obvious Ruth is in great danger.This is an odd movie in that the story - for me, anyway, wasn't very clear. There is a circus train wreck thrown in, giving Ruggles the opportunity to interact with several animals.The highlight of the film is a train chase, and the process shots were very well done - normally you can tell the background is a movie screen, but here it wasn't always apparent, and the chase was very exciting.I was confused because it looks in the beginning of the film as if the detectives faked the evidence in order to say that Ruth was the long- lost daughter, but I don't think it was followed up. I guess whether she was or not, she thought she was and the father believed it. The other thing that threw me was the disembodied voice which I thought I recognized - I won't say who I thought it was, but I spent some time thinking the murderer was someone who wasn't. In fact I'm not sure if the murderer was revealed. I was probably distracted. It reminded me of an old episode of Inspector Morse that was so confusing, I called my friend and asked whodunit. He returned my call and said, "I not only don't know whodunit, I don't know who was killed."Georgia (Merkel) and Godfrey have a cute relationship that grows during the film. Definitely worth seeing - Walter Brennan is one of the men at the train switch, obviously a very early role. Sterling Holloway, so familiar to Baby Boomers from TV and the voice of Winnie the Pooh, is also in the film. MGM supposedly remade this film about ten years later - but to be honest, the description of "Grand Central Murder" doesn't sound the same, except for the train sequence. This movie is also reminiscent of a film with Lana Turner minus the train - so who knows.I thought this B movie ended before certain things were cleared up. According to IMDb, Mary Carlisle is still alive at 101. Wow.

Michael_Elliott Murder in the Private Car (1934) ** (out of 4)MGM murder/mystery has Una Merkel playing a woman who is identified as a baby who was kidnapped fourteen years earlier. Now, as an adult, her father has paid for her to come home to him so she gets on a train where a stranger tells her she only has eight hours to live. Charles Ruggles plays a small-time detective who tries to keep the girl alive long enough to meet her father. Only God is certain on how many of these mysteries I've seen over the years and they are all mostly average with a few that manage to be quite good movies. This one here thankfully just runs 63-minutes but it's pretty lifeless through each of those minutes. The biggest problem is that the film goes for far too many laughs, which wouldn't be a problem if they were actually funny. Since they are all unfunny it really drags the film down and makes all the characters quite annoying. Ruggles just doesn't work as the leading man as his humor is very annoying and he really can't keep the film moving. Merkel is good in her role, although it's certainly not written too well. And yes, there's a gorilla who shows up to scare everyone. I'm still trying to figure out why all of these mysteries from the silent era to the 1940s featured a gorilla.

John Esche Seldom will the words "what were they thinking?!" come to mind while enjoying a film as often as while watching this pseudo-mystery from the early days of sound at MGM - though not as early as the haphazard writing would suggest.Enjoy it you will, however, as the odds and ends the entertainment are assembled from are largely quality remainders, borrowed from all kinds of other films than the mystery the title leads one to expect. Who knows what the original mystery play ("The Rear Car") the film is based on was really like? It lacked sufficient merit to make it to Broadway (neither did "Everybody Comes To Rick's," but that didn't seem to hurt CASABLANCA much), but the stagy "thriller" aspects of the center part of the film suggest that the tossed in ingredients didn't hurt it any.Chief among the "tossed in" ingredients is Charlie Ruggles' Godfrey Scott, a supposed "detective" occupied far more with the kind of bumbling burlesque comedy Ruggles had been perfecting since his movie debut back in 1914 (and would continue to mine right up until his death in 1970). By the 1930's Ruggles was a well recognized Hollywood commodity in such hits as Brandon Thomas' CHARLEY'S AUNT, THE SMILING LIEUTENANT, LOVE ME TONIGHT and ALICE IN WONDERLAND. MURDER IN THE PRIVATE CAR must have seemed a decidedly second tier assignment to the comedian, but he gave it his all . . . though the biggest laugh in the script may come in the credits - "Edgar Allan Woolf," one of the co-writers was clearly named after Edgar Allan POE, the founder of the modern mystery format with his "C. Auguste Dupin stories in the 1840's! So much for legitimate mystery credentials in this film.The silly plot (a lost heiress found and at risk) had already been the subject of too many musicals and farces to be taken entirely seriously, and the film makers don't spend to much time seriously laying out the clues and red herrings even though the golden age of the murder mystery was near its peak. Instead, they pull out the stops with cinema-friendly special effects like runaway trains and (never explained) secret panels.It starts and remains a supremely silly hodge podge, but fun nonetheless for all but the serious mystery fan the title seems to want to attract. Watch for Ruggles and Una Merkle, and don't worry so much about the title murder(s) and a good time is to be had.