Night Ride * (1937, Julian Vedey, Jimmy Hanley, Joan Ponsford, Wally Patch) – Classic Movie Review 12,795

Jimmy Hanley and Wally Patch.

Jimmy Hanley and Wally Patch star as truck drivers in the awkwardly written and clumsily handled 1937 black and white British quota quickie drama film Night Ride.

Director John Paddy Carstairs’s awkwardly written and clumsily handled 1937 black and white British drama film Night Ride is a time-wasting filler from production company British and Dominions, released by Paramount British Pictures.

Jimmy Hanley and Wally Patch star as truck drivers Dick Benson and Alf Higgins, who start up their own haulage company with financial backing from Italian restaurant owner Tony Spinelli (Julian Vedey) when they have been dismissed by their bent company, run by Arthur Wilson (Frank Petley).

Arthur Wilson hates the competition and wants to sabotage the new enterprise, so he gets his daughter Ruth (Elizabeth Kent) to try to seduce Dick and gets his men to try to sabotage their trucks. But soon the truckers are making money and saving pitmen stuck in a waterlogged mine.

The complicated but feeble script by Ralph Gilbert Bettinson (based on a story by Julian Vedey), the cheap production, the slack handling by John Paddy Carstairs, and the largely weak performances sink it into oblivion. Stalwarts Hanley and Patch do their best to make something of it, but are uninspired, though Vedey is poor as the Italian restaurant owner. It is a quota quickie, made at Pinewood Studios and released in June 1937 (UK).

The cast are Jimmy Hanley as Dick Benson, Julian Vedey as Tony Spinelli, Wally Patch as Alf Higgins, Joan Ponsford as Jean Morley, Frank Petley as Arthur Wilson, Elizabeth Kent as Ruth Wilson, Kenneth Buckley as Claude Dulson,Clelia Matania as Lucia Spinelli, and Mervyn Johns as Trapped Miner. Moore Marriott’s role as Miner was cut.

British actor Julian Vedey was born in Warwickshire in 1898 and died in Worthing in 1967.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,795

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