"The Hurricane Express" is a very low budget movie serial from tiny Mascot Studios. And, because of this, there isn't a whole lot to distinguish it other than one big thing--it stars a very young John Wayne. If it weren't for this, I doubt if many people would ever want to see the film. It just isn't very good.

The film begins by introducing Larry (John Wayne) and his father. Larry is a pilot and his dad has been an engineer for the railroad for many years. However, soon the father is killed--the result of someone sabotaging the rails. Who would do this and why would they do it? Larry was determined to figure this out for himself--and thus goes the rest of this 12-part serial. At the end of each part, there is, of course, some cliffhanger that makes it APPEAR that he is killed--but naturally, Larry has found some ridiculous way to somehow survive. It turns out that the sabotage is NOT the work of some nut, but a guy called 'The Wrecker'--but who the wrecker is you need to wait until part 12 to learn. In the meantime, he and his gang try again and again to sabotage the rails.

When you watch the film you'll probably notice a few things. First, the film is very quiet. The usual incidental music is gone--partly because early sound films sometimes missed this and partly because the production was so cheap that they couldn't afford it. Also, the condition of the print is not particularly great--but much of this is because of the degradation of the film and has nothing to do with the original quality of the serial. As for the writing, it's pretty poor--with lots of action but not a whole lot in depth or believability. It's quite a step below the quality of a serial from a decade later. Not terrible...just not all that good.

I have a hard enough time watching films like this in a serial format, but this one felt almost as long watching the feature length picture culled from it's respective twelve chapters. You can pretty much tell where most of the chapter breaks occurred by the cliffhanger moments that pop up, some of them looking corny at best, like the one where John Wayne's character, Larry Baker, gets knocked down between railroad tracks and a train runs over his body. You can see how the the film makers used a dummy for that scene. 'The Hurricane Express' is the name of the train at the center of the story, part of the L&R Railroad, and target of a criminal known as 'The Wrecker'. This is one of the very few movies in which you'll catch The Duke wearing a suit and tie, a couple of others are the following year's "His Private Secretary", and 1942's "Lady for a Night". The sharp duds don't help the story out very much though. It's mostly an endless escapade of car chases, fisticuffs, scuffling, multiple gang-ups on Wayne's character by the bad guys, and The Wrecker himself donning realistic looking masks to mimic other players in the story as he goes about his dirty deeds. According to the movie's title page here on IMDb, the DVD version I caught comes in at eighty minutes, but even watching it in interrupted segments, it felt much longer. But hey, it's John Wayne in an early title role, and if you're a completist I guess you'll have to catch it. Good luck if you pick up the full twelve chapter serial.

Ther is a car chase on train tracks, this is way before Bond films. A bike stunt, this is way before McQueen. Another car chase, this is way before Bullit n French Connection. I saw this for the first time recently n quite enjoyed it. The car chases are excitingly shot on the steep, twisting roads of the Bronson Canyon area, the movie has plenty of action around trains, planes, and cars. Wayne's motorcycle pursuit is adrenaline filled.