Time Bomb (1953 film)

Time Bomb is a 1953 British film noir thriller film starring Glenn Ford, Anne Vernon and Maurice Denham.^[2] Directed by Ted Tetzlaff, it was produced by MGM at the company's Elstree Studios with sets designed by the art director Alfred Junge. In the United States it was released under the title Terror on a Train.^[3]

In England in 1952, a freight train loaded with naval mines is destined for HM Dockyard, Portsmouth. As it passes through a Birmingham railyard at night, a man jumps off. After a scuffle with a railway constable, he escapes, but without the bag he was carrying. The constable, Charles Baron, examines the contents of the bag and realizes that the man is a saboteur. The police are alerted, and it is assumed that the man has rigged a bomb to set off the trainload of mines, timed to go off the next morning after arrival at the naval dockyard.

The saboteur eludes the police, so on the assumption that he will want to witness the aftermath of his handiwork, Constable Baron goes to Portsmouth to find him.

The authorities divert the freight train to an abandoned siding, and the neighbourhood is evacuated. The nearest bomb disposal expert is Peter Lyncort, a former army man who lives in Birmingham with his wife Janine--though that evening she has left him, intending to take the train to London.

At the station, Janine reconsiders. She returns home, and sets about trying to find Peter, unaware that he has been taken to the freight train by local railway security chief Jim Warrilow.

After an initial inspection of the train, Lyncort concludes that the bomb is inside one of the mines and proceeds to open each one for examination, assisted by Warrilow. They find the bomb and disable it shortly after dawn, by which time Constable Baron has nabbed the saboteur in Portsmouth and is bringing him to the train via helicopter.

Warrilow wants to question the saboteur, who is uncooperative. That changes when he is handcuffed to the train believing that the bomb has not been found. He agrees to talk, warning Warrilow that two delays are set to go off within minutes. As Lyncort probes for the second bomb, his wife arrives. With no time left to disarm it, he throws the bomb into a field where it explodes harmlessly. The emergency is over, and Peter and Janine are reconciled.

According to MGM records the film earned $346,000 in the US and Canada and $400,000 elsewhere, resulting in a loss of $517,000.^[1]

In their survey of British B movies, Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane describe Time Bomb as "a slickly made suspense thriller with a twist in the tail" that "pointed the direction for British second features over the next decade": "Its compact story, clear narrative trajectory, convincing location work and engaging central performance augmented with entertaining character studies, all provided a template for smaller British production outfits looking to give their films some international appeal."^[4]

• Time Bomb at IMDb
• Time Bomb at Rotten Tomatoes
• Time Bomb at the British Film Institute