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Crossed Signals Reviews

1926
Drama

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A gang of counterfeiters are using the mountain division of the Pacific Coast Railroad for their nefarious purpose in this rare surviving railroad melodrama starring the queen of the genre, Helen Holmes. She plays Helen Wainwright, the innocent ticket clerk in Middletown, where the agent, George Harvey (William Lowery), is working for the gang. Learning that a package containing 30,000 dollars is on its way from San Fernando to the National Bank in Garden City, Harvey deftly exchanges it with one containing counterfeit bills. Helen learns that Harvey is trying to reach a Mr. George Smith at the Adams Hotel, and she decides to masquerade as Smith. Dressed in clothes belonging to undercover policeman Jack McDermott (Henry Victor), the plucky ticket clerk manages to get the package containing the real money away from Harvey but is later cornered in Middletown's power station. When the counterfeiters escape by train, Helen uses Morse code to alert railroad superintendent Steele (Clyde McAfee) and soon the heroes are in hot pursuit on a light engine. Helen makes a daring transfer from one speeding train to the other and the counterfeiters are arrested.

Reviewed By: Hans J. Wollstein

Helen Holmes, the star of the popular 1915 railroad series The Hazards of Helen, was still going strong ten years later, although no longer in the first bloom of youth. Happily, Crossed Signals, directed by her husband J.P. McGowan, is a less than strenuous exercise, Helen being noticeably doubled in a couple of sequences. As her leading man, Henry Victor makes a rather dashing hero and William Lowery sneers appropriately as the dastardly villain. For fans of B-Westerns, the ever popular Charles "Slim" Whitaker appears unbilled as one of the counterfeiters and the train sequences are well photographed by yet another veteran of the genre, Robert Cline. On the debit side, diminutive George Chapman, who occasionally speaks in Hebrew subtitles, and gangly Nelson McDowell perform a couple of unfunny routines, their characters obviously inspired by the then widely popular Scandinavian comedy team of Pat and Patachon. Although haphazardly directed and edited, Crossed Signals still manages to entertain with its quaint melodramatics.