“20 Best Films Set On Trains - Ranked!”

[Anadin Dogwalker]

If scenes on trains are eligible, then The Spy Who Loved Me (all time fave) , Live and let Die and From Russia With Love. Oh and Daniel Craig getting "skewered" in Casino Royale.

[John M Upton]

The Cassandra Crossing was an odd one, an A List cast saddled with a Z List script that seemed to have been reheated from one of those highly improbable 1970's airport disaster movies.

 

Worth watching for the litany of continuity errors (magically changing locos and stock formations on a train that never stopped) and then the extra four carriages of cannon fodder extras added at the front of the train just in time to protect the A List actors from dropping into the ravine...

Edited June 25, 2022 by John M Upton

[dibber25]

5 hours ago, John M Upton said:

The Cassandra Crossing was an odd one, an A List cast saddled with a Z List script that seemed to have been reheated from one of those highly improbable 1970's airport disaster movies.

 

Worth watching for the litany of continuity errors (magically changing locos and stock formations on a train that never stopped) and then the extra four carriages of cannon fodder extras added at the front of the train just in time to protect the A List actors from dropping into the ravine...

Wasn't that the thing where they 'contained' a deadly virus by dropping a train full of infected passengers into a river?!! My wife was a micro-biologist - she nearly choked watching it! (CJL)

[John M Upton]

Yep, sealed them in by welding shut the doors and barring over the windows (They just happened to have an entire trains worth of window blanks handy that were just the right size!), fill it with pure oxygen and then send it on a cross Europe detour to a rickety old bridge that would collapse under the weight and boom, bang, splash....

 

Tosh...

[Mike Storey]

How could he have possibly missed "La Bete Humaine" (1938) (The Beast Within, or the Human Beast if you prefer). It's about a locomotive driver for gawd's sake, largely driving trains but gradually going bonkers along with others, and was pretty "arty" enough for his penchant. (See it if you have not - one of the very best films ever made, on wheels).

 

Another, perhaps not as arty, was "Train of Events" (1949) starring Jack Warner as a loco driver, amongst others, about four, unconnected people affected in the same train accident. That too was blooming good. I bet many of us have seen that on the box, during a rainy Sunday afternoon.....

 

[Steamport Southport]

9 hours ago, Anadin Dogwalker said:

If scenes on trains are eligible, then The Spy Who Loved Me (all time fave) , Live and let Die and From Russia With Love. Oh and Daniel Craig getting "skewered" in Casino Royale.

No Octopussy? 🐙 🐱

 

 

 

Glad to see Silver Streak get a mention, but much of the list are a bit too recent and obscure for my tastes. Just reeks of someone trying too hard to prove they are edgy by watching obscure films that no one has heard of.

 

In which case I'm very surprised Kontroll isn't on it. If The Taking of Pelham One Two Three counts then surely that does. If you like quirky and can put up with subtitles it's well worth a watch.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kontroll

 

 

Jason

[KeithMacdonald]

How about Shanghai Express (1932) - directed by Josef von Sternberg, starring Marlene Dietrich?

 

Not quite a filum, but wasn't there a classic episode of Dr Who set aboard a tube train with a load of skeletons? Quite scary.

 

And then there was this ... Cybermen with Oyster Cards?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1332613/Doctor-Whos-Cybermen-invade-London-promote-Doctor-Who-Experience.html

 

[Steamport Southport]

9 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

How about Shanghai Express (1932) - directed by Josef von Sternberg, starring Marlene Dietrich?

 

Not quite a filum, but wasn't there a classic episode of Dr Who set aboard a tube train with a load of skeletons? Quite scary.

 

And then there was this ... Cybermen with Oyster Cards?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1332613/Doctor-Whos-Cybermen-invade-London-promote-Doctor-Who-Experience.html

 

 

Yetis wasn't it? Unfortunately one of the ones that is missing. I think there is one full episode and a few clips.

 

[RJS1977]

9 hours ago, John M Upton said:

The Cassandra Crossing was an odd one, an A List cast saddled with a Z List script that seemed to have been reheated from one of those highly improbable 1970's airport disaster movies.

