Truly the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater

Best movie ever!

Absolutely the worst movie.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

"Non-Stop New York" is a delightful film from 1937 starring Anna Lee, John Loder, and Francis L. Sullivan.Anna Lee (Lila Quartermaine on General Hospital) is pretty Jenny Carr, a young British actress in New York City with a flop play. So soon, she'll be on her way back to London. She meets a man who sees she's hungry and offers to buy her a meal. That man is later murdered, and a bum is arrested. He is due to be executed in a matter of days. He says that an English girl knows he didn't do it, but no one can find her. She's already home. Once she sees a headline that she's being searched for, she realizes she has to get back to the US immediately. She and her mother find a plane that goes London to NY in 18 hours, and her mother pretends to be drowning while Jenny boards the plane.Little does Jenny know but the real killers are out to stop her.This plane is something to behold. It's a clipper, and apparently this type of plane did exist. Wish it still did. The inside is more like a train, with sleeping compartments, dining room, and one can step out onto a terrace like thing outside the plane. It also flies rather low. Totally amazing.Francis L. Sullivan is excellent as the slimy gang head who wears different disguises in his quest to get rid of Jenny. Apparently - could this be true - he was 35 years old when he did this. If you'd told me he was 65 I would have believed you.John Loder, who was married at one time to Hedy Lamarr, is the handsome investigator who really doesn't believe Jenny.This film is available on youtube. Try and see it - it's very enjoyable.

This unknown classic is a must see. It is fast paced in the Hitchcock style and well acted with a lot of droll sequences intertwined between. Anna Lee couldn't be prettier or more charming. The entire cast including the villain Francis Sullivan are great. The British attempt at American slang is slightly noticeable but otherwise the direction is top notch. I just love that luxury aeroplane and wish that it was a reality to the present air traveller to rid him of the monotony of long travel. The storyline may be a little slow paced but is offset by the acting. Certainly a movie far before its period and not necessarily a curio but most interesting to watch.

Robert Stevenson (1905-1986) was a superb British director, but his name is not widely enough recognised. He is probably most famous for JANE EYRE (1944) with Orson Welles and TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS (1940). Less well known are his excellent DISHONORED LADY (1947, see my review), and his truly magnificent OWD BOB (1938, see my review), which he made the year after this. In this year, he also made KING SOLOMON'S MINES with Anna Lee, who stars once again in this film of his. This really is a most fascinating film, because of the spectacular second half which takes place on a trans-Atlantic Clipper seaplane, the interior of which resembles that of a zeppelin, on multiple levels with individual sleeping compartments, bar and restaurant. It even has a little balcony where people stand outside to take the air and look down upon the ships which are not far below them. Francis L. Sullivan here gives one of his finest performances as the oiliest and least scrupulous of villains, truly hair-raising in his wickedness. Anna Lee is a typical 1930s English 'sweetie', but with more fibre and character than is usual for that time, and she handles the part of the courageous accidental heroine very well. She is determined to save the wrong man from being executed in America for a crime he did not commit. Anna stows away on the Clipper to get back to America to give her evidence, which Scotland Yard had refused to take seriously. This is very much a Hitchcock-style suspense thriller, and makes excellent viewing. It deserves to be more widely known, as it is certainly a British pre-War classic. If Britain had as many film buffs as there are in America, where almost any trivial B or C movie can achieve fame nowadays, films like this would be familiar and praised, rather than obscure and forgotten. But the British are lazy about their cinematic heritage, and films like this are never shown on British television, so no one even knows they exist. In this film, the child actor Desmond Tester is most amusing as an eccentric child musical prodigy who becomes entangled in the murderous intrigues going on aboard the Clipper plane. If only British films still produced wonderfully strange character actors like that! It was also amusing to see a young Peter Bull scowling with his heavy jowls as a blackmailer in this film. In real life, he was actually rather jolly, although extraordinarily bombastic and often too loud, and he was always available for a chat when he ran his astrological shop in Notting Hill Gate in the 1960s and 1970s.

I first heard of Non-stop New York while browsing, of all things, the Aurum Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction films. The only reason that this film was included in that book was because it is 'futuristic' by 3 years; it was made in 1937 while the main action takes place in 1940. One interesting point is that the filmmakers did not know that WW2 had started by then and so there is no mention of it.For some reason, the film is very obscure, only 39 viewers (including me) having voted for it on IMDb at the time of this writing. But is a fast moving little thriller full of incisive British wit. The film is so quintessentially British that one cannot help but notice that even the 'Americans' are local actors wincing with their attempts at transatlantic accents. But for this one minor flaw, the film is thoroughly enjoyable with perfect casting and good, if lightweight performances. An added bonus, certainly from my own perspective, is that most of the action takes place on board a Transatlantic Clipper, one of those seaplanes that were so glamorous in the 1930s. A definite Collector's item and I am the proud owner of a good quality VHS tape.