Movies set almost entirely on trains - like 'The Tall Target' and 'The Narrow Margin' - practically constitute a genre in their own right. The train's humbler cousin, the bus, frequently features in movies too; but the more cramped setting, which forces various varied individuals into close proximity for the duration, combined with the need to occasionally get out and stretch your legs, lends the bus movie a more vivid sense of time and place, be it depression-era America in 'Cross Country Cruise', rural Japan in Hiroshi Shimizu's 'Mr. Thank You' (1936), south of the border in Luis Bunuel's 'Subida al cielo' (1952) or flyover country in countless road movies of the seventies & eighties, which 'Cross Country Cruise' vaguely anticipates.
The cast list in the opening credits of 'Cross Country Cruise' is full of the usual dependable acting talent, and like many classic old movies there are also notable uncredited contributions by the likes of Jane Darwell, Walter Brennan, Ara Haswell, Lee Phelps and Charles C. Wilson, to name just a few. Leading man Lew Ayres grates at first, playing yet another of those millionaire playboys who drop everything to pursue a young woman they've never met before; while she in turn is as usual improbably won over by such a creepy charm offensive. Once these romcom preliminaries are dispensed with, Ayres's character becomes much better company; turning amateur detective to nail who committed the unexpected murder which enlivens the film's final third. (Both the method of the murder itself and of the concealment of the body are worthy of a seventies Italian giallo.)
The cast list in the opening credits of 'Cross Country Cruise' is full of the usual dependable acting talent, and like many classic old movies there are also notable uncredited contributions by the likes of Jane Darwell, Walter Brennan, Ara Haswell, Lee Phelps and Charles C. Wilson, to name just a few. Leading man Lew Ayres grates at first, playing yet another of those millionaire playboys who drop everything to pursue a young woman they've never met before; while she in turn is as usual improbably won over by such a creepy charm offensive. Once these romcom preliminaries are dispensed with, Ayres's character becomes much better company; turning amateur detective to nail who committed the unexpected murder which enlivens the film's final third. (Both the method of the murder itself and of the concealment of the body are worthy of a seventies Italian giallo.)