 

Worth watching for the litany of continuity errors (magically changing locos and stock formations on a train that never stopped) and then the extra four carriages of cannon fodder extras added at the front of the train just in time to protect the A List actors from dropping into the ravine...

 

Sounds like an episode of "Great British Railway Journeys"!

[BR60103]

17 hours ago, dibber25 said:

Well, at least similar locomotives and a good attempt at historical accuracy in most respects. So, was the real General used in the Buster Keaton film? Perhaps I'm getting confused. (CJL)

The film was shot in Oregon (Oregon, Pacific & Eastern Rly) which owned a couple of old locomotives. The owners of the General wouldn't let it go.

(Info from Wikipedia.)

 

Sorry, but I was a fanatic about this episode as a youngster -- the Disney film had just come out.

 

[33C]

A good recent film is "Last train to Busan".

[The Stationmaster]

14 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

How could he have possibly missed "La Bete Humaine" (1938) (The Beast Within, or the Human Beast if you prefer). It's about a locomotive driver for gawd's sake, largely driving trains but gradually going bonkers along with others, and was pretty "arty" enough for his penchant. (See it if you have not - one of the very best films ever made, on wheels).

 

Another, perhaps not as arty, was "Train of Events" (1949) starring Jack Warner as a loco driver, amongst others, about four, unconnected people affected in the same train accident. That too was blooming good. I bet many of us have seen that on the box, during a rainy Sunday afternoon.....

 

As it happens 'Train of Events' was on the telly only a couple of days back so I could once again enjoy the site of 'Macclesfield' being remarkably near to a certain London power station chimney still inits wartime camouflage livery.  An excellent film although some LMS aficionados might be a bit disappointed that one very brief scene suggests that Jack Warner's character lived in house backing onto the GWR near to Ladbroke Grove Signal Box.

 

I think omission of 'La Bête Humaine' goes a long way towards showing up The Grauniad's list for what it was, or more appositely for what it wasn't.  And we could perhaps also add 'Bhowani Junction' which has much more railway relevance than some of the films in The Grauniad's rather amateurish list.

[Flying Pig]

On 24/06/2022 at 11:31, 33C said:

North West Frontier

 

A film in which upright Empaah types battle Pathans and a sinister Muslim fifth columnist to deliver a child prince to safety with the help of loyal Indian subjects.  Hmm... I'm really surprised the Graun didn't list that one 😆.

[pete_mcfarlane]

14 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

Yetis wasn't it? Unfortunately one of the ones that is missing. I think there is one full episode and a few clips.

 

They found most of 'The web of fear' a few years back. It's now just missing one episode, and is on DVD. It's also the story where we meet the Brigadier for the first time (as a Colonel).

[Pacific231G]

On 24/06/2022 at 11:31, 33C said:

Don't forget Cassandra Crossing, Train of Events, North West Frontier, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, The Love Match and Murder on the Orient Express. 

The Lady Vanishes (1938)  and Murder on the Orient Express are in the Guardian's list.  I found that seven of their list would be in my own top twenty though I'd have put Silver Streak a lot higher. Those I'd add to my top twenty would include North West Frontier but also-

despite its questionable politics-  The Dark of the Sun (Jack Cardiff 1968)  Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Brown,

 

The Train. This is probably my no 1 despite the 141Rs clearly visible outside the sheds at Vaires.

 

The Last Train (1973 dir. Pierre Granier-Deferre) ,  Jean-Louis Trintignant and Romy Schneider meet on a refugee train (hauled, like the train in Murder on the Orient Express, by my favourite steam loco 230G 353)  that crosses France while escaping the advancing Germans in 1940. It's based on a short novel by Georges Simenon but, though I'm a fan of Simenon, I thought the film far better than the book)

 

La Bête Humaine (1938 Jean Renoir) Jean Gabin, Simone Simon based on the Victor Hugo novel.

 

Emperor of the North: rather violent but a good insight into American steam era railroading and the depression.

