hyped garbage

Boring, long, and too preachy.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

. . . everyone seems to be wearing masks of everyone else's faces. It's like these 1930s people traveled in time to view FACE\OFF and POINT BREAK, and then returned with a Biotech 3D printer. One guy impersonates half a dozen short, medium, and tall dudes varying by at least a foot in height. (Evidently, folks were easily-fooled simpletons back then, which is why their Depression was so Great.) These 1930s dandies also were very Wishy-Washy, never sticking to their original choice of transportation. A guy with train tickets suddenly climbs up a rope ladder into a plane; three people already IN a plane decide to jump out and walk; another joker is out for a joy-ride in his car, before he just sends it careening along--driver-less, at full speed--in order to hop a train (leaving the empty Packard to fend for itself). A little later the same clown repeats this shenanigan with a motorcycle. With John Wayne in the cast here, I was waiting for him to hop out of a plane on horseback, but no such luck. Based on this 79-minute "feature condensation," I see no reason to plod along for three more hours on the HURRICANE EXPRESS.

. . . of the 3 hour, 46 minute, 59 second 12-chapter "Mascot Serial" version of THE HURRICANE EXPRESS would technically be qualified to rate or comment about this flick. (That's 13,559 seconds, for the mathematically challenged, like my sister.) For ease of reference, your twelve chapters (with their time splits) are: 1)The Wrecker (28:43), 2)Flying Pirates (16:35), 3)The Masked Menace (17:15), 4)Buried Alive (19:26), 5)Danger Lights (16:48), 6)The Airport Mystery (19:47), 7)Sealed Lips (18:19), 8)Outside the Law (19:00), 9)The Invisible Army (18:29), 10)The Wrecker's Secret (16:26), 11)Wings of Death (17:26), and Unmasked (17:45). As he doddered toward Oblivion, John Wayne campaigned desperately to eclipse the 259 feature film credits of his late henchman, Ward Bond. In order to inflate his work record from the 166 features on his filmography for this site (and all other credible listings) by another 94, Wayne counted each of the serials he appeared in (such as HURRICANE) as TWELVE feature film roles, rather than one (even though 11 of the chapters in each serial ran for LESS than 20 minutes!). Wayne also awarded himself a theatrically-released feature film credit for each of his TV situation comedy cameo guest bows, as well as counting coup every time he made the annual Oscar Awards broadcast as either a losing nominee or a seat filler.

One caveat I have to give this particular review. I saw an abbreviated 80 minute version of this serial which was almost unintelligible to follow. Not that I think the full length version would have put The Hurricane Express right up in cinematic history with Gone With the Wind.John Wayne did three serials for Mascot and this particular one must have been edited down for a feature length movie to take advantage of his growing popularity in the Forties. The plot such as it is involves John Wayne as the son of engineer J. Farrell MacDonald who is killed in a planned train wreck. The mysterious guy doing all these wrecks is someone appropriately called The Wrecker. He's got one interesting gimmick, he wears incredibly life like masks of all the other folks that are suspected of being the Wrecker. Fools everybody of course until the Duke catches on.If this version of The Hurricane Express came out in the late Forties, what must John Wayne have thought when such things as Red River, Fort Apache, etc. were being released? The Duke must have shuddered.

I watched the eighty minute condensed version of this show and actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Unfortunately, the DVD i bought wasn't made from a great print(i would certainly buy a better one if could). Anyhow, it was a very fun trip back in time to the days when John Wayne was a young pup and Hollywood was becoming, well, Hollywood. As you might expect the condensed version was very fast moving and there were lots of stunts, some really scary, like when Wayne or a double jumps from a moving car onto a moving train. Yikes!!! You had to be crazy to be a stuntman back in those days. The story isn't really that much by todays standards but it makes for a pretty good little action film. The girl is cute and yeah I'm sure she and Duke probably saw some action between takes. Ha, why not? I'm sure that the entire serial would prob get boring so don't waste your time with that, the short version works really well. Hopefully you can get a better transfer though. Overall, this is a nice time capsule that takes you back to a earlier and more innocent America and Hollywood. If nothing else you might enjoy the vintage trains, planes, and automobiles. The DVD i bought included this movie and three more and i paid fifty cents for it at kroger. This movie was the second best behind Paradise Canyon which was a great movie and was made from a great print.