"Transatlantic Tunnel" opens with some pretty good shtick. The camera pulls back from a tight shot of a live orchestra, slowly revealing a group of well-heeled yet obviously bored listeners. A man leans over to his wife and asks, "Will this tune ever end?" "It's Beethoven. He's dead." she responds. A few more wisecracks about how tiresome classical music follow, but that's about it for intentional humor that actually works. Minutes later we get this scene of men bathing together:
"Don't forget it's your son's birthday" "It looks more like yours." "Why?" "You've got your birthday suit on!"
That gem of a punchline is delivered by the film's star, Richard McAllan, played by Richard Dix, whose laughably - for a while anyway - bad overacting supply the only other yuks for the next excruciatingly long hour and change.
The only thing left to hold the viewer's attention are the futuristic tunnel scenes, which look amazingly real, complete with streamlined trains gliding along, and the spot on futuristic cars. If the tunnel scenes were done with models, they're as good as what is being done today. If not, they must have cost a fortune to produce. As far as the cars go, they look better than Tucker's famous 1948 sedans that were billed as being so far ahead of their time thirteen years after this film was made.
Everything else is simply tedious and poorly done. You can pretty much figure out what's going to happen with the main characters ten minutes in. The only real struggle is figuring out which is worse, the dialog or the acting. Madge Evans, who plays McAllan's silently suffering blind wife has some scenes that somehow manage to surpass Dix's in outright shamelessly bad acting. The plot itself is about as believable as a "Bones" episode.
From a technical standpoint however, "Transatlantic Tunnel" excels. Hitchcock films of this era look and sound ancient and feeble in comparison. The photography, lighting, set design and sound are all first rate, and look like high budget Hollywood productions from the forties. This fact, and the uncannily accurate view into the future made the film worth watching for me, but if atrocious acting and tortuously bad scripts put you off, you should pass on this one.
"Don't forget it's your son's birthday" "It looks more like yours." "Why?" "You've got your birthday suit on!"
That gem of a punchline is delivered by the film's star, Richard McAllan, played by Richard Dix, whose laughably - for a while anyway - bad overacting supply the only other yuks for the next excruciatingly long hour and change.
The only thing left to hold the viewer's attention are the futuristic tunnel scenes, which look amazingly real, complete with streamlined trains gliding along, and the spot on futuristic cars. If the tunnel scenes were done with models, they're as good as what is being done today. If not, they must have cost a fortune to produce. As far as the cars go, they look better than Tucker's famous 1948 sedans that were billed as being so far ahead of their time thirteen years after this film was made.
Everything else is simply tedious and poorly done. You can pretty much figure out what's going to happen with the main characters ten minutes in. The only real struggle is figuring out which is worse, the dialog or the acting. Madge Evans, who plays McAllan's silently suffering blind wife has some scenes that somehow manage to surpass Dix's in outright shamelessly bad acting. The plot itself is about as believable as a "Bones" episode.
From a technical standpoint however, "Transatlantic Tunnel" excels. Hitchcock films of this era look and sound ancient and feeble in comparison. The photography, lighting, set design and sound are all first rate, and look like high budget Hollywood productions from the forties. This fact, and the uncannily accurate view into the future made the film worth watching for me, but if atrocious acting and tortuously bad scripts put you off, you should pass on this one.