Some nasty Thuggees have some plans for the Last Train From Bombay, it's going to be blown up because a prominent Indian nawab is on the train and the terrorists are hoping to get a nice civil war going. If you're expecting Bhowani Junction from this Grade C foreign adventure film that never got closer to India than the studio back lot, you will be gravely disappointed.
After having seen Gunga Din and other such films about the British Raj, I thought the strangling cult of the Thuggees had been dealt with. Silly me.
Jon Hall is an American Foreign Service officer going to report for assignment in India to be a consul when he gets taken off the train after meeting up with Christine Larsen. She's the daughter of a British brigadier traveling with dear old dad in the places where he once ran things and now they're just tourists. She doesn't make the slightest attempt at a British accent.
After he leaves the train he goes to a hotel to meet up with an old OSS buddy from the late war, Douglas Kennedy who's now a mercenary for hire. Kennedy fakes his own death a la Harry Lime in The Third Man and meets up with Hall. The old demolition man from the OSS has been hired to blow up a train and he had to get his old buddy off the train when he heard he would be on it.
But then Kennedy is really killed and Hall becomes a suspect and he's on the run from the Indian police and the terrorists as he tries to stop the Last Train From Bombay before it reaches the place where the track is mined.
It's interesting, but not even remotely historically accurate because the various Indian princes in both India and what later became Pakistan were bought off one by one by Lord Mountbatten as part of the eventual British departure from India. With one exception, the guy running Kashmir and that's been a sore subject between both countries for decades now. In 1952 no one would care if some rich nawab got blown up in a train accident, he's just another rich guy and Hindu, Moslem, Parsee, Sikh, and Christian really couldn't have cared. Not to mention that the Thuggees are as relevant on the scene as our Ku Klux Klan.
But American ignorance about places that we had little or no dealing with in our past like India is what producers counted on in putting out films like Last Train From Bombay.
Poor Jon Hall though, he went on from this to Ramar of the Jungle and even acted with James Fairfax who played his South African guide in several episodes in this film. Fairfax has a brief role as a club bartender.
I've only one question, is this what our Secretary of State at the time who was Dean Acheson expect from our diplomatic and consular service?
