IMDb #204 Review: Strangers on a Train (1954)

Source: Wikipedia

These two guys meet on a train — you might have guessed that part. One guy, cleverly named Guy, is a pro tennis player. The other’s a professional creep. It’s obvious, judging by the tacky lobster tie and monogrammed tie clip.

The creep displays a disturbingly comprehensive knowledge of Guy's marital indiscretions. The pending divorce, the affair with a senator’s daughter, everything.

He proposes a deal: the maniac offers to off the tennis-guy’s money-grubbing wife, if tennis-guy kills the maniac’s father. Swapping murders, to muddle the motive. Brilliant, if you’re outta your mind.

So without asking permission, the maniac follows through. The harpy in horn-rimmed spectacles gets strangled at the carnival, which was a suckhole of fun to begin with. (Question: who wears a suit and fedora to a carnival? Answer: the 1950s.)

Our hero owes a murder. If Guy outs the killer, the killer frames Guy. He’s also got a big game to train for, and a police tail to avoid. Not to mention the maniac stalking him, sabotaging his social functions.

It’s like Rope — a charming psychopath and a reluctant innocent work together to conceal a crime, except the innocent frets and the psychopath shoehorns “murder” into every conversation.

Here, Hitchcock’s overly complex premise spirals into madness. The mystery/suspense formula already runs on a heaping helping of disbelief suspension, but this one just staggers me.

The ending — spoilers be damned — is freaking hilarious. Unintentionally. I'd say it encapsulates the movie. What is it? A bathetic fistfight on a runaway carousel (sped-up footage courtesy of A. Hitch himself), surrounded by moms freaking out and kiddos loving the ride.

If you typically lap up Hitchcock schlock, go ahead and slog through it. If not...have I got a killer of a proposition for you...

101 minutes.