Even so-called "B" movies can be good - if they have a good plot, screenplay, sets and settings, and cast. Unfortunately, "The Dawn Express" is lacking in all of these. As much as one might want to have an interesting espionage thriller, this film just screams "amateur." The script is terrible, the plot and acting resemble the melodrama of silent films. Most propaganda films are much better than this. The plot idea is a good one, but the story just didn't get a very good screenplay. Either that or the direction was terrible. More than likely, it was a combination of the two. Even the most die-hard war movie collectors will want to forget this poor film.

Michael Whalen (Robert Norton), Anne Nagel (Nancy Fielding), William Bakewell (Tom Fielding), Constance Worth (Linda Pavlo), Hans Von Twardowski (Captain Gremmler), Jack Mulhall (Curtis), Kenneth Harlan (Brown), Crane Whitley (Ed), Frank Mayo (the FBI agent who shadows Tom), George Pembroke (Professor Schmidt), Robert Frazer (John Oliver), Hans Von Morhart (Heinrich), Michael Vallin (Argus), Montague Shaw (Prescott), William Costello (Otto), William Yetter (Wolf), George Morrell, Milburn Morante (waiters), Jack Gardner (spy with paper), Ted Adams (Sullivan, the night guard).Director: ALBERT HERMAN. Original screenplay: Arthur St Claire. Photography: Eddie Linden. Film editor: Leete R. Brown. Art director: James Altwies. Music director: Lee Zahler. Assistant director: Seymour Roth. Sound recording: Corson Jowett. Associate producer: Arthur Alexander. Producers: Max Alexander, George M. Merrick. Executive producer: George R. Batcheller. Copyright 20 February 1942 by Producers Releasing Corporation. The movie did open in New York in 1942, but the actual date was not recorded. U.S. release: 27 March 1942. No theatrical release in Australia. 66 minutes.Alternative title: NAZI SPY RING.SYNOPSIS: Nazi agents will stop at nothing to gain the secret of a chemical formula which will enhance the power of gasoline.COMMENT: Here's the lovely Constance Worth from "Criminals Within", again at her villainous best. This time she has another sympathetic director in Albert Herman who, in collaboration with photographer Eddie Linden, has contrived lots of spooky close-ups of all the heavies (even the minor ones) which are somewhat arbitrarily edited into the action. Nonetheless, it's all moderately exciting by Poverty Row standards, even if the rather routine story does come to a foregone conclusion which will only surprise those callous but stupid Nazi spies.

It's a PRC film so start with low expectations, but The Dawn Express will not even meet those. This is a horribly dated early World War II era flag waver when we were told to be on the alert for Nazi spies everywhere.Michael Whalen and William Bakewell are a pair of scientists working in a chemical laboratory on a formula to get a little more mileage out of the gasoline in your tank's tank. Something no doubt that General Patton will find invaluable, not to mention what it will do for the post war civilian drivers. The Nazis want it too and they're even sending one of their top scientists, flying him secretly to America to test it for himself. It's Bakewell they get to first putting an alluring Constance Worth in his path. Bakewell does fancy himself a player. Then it's up to Whalen to keep the formula out of Nazi hands and rescue Bakewell if he can do both. In fact he's engaged to Bakewell's sister Anne Nagel.There are about a dozen holes in this story and it looks like it was shot with an old Bell&Howell home movie camera. I just hope our post war drivers got the benefit of this research.

***SPOILERS*** One of the very first movies out of Hollywood after the entrenches of the US into WWII the film "Dawn Express" concentrates on the Nazis effort to steal, by hook crook and pay offs, the secret formula 3-B-11 no not the ingredients of a new kind of soft drink from Coca Cola but something that has to do with doubling the mileage of your gas tank when it's dropped in the gasoline. This secret is so important to the Nazi war machine that Germany sent it's top secret agent, who has trouble hiding his very prominent German accent, to the US Captain Gemmer, Harr Hans Heinrich Von Twardowski, who never makes mistakes to get his hands on it.It's the two US chemists Robert Norton & Tom Fielding, Michael Whalen & William Bkewell, whom Capt. Gemmer wants kidnapped and then paid off, with $100,000.00 in US currency, to give him formula 3-B-11 or else he'll not only off them but their family members as well! It's when Norton finally gives in to spill the beans or the formula to the Nazis that his good friend Tom Fielding turns traitor to his country and not only volunteers to give them the magic formula for gasoline enhancement but mix it for them as well!***SPOILERS*** As we'll soon see Tom Fielding is no traitor to his country but a full fledged hero instead. Putting his life on the life Fielding is brought on a Nazi airplane to fly back to Germany with top Nazi chemist Karl Schmidt, George Pembroke, to check if him mixing formula 3-B-11 is on the up and up. You begin to wounder why Schmidt couldn't do it himself? It was an act of desperation by Fielding but he in the end put and end to the Nazis attempt to get their hands on secret formula 3-B-11 by putting an end to them as well as himself!P.S What Tom Fielding did was copied in real life by the likes of Japanese kamikaze pilots as well as Al-Qeada suicide bombers who's actions in some cases were just as successful as his were!