audiomagnate "Transatlantic Tunnel" opens with some pretty good shtick. The camera pulls back from a tight shot of a live orchestra, slowly revealing a group of well-heeled yet obviously bored listeners. A man leans over to his wife and asks, "Will this tune ever end?" "It's Beethoven. He's dead." she responds. A few more wisecracks about how tiresome classical music follow, but that's about it for intentional humor that actually works. Minutes later we get this scene of men bathing together:"Don't forget it's your son's birthday" "It looks more like yours." "Why?" "You've got your birthday suit on!"That gem of a punchline is delivered by the film's star, Richard McAllan, played by Richard Dix, whose laughably - for a while anyway - bad overacting supply the only other yuks for the next excruciatingly long hour and change.The only thing left to hold the viewer's attention are the futuristic tunnel scenes, which look amazingly real, complete with streamlined trains gliding along, and the spot on futuristic cars. If the tunnel scenes were done with models, they're as good as what is being done today. If not, they must have cost a fortune to produce. As far as the cars go, they look better than Tucker's famous 1948 sedans that were billed as being so far ahead of their time thirteen years after this film was made.Everything else is simply tedious and poorly done. You can pretty much figure out what's going to happen with the main characters ten minutes in. The only real struggle is figuring out which is worse, the dialog or the acting. Madge Evans, who plays McAllan's silently suffering blind wife has some scenes that somehow manage to surpass Dix's in outright shamelessly bad acting. The plot itself is about as believable as a "Bones" episode.From a technical standpoint however, "Transatlantic Tunnel" excels. Hitchcock films of this era look and sound ancient and feeble in comparison. The photography, lighting, set design and sound are all first rate, and look like high budget Hollywood productions from the forties. This fact, and the uncannily accurate view into the future made the film worth watching for me, but if atrocious acting and tortuously bad scripts put you off, you should pass on this one.

Bob-45 How do you make a story as potentially exciting as building a tunnel from England to the U.S. dull and uninvolving? If you want to know, watch the dull camera-work, plodding direction, trite script and melodramatic acting in "Transatlantic Tunnel." Too bad, because the special effects and art direction are first rate for the period. They are,in many ways, superior to those used in "Things to Come." I have difficulty faulting the acting style used in "Transatlantic Tunnel;" it's a carryover from silent films, and many movies of the period are equally overacted. However, the script is strictly "by-the-numbers," and the direction of actors is so slap-dash, it's impossible to care much about them.Little, if any, attempt is made to age the actors, in a story that spans at least 7 years. Only the child "grows up" to be a man, and his scenes are brief and unmoving.The film feels excruciating slow when it generates any emotional involvement at all.The film's message of "peace through joining the English-speaking peoples, is embarrassingly naive, even for the time. When the "English-speaking peoples" get together, it's generally for anything but peace.I give "Transatlantic Tunnel" a "5," and that for the special effects and art direction. Entertainment value is pretty near zero.

ksf-2 Quite similar to "Just Imagine" from 1930, where they try to give some insight into what the future will look like. Some cool inventions, like picture telephones, airplanes that can hover like the Osprey, and the "radium" tunnel drill. They even talk about the man who "built the Channel Tunnel in 1940" . Another viewer mentions that at the end, they saw cars driving into the tunnel, but I never saw that. I saw the 92 min, 40 sec version on TCM in March 2008, so it seems there's a minute or two missing from the TCM print. "Tunnel" stars Richard Dix and Leslie Banks, with various other co-stars. It combines the challenge of building a tunnel (where the shareholders keep pulling the financing) with a troubled family life. They even take a couple swipes at millionaires. George Arliss, star of the silents, appears as the British Prime Minister. The big shot shareholders take a minute to point out that the lead engineer is "just another employee, and he must remember that!" When he asked why they couldn't tell him what was wrong over the telephone, they insisted he come in person... I wondered if they were avoiding saying things over the air, but they don't indicate that (this was just prior to WW II) I also felt bad for the workers down in the tunnel -- heavy equipment is being pulled up on cable, but no-one is wearing hardhats. Fun to watch if you keep in mind that it was made in 1935. I could have done without the silly side portraits of the key characters at the last couple minutes, but someone must have felt that added something. Entertaining early science fiction.

Neil Doyle There's an art deco look to the streamlined images of many scenes from THE TUNNEL, giving it the futuristic look it needs to succeed as science fiction. There are even TV screens and/or videophones being used in 1935 for conversations between RICHARD DIX and his wife, MADGE EVANS, both of whom have to spend too much time on the domestic drama behind the main story of the tunnel.Their unhappy marriage comes into play when he becomes heavily involved in construction of an Atlantic tunnel connecting the British mainland to the U.S.A. "His real self stays behind in the tunnel," she tells LESLIE BANKS, her husband's co-worker. Later, their grown son becomes a worker in the tunnel but is tragically killed during a volcanic burst of lava that forces a section of the tunnel to be sealed off by emergency doors so that many other lives can be spared.There is much talk about the "depth of the Atlantic" and "the character of the sea bed", and references to "new steel and radium drills" that are supposed to make the concept of a transatlantic tunnel possible. And to the credit of the filmmakers, they do make such an undertaking look realistically possible, at least for the duration of the story.C. AUBREY SMITH lends his sober presence to a good supporting role but the film is largely concerned with the domestic troubles of Dix and his wife. MADGE EVANS looks so much like Norma Shearer in the glossy close-ups she gets and was clearly one of the most classically beautiful of the '30s film actresses.But when the action is centered on the tunnel, the film remains fascinating to watch, beautifully photographed in B&W. Unfortunately, RICHARD DIX is given to overacting at every opportunity, particularly during the melodramatic situations involving his marriage.Summing up: Melodramatic, but in many ways, ahead of its time in true sci-fi style. WALTER HUSTON as an American president and GEORGE ARLISS as a British Prime Minister have cameo roles.