 

Von Ryan's Express - despite the obvious flaw that escaping POWs reaching neutral Switzerland (which thousands did) had to stay there. The reality of the blunder by MI9 when thousands of POWs who, like those in the film, found themsleves in unguarded camps when Italy overthrew Mussolin, were ordered to stay-put and became prisoners of the Germans, seems to have been all but forgotten https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/01/second-world-war-british-pows

 

I'm afraid the Cassandra Crossing wouldn't even make my top hundred films set on trains. More like 126 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

 

Two of my favourite railway based films, La Bataille du Rail (1945 eulogy to Resistance Fer (the railway resistance in occupied France) and Closely Observed Trains, don't count as they're not actually set on trains.

 

The one lost episode I'd love to see again is the Adam Adamant Lives episode "Ticket to Terror" where a train load of commuters, incuding Adamant's manservant Simms disappears from the Waterloo and City  Line (in those days B.R.) only to reappear a few days later full of skeletons. Then a second train which Georgina Jones (Juliet Harmer) is travelling on also disappears. Sadly, this episode does seem to be really lost (they sometimes turn up in old film vaults as telerecordings that were sent out tby the BBC to Australian etc. broadcasters) 

 

 

Edited June 26, 2022 by Pacific231G

[Pacific231G]

On 24/06/2022 at 13:08, Darius43 said:

No, and that’s yet another egregious omission.

 

What about “Horror Express” starring Telly Savalas…

 

Cheers

 

Darius

Ugh, almost as bad as Cassandra Crossing.

 

Not this post in particualr but for heaven's sake. Patrick Barkham, a freelance journalists who writes for the The Guardian (normally on natural history) has put together a fairly light-hearted list of twenty films set on trains - presumably his own favourites- and some people here turn it into a culture war. I'm surprised nobody has yet described him as a "woke lefty"  for leaving out one or two films.

It does seem that The Guardian's very existence is like a red rag to a bull- How dare any newspaper be allowed that doesn't support the present shower in power. I wonder if an equivalent list would have invoked the same response if it had been in the Daily Telegraph?

 

Bhowani Junction wasn't set on a train but it was also, unfortunately, not really very good and certainly not a patch on the book (which is well worth reading).  

[Steamport Southport]

2 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

They found most of 'The web of fear' a few years back. It's now just missing one episode, and is on DVD. It's also the story where we meet the Brigadier for the first time (as a Colonel).

 

Ah. I remember buying a DVD with the surviving episode on. I'll have to see if my brother has got the newer version.

 

 

 

Jason

[dibber25]

On 26/06/2022 at 14:13, Pacific231G said:

Ugh, almost as bad as Cassandra Crossing.

 

Not this post in particualr but for heaven's sake. Patrick Barkham, a freelance journalists who writes for the The Guardian (normally on natural history) has put together a fairly light-hearted list of twenty films set on trains - presumably his own favourites- and some people here turn it into a culture war. I'm surprised nobody has yet described him as a "woke lefty"  for leaving out one or two films.

It does seem that The Guardian's very existence is like a red rag to a bull- How dare any newspaper be allowed that doesn't support the present shower in power. I wonder if an equivalent list would have invoked the same response if it had been in the Daily Telegraph?

 

Bhowani Junction wasn't set on a train but it was also, unfortunately, not really very good and certainly not a patch on the book (which is well worth reading).  

I haven't read a newspaper since the 1970s and the only thing that might make me buy one is if I need to light the fire. So I have no axe to grind for or against any of them. Fact is, 'lefty', 'righty' or whatever, the Guardian's list was not much cop. Why do you need to bring politics into it? (CJL)

[Pacific231G]

39 minutes ago, dibber25 said:

I haven't read a newspaper since the 1970s and the only thing that might make me buy one is if I need to light the fire. So I have no axe to grind for or against any of them. Fact is, 'lefty', 'righty' or whatever, the Guardian's list was not much cop. Why do you need to bring politics into it? (CJL)

I don't think I did. It was lazy assumptions about the Guardian's "wokeness" (whatever that vapid concept might actually mean) with reference to films like North West Passage and Emperor of the North that irritated me. It was also an unspoken assumption that if someone writes for that paper you know everything you need to know about them and their taste in films or anything else.

