GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Nicole 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.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

MikeMagi There was a time when lousy movies were entertaining. And "The Silk Express," released in 1933 when films were just learning to talk, is a prime example. First, you gotta' believe that a criminal syndicate has cornered the entire American silk market and unless a trainload of silk from the Orient reaches New York within three days, the nation's fashion industry will collapse. A mysterious criminal mastermind has been planted aboard the silk express to stop it in its tracks. But who is he? The paralyzed scholar being rushed to New York for emergency surgery? His beautiful daughter? The doctor who doesn't seem to know as much as he should about medicine? The erudite hobo? The smooth-talking lawyer? It couldn't possibly be the bellowing railroad detective played by Guy Kibbee, could it? This ain't Agatha Christie. But the dialogue's crisp, the pace never lags and the solution to the mystery actually comes as a surprise.

gerrythree The Silk Express is a fast moving crime story loaded with Warners' supporting actor regulars: Guy Kibbee, Robert Barrat, Harold Huber, Allen Jenkins and Arthur Hohl. For train fans, there are scenes of an actual train filmed for the movie, along with stock footage of a train going through a snow storm on the way to New York. If the basis of the screen story seems odd, about importing a load of silk to break the "corner" a speculator has on silk supplies, at least the story is different. Warner Bros. in 1933 had an unequaled team of professionals who could turn out polished movies on the cheap. There are probably as many scenes in this 62 minute movie as a 90 minute movie now. And, just like in another Warners crime movie, Fog Over Frisco, when someone receives a telegram, you see an authentic looking telegram on the screen. The only things out of place in The Silk Express are the leads, Neil Hamilton and Sheila Terry, apparently brought in on a trial basis to see if they were Warners material. They did not stick around at Warners. Soon they would have company, as Jack Warner's cost cutting at the studio caused a migration of acting talent to other studios (among them Loretta Young and William Powell). The Silk Express is an example of the quality that Warner Bros. routinely put on the screen from 1931 to 1934, movies set in the Depression-era present that have not dated as badly as the studio product from MGM and other studios.

Neil Doyle Fast paced little mystery yarn features handsome NEIL HAMILTON in the lead as a man anxious to get his shipment of silk safely removed at the train's destination--but hampered in his efforts by a murder aboard The Silk Express.Hamilton is determined and spunky as the lead, a far departure from his fate in a film from 1944 (SINCE YOU WENT AWAY) where he was only shown in a photo within a picture frame as Claudette Colbert's husband.The supporting cast has a number of familiar Warner Bros. faces: Allen Jenkins, Guy Kibbe, Robert Barratt, Vernon Steele--but the round-up of suspects by detective Guy Kibbe is just one of the many clichés in the script which is riddled with just such moments. It comes across as Agatha Christie, without the wit, not that this is from a Christie play or novel.Guy Kibbe as the detective is overly emphatic in his gruffness, as are just about all of the performances. It's strictly for movie buffs who aren't fussy about how over-baked acting was back in 1933 melodramas.

bensonj This is not a "racy melodrama" (as described in Hirschhorn's WARNER BROTHERS STORY). There's nothing remotely racy unless one counts the train racing across the country. Rather, it's a primitive whodunit where arbitrary clues are thrown out to make everybody look guilty. Although it's crammed with Warner character players and moves briskly, it's still boring and weak.