Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786301986151
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 6301986156
Label: Turner Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Turner Home Entertainment
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Turner Home Entertainment
Release Date: 1991-04-10
Running Time: 71
Studio: Turner Home Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 1952-05-04

This gem of a B-picture from RKO is the kind of trim, beautifully paced movie people have in mind when asking, "Why don't they make 'em like that anymore?" Two cops have to guard a gangster's widow against assassination as she rides the Golden West Limited sleeper train from Chicago to give evidence in L.A. Soon there's only one cop (gravel-voiced Charles McGraw, usually cast as a villain), and he's finding the sharp-tongued widow (Marie Windsor in excelsis) as obnoxious as she is endangered. Nothing goes quite as you'd expect in this exemplary train thriller, which rattles and rocks toward its destination without a music track or a wasted moment. The bad guys include a most distinctive, elegantly garbed hitman (Gordon Gebert); a soft-spoken, "Be reasonable, Sergeant" negotiator (the vulpine Peter Brocco); and possibly the fat man (Paul Maxey) who keeps blocking up the train corridor at just the wrong time. Detour writer Martin Goldsmith worked on the story, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and George E. Diskant's black-and-white cinematography is as sharp as the work he was doing for Nicholas Ray around the same time. Director Richard Fleischer went on to bigger things--but he never made a better movie. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Rating:
Summary: Best Noir of Warners Film Noir Volume 3
Comment: Keeping it short and simple- this was the one of the better Noirs. Charles McCraw is great as the cop trying to protect a lady on a train from one destination to another, but is he protecting the right woman? What I like about it for one thing is it a short movie running at fast paced 72 minutes, but the story and action is pretty tense and non-stop all the way through. Great dialog too, I couldn't help by laugh at times. Thoroughly entertaining with all sorts of twists and turns of characters., This had more twists than a pretzel. Between this movie, Clash by Night and Born to Kill, Warner's Film Noir Volume 3 from Warner is a must. This was the best Noir from Volume 3 to me. Just an amazing gem of a film

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A fine example of Film Noir
Comment: It's been while since I watched this DVD, but I have to say it should be in the top 10 of best Film Noir movies of all time.
Love Charles McGraw in the flick, what an under appreciated actor !!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Cliches aside, this is just the ticket for drama
Comment: B movies are often thin on star quality, filled with cliche story lines and cheap one liners and made on the cheap. This film is all of that BUT it has a simple and effective storyline that allows everything else to fall in line and create a riviting film. AT 70 minutes, there isn't a lot of time fluff - this movie gets with it and for a very few moments stays on track, figurativly and literally.

The story is that cop has to escort a dame (lower case, of course) so she can make it to California and turn states evidence against her dead husbands "Business associates" Marie Windsor plays the broad as cheap as a bottle of Night Train, a regular charmer, but not too bright. The cop? He's got a job to do and wouldn't you know it: the train is lousy with hit men, an ice queen blonde and mouthy kid. The movie has a surprise twist ending.

This is a GREAT Flick that doesn't demand much, but delivers the goods when it reaches the end of the line.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Classic tough guy film noir from 1952
Comment: Some time ago, I saw the remake of this film with Gene Hackman. I wasn't much impressed. Recently, I stumbled on a DVD version of the remake and decided to compare it with this 1952 classic.

Let me now be perfectly clear. If you have any wish to retain even a vestige of respect for the remake, DO NOT view it in conjunction with this brilliant original! With the single exception of Gene Hackman (who at least struggled to make some bricks, despite an acute lack of straw), the remake was lame in every possible respect. Every line of dialogue, every plot point, every set-up, every individual frame was not only inferior to the original but clearly designed to be so by the writers, technical staff, director and producer. The single-minded crumminess of the 1990 effort can only have arisen from some shared, manic delusion that they, each and all of them, were making improvements on the old film noir thriller. Hooboy, were they wrong!

How does this sort of thing happen? Exactly why does someone who has chosen to spend millions of dollars on remaking a movie decide to scrap everything that was good in the original and replace it with intellectually and artistically shabby merchandise? Why, in short, would anybody exchange a taut, tense little thriller on a train with a big, dumb, clumsy action flick that largely takes place ON TOP of a train?

After venting on the iniquities of the recent generation of film makers, I shall now turn to an absolutely more congenial subject, an excellent film noir. This is the twenty-sixth Amazon review. Twenty-four earlier reviewers have described the merits of the film (and one bozo has scattered spoilers, each with a dull thud.) I commend readers who wish information on the plot set-up and cast of "The Narrow Margin" to those twenty-four earlier reviews. As for myself, I'll add only that this film is one of those low-budget, program pieces that sometimes popped out of the American studio system and unexpectedly committed real and unquestionable art.

Even though it originates somewhat late in the era of the film noir, "The Narrow Margin" is one of its finest exemplars. It is taut, intense, single-minded, ruthless, and just a bit grimy--everything, in short, that a film noir ought to be. Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor are just about perfect in their roles: all tough, hard surface and, appropriately, neither one of them obviously trustworthy.

This film is 72 minutes of pointed, lean, mean drama that covers about as much ground as one today's bloated two-and-a-half hour epics. Every shot in it is a testimonial to what was good about the old studio system.

For those in any doubt whatsoever about the true nature of film noir, the magnificently planned, lit and shot sequences in the grungy Chicago apartment building will serve at once as an introductory seminar and as a master class.

The quality of the print is first-rate, particularly when compared with the fuzzy, darkened, nth-generation trailer.

The commentary track is good on the effect "The Narrow Margin" had on the following generation of film makers, but a bit generic in regard to the film itself. Still, I've experienced far worse with other DVDs.

This is a small classic: five hard-edged stars.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Who will cry for Sarah?
Comment: I am embarrassed and ashamed that I, The Queen, had not seen this excellent noir before. I am also thrilled to learn that there are still undiscovered (to me) gems out there!! Two detectives are assigned to protect the wife of a mobster during her travel to LA, in order to provide the police with her husband's list of co-conspirators. The detectives wonder what kind of woman would marry a mobster? Well they find out, and how! Marie Windsor shows them the meanest, nastiest most shrewish woman this side of Ann Savage's Vera. As a counterpoint, Jacqueline White provides the bland and boring Mrs Sinclair with...bland boringness. The movie moves right along with unexpected action right up front, and it doesn't let up right until the ending. Clever plot twists and interesting, high style B&W photography keep the interest levels high. Definitely a keeper! The Queen commands you to attend to this often overlooked noir thriller.

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