 

Such a list is bound to be "not much cop" for most people but it was quite fun to use it as the start of our own lists which, if you look back a few posts, you'll see that I did. For example, some people liked the Cassandra Crossing but I thought it a great shame that the script for it wasn't thrown from a train crossing the  Garabit viaduct (which is so well known that they might as well have pretended the Forth Railway Bridge was in Poland) long before anyone thought of actually filming it. And to think that Burt Lancaster also starred in "The Train" 😬

Edited August 1, 2022 by Pacific231G

[RichardT]

On 26/06/2022 at 12:33, Flying Pig said:

 

A film in which upright Empaah types battle Pathans and a sinister Muslim fifth columnist to deliver a child prince to safety with the help of loyal Indian subjects.  Hmm... I'm really surprised the Graun didn't list that one 😆.

Except that North-West Frontier ends with the boy prince turning to the Kenneth More character and saying that his father has told him that one day he will have to fight the British (but, until then, thanks for saving me) from the rebels).  A more nuanced film than you might think - loco crossing unsupported rails excepted!

 

On 26/06/2022 at 14:13, Pacific231G said:

It does seem that The Guardian's very existence is like a red rag to a bull- How dare any newspaper be allowed that doesn't support the present shower in power. I wonder if an equivalent list would have invoked the same response if it had been in the Daily Telegraph?

Speaking as the woke lefty that started this thread, I have a certain sympathy for your view.

 

In practical terms though l, we’d never have seen a list from the Daily Telegraph as that parody of a newspaper puts its online stuff behind a paywall, and posting links to a paywalled site is a waste of time. The Graun tends to feature heavily in online link swapping because it (naively) keeps online access free in the interests of discussion, not because the links are being posted as part of some remoaner propaganda conspiracy.

 

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

Such a list is bound to be "not much cop" for most people but it was quite fun to use it as the start of our own lists

Exactly! That was my hope in starting this thread.

 

And now, back to our normal programming…

 

RichardT

Edited August 1, 2022 by RichardT
Ruined my lofty arguments by omitting words from sentences

[dibber25]

Isn't 'woke' the past tense of 'wake'? I refuse to understand what these new 'nonsense terms' are supposed to mean. To me, they are making my native language incomprehensible. (CJL)

[Pacific231G]

On 01/08/2022 at 21:32, dibber25 said:

Isn't 'woke' the past tense of 'wake'? I refuse to understand what these new 'nonsense terms' are supposed to mean. To me, they are making my native language incomprehensible. (CJL)

It has American origins and according to Webster it actually means "to be aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)" I agree though that it's been largely stripped of meaning and has become one of those "bogeyman" words that populist like to use to scare us without saying why we should be scared of it.

Edited August 4, 2022 by Pacific231G
typo

[jjb1970]

On 24/06/2022 at 20:06, The Stationmaster said:

How about 'Emperor Of the North'?  Very much set on trains which are a key part of the story and the 'social changes' aspect of it ought to appeal to The Grauniad although the violence might not.  i suspect that their film critic or whoever made the choices might not even have heard of it.

 

This would be my number 1. Yes, it's violent, but it's a great story, well-acted by two great leads and for all some of it is still close to the bone after all these years I find it utterly compelling. I still get a bit of a shiver when Ernest Borgnine runs out a weight on a length of rope so it bounces up off the track bed to pound anyone trying to hang off the under body of a wagon, brutal.

[jjb1970]

At Least The Taking of Pelham 123 is in the top ten, and the original version. Robert Shaw and Walther Mathau were great actors, the John Travolta re-make was awful. I'd probably shuffle Train to Busan higher, I liked that one. I'd include Von Ryan's Express somewhere as that comes within the definition of being set on a train I think.

[4901]

La Bete Humaine is a remarkable piece of filming on a locomotive.  Highly recommended even if he Guardian didn't rate it.