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To help a young woman (Eve Miller) pass the time on a monotonous and
tiresome train journey, an old eccentric (Fritz Leiber) with clairvoyant
talents tells her a story, the story of Harry Dunlap (Charles Russell), a
young man who dumps the dead body of a young woman onto a train that's
just leaving the station. Too bad there is a witness for this, Mike (Dale
Belding), a young boy who just likes to watch trains. He hasn't seen
exactly what Dunlap has dropped and isn't suspicious at all (yet) when he
starts a conversation. Dunlap though thinks it's best to kill the boy as a
possible witness as well - but Mike manages to escape without so much as
trying. Dunlap hitches a ride to skip town, but it turns out all the
bridges leading out of town are washed out, all the roads are closed ...
so he ends up at a boarding house only a few hundred yards away from the
train station - and what's worse, Mike and his mom (Lee Patrick) are
permanent residents at the place. Dunlap tries to befriend Mike, who
cannot place him yet, with some success, while a blonde, Jean (Mary Beth
Hughes), who has figured Dunlap's a man on the run but has no idea on the
run from what, wants to use him as her ticket out. Eventually, news
reaches the boarding house that the dead body of a woman has been found on
a train, and it doesn't take Mike long to put two and two together and ...
but that's when Dunlap strikes, he manages to tie him up and persuade
everyone else he's run away - killing isn't on the menu anymore it seems.
Then, while the others are looking for Mike, Dunlap tries to make his
getaway but is stopped short by Jean. And ultimately, Dunlap is exposed
for what he is, and being cornered, he gives himself up. Back in the
now, it turns out that the woman the old eccentric was telling this story
to was exactly the woman Dunlap will murder - at the next station ... A
cheaply made thriller that's actually pretty good, using a supernatural
framing story for a very well-told suspense tale that never tries to
overpower its audience with big spectacle but surprise everybody with
original yet not far-fetched plottwists. Add to this a good ensemble cast,
and conveyor belt filmmaker LEw Landers' very probably best directorial
effort, and you've got yourself a pretty good (though very
underappreciated) film.
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