Busses Roar (1942)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Just what I expected

A different way of telling a story

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

***SPOILERS*** Like a number of previous reviewers stated the film "Busses Roar" very likely inspired the plot for the blockbuster 1994 film "Speed" some 60 years later but despite it's low budget it just if not more entertaining. The Nazis and their Japanese allies are planning to blow up a number of oil instillation's along the Pacific Coast Highway and plan to use a passenger bus-The San Diego to San Francisco Line-to do it. With American traitor Jerry Silva, Rex Williams, given the task by his Nazi controller Hoff, Peter Whitney, to plant the explosive, that looks like a thermos bottle, on the bus he finds his what at first seemed simple task far more difficult that what he first thought it would be.***SPOILER*** One of the reasons is that the local bus terminal annoying moocher or panhandler, Bill Kennedy, is really an undercover Government Secret Agent who's on to what he's up to."Busses Roar" starts out like a 1970's disaster movie with all the characters in it introduced to the audience with us watching trying t figure out just who will end up alive or dead as well as the, what turned out be, unlikely hero or heroine in it is by the time the movie is over. The heroics comes late in the film with pretty Reba Richards, Julie Bishop, who at first didn't have the money, $5.40, for a bus ticket commandeering the runaway bus, who's brakes were cut by Silva, and keeping it together with it's some dozen passengers from crashing into an oil rig with time bomb planted on it detonating blowing the whole place to kingdom come!***SPOILERS*** There's also the elderly couple Mr & Mrs Dipper, Harry E. Bradey & Vera Lewis, who are on their way to SF to see their daughter with a box of oranges from their orchid. Unknown to them Silva planted the bomb together with the oranges where It was set to go off. It's old man Dipper, known to his family and friends as "The Big Dipper", who in finding the bomb among his oranges coolly disarmed it and prevented it from going off! As it turned out that the meek henpecked and grandfatherly looking Dipper was a top explosive expert with the US Army back in WWI! It was in fact African/Amerian actor Willie Best as the bus baggage handler "Sunshine" who got all the best lines and scenes in the film. Best who you would have expected to be the least heroic person in the cast ended up foiling the Nazi and Japaneses plans to blow up the bus by him bravely and mindlessly overreacting, instead of turning white with fright, to it!P.S The movie "Busses Roar" was 19 year old actress Elenore Parker who played bus ticket girl Norma first talking and credited film role.

Except for the stereotypical portrayal that Willie Best does in Buses Roar of the misspelled title, the film is a typical wartime propaganda film, just some fodder for the homefront morale. This concerns a rather inept bunch of saboteurs, a joint German-Japanese operation to blow up a bus.This is not a terrorist act per se, the idea is to plant a bomb on a bus and detonate when it's near some undisclosed valuable wartime site. The passengers would be considered collateral damage in today's terms.The film marked Eleanor Parker's feature film debut though she's billed fourth in the cast as a bus ticket agent who has a couple of drivers panting hot and heavy for her. The real stars are Richard Travis and Julie Bishop as a marine on leave and a woman who's hoping to charm the price of a ticket out of San Diego.The saboteurs who are led by Peter Whitney make three different attempts to get the bomb on the bus. Law enforcement isn't to swift either in this comedy of errors.Still the film has a certain charm to it, sad it had to include Willie Best at his worst.

Probably the most racial and gender stereotypes per foot of film than any other film. Something to offend everyone. Even making allowances for the early WWII hysteria it comes across poorly. One feels that the film makers weren't taking themselves seriously. There is a really gross jumpcut in one scene. Rather than try to hide it, the composer actually put a music sting on it. Maybe everyone thought they needed to do the film for the war effort.

This is a most enjoyable movie,catching the spirit of the enemy as depicted by Hollywood in early WWII. Such a movie would be "politically incorrect" these days, as would "Outrages of the Orient" which I recently purchased. I remembered it from childhood, but found it now to be trashy compared to "Buses Roar".