Thanks for the memories!

Just perfect...

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Crooked racketeers are using passenger cars to take customers away from a legitimate bus company. The daughter of the owner (Fay Wray) investigates and helps break up the racket with one of the members of the crooked gang who has found out first hand what they are capable of. This is a typical RKO programmer of this era, 90% of their annual releases. Rarely seen until Turner Classics brought them out from mothballs, these features are a mixed bag, and this one, which has a few redeeming values, is like many others of the golden age of cinema. Somewhat violent, not as fast moving as similar crime dramas made at Warner Brothers, they've got all the necessary ingredients to be nothing more than just forgettable bottom-of-the-bill features that ended when television came along. Wray is feisty, and Leona Roberts, as a slovenly landlady with a secret, adds spark to what otherwise would be simply ordinary.

Wildcat Bus (1940) ** (out of 4) Warner made a crime picture about taxi drivers in the entertaining TAXI! so I guess RKO thought they'd push the envelope by making a crime picture with bus drivers. This film, however, is pretty dull from start to finish. In the film a playboy (Charles Lang) goes bankrupt so he has to get a job at a bus company ran by a woman (Fay Wray) and her father. The bus company has had all sorts of accidents that are ruining their company but they begin to think that it's racketeers running a taxi service that's trying to steal their business. This RKO picture runs a very brief 63-minutes but at times it feels doubt that length. The biggest problem is the rather bland direction that puts very little life into the picture. The screenplay really doesn't help matters either as all the characters are pretty one-dimensional and none are overly interesting. The bad guys are carbon copies of what you'd see in a Warner picture and the good guys are just boring and constantly saying bad jokes. Lang is okay in his role but the screenplay pretty much lets his character done as at times he's annoying and it's really hard to care too much for him. Wray is pretty much going by the numbers but once again, a lot of this could be blamed on the screenplay or direction. Paul Guilfoyle, Don Costello, Paul McGrath and Joe Sawyer round out the supporting players. There's very little energy to anything in the film as the entire story just feels forced and it's just not interesting enough to carry the short running time. The ending picks up a few punches as we get a big fight sequence with plenty of punches and kicks.

This rather poor RKO programmer manages to keep some interest going, mostly due to Fay Wray, who struggles with the poor material, but who is canny enough to make the most of her close-ups, and to Paul Guilefoyle who is pretty good is his supporting role as the hot-tempered moral center of the piece. Leading man -- actually, leading chump -- Charles Lang suggests, if anyone, a rather clueless Dan Duryea.The plot, about a struggling bus line, owned by Miss Wray's father and run by her, despite the efforts by wildcatters to put it out of business by faking accidents, has hints of screwball comedy about it at some points, but it is rarely played for laughs. Lang, the newly indigent ex-playboy, is down to his last limousine, which has its potential, but the effect is not funny, merely incongruous. Not a terrible piece to watch, but not to go out of your way for.

Seen on Turner Classic movies, this is a quick very entertaining little B movie. It features Fay Wray who is the main reason for watching as the daughter of the owner of a bus company who is being threatened by Ma whose husband was dad's partner and stealing from the company who dad got sent to jail. Ma is running a group of cars that go from LA to San Fran for a price in order to take business away from the bus company. There are also sabotage on the buses and using cars to force the buses into crashing. The best part is two strong women Fay and Ma even if Fay ends up quick for marriage to Jerry at the end. Ma isn't quite so lucky.