The Narrow Margin

Pack your bags for one of movie history's greatest trips, a nifty film noir thriller that Time deemed worthy of being bracketed in the select group of train thrillers headed by Alfred Hitchcock's the Lady Vanishes. The tracks run direct from Chicago to L.A. The Oscar-nominated story, directed by Richard Fleischer (The Boston Strangler) and scripted by his frequent collaborator Earl Felton, zigzags with surprise turns. Film noir favorite Charles McGraw plays a cop guarding a gangster's moll (fellow genre icon Marie Windsor) as she travels west to testify before a grand jury. Also riding the Pullmans: determined hit men who know the moll is on the train, but don't know what she looks like. All aboard!