Human Desire

A Korean War vet returns to his job as a railroad engineer and becomes involved in an affair with a co-worker's wife following a murder on a train where they meet. Jeff Warren, a Korean War vet just returning to his railroad engineer's job, boards at the home of co-worker Alec Simmons and is charmed by Alec's beautiful daughter. Vicki Buckley is the sultry wife of brutish railroad supervisor Carl Buckley, an alcoholic wife beater with a hair trigger temper and penchant for explosive violence. After Buckley is fired for insubordination, he begs Vicki to intercede on his behalf with John Owens, a rich and powerful businessman, for whom Vicki's mother used to keep house and whose influence can get him reinstated. When Buckley suspects she has used sexual favors to persuade Owens, he beats Vicki and develops a plan to meet Owens on the train and stabs him to death in a jealous rage in his compartment. Jeff, who is deadheading after a trip, is on the train and meets Vicki without knowing who she is, when Buckley needs her to get him out of the way so he can get back to their compartment without being seen as he is covered in blood. Jeff is a potential witness to the homicide and becomes an accessory after the fact due to his attraction for Vicki. Jeff and Vicki begin an affair, while Vicki plots to get away from her abusive husband and recover the evidence that links her to the murder. —duke1029 Rough around the edges, hard drinking and hot tempered Carl Buckley has just been fired as Assistant Yard Master at a Midwest American railroad yard in having just one too many run-ins with his dour boss, John Thurston. Carl asks his much younger bride Vicki Buckley to use her personal sway with John Owens, an important railroad client and in whose house she grew up in her mother having been his housekeeper, to help him get his job back, something she seems somewhat reluctant to do but does it anyway to satisfy Carl. While Owens is able to get Carl his job back, Carl begins to believe that Vicki and Owens' relationship is more than just friends. Forcing Vicki to help in writing Owens a letter ensuring that he will be in a certain place at a certain time, Carl, in Vicki's presence, kills Owens. For Vicki, that act is the last straw in their marriage, but she feels she cannot leave him as he lords the letter, which he now has in his possession, over her in her complicity in the murder. Vicki turns to her new friend Jeff Warren, a locomotive engineer based out of the same railroad yard, he who has just returned after three years away fighting in the Korean War. In their burgeoning romance and knowing about Jeff's experience in the war, Vicki ends up inferring that the only way for them to be together as husband and wife, what Jeff wants, is for him to kill Carl. —Huggo Train engineer Jeff, returning from the Korean War, falls in love with his co-worker Carl's wife, Vicki. Vicki was involved in a murder committed by her abusive and jealous husband. Carl has a note linking Vicki to the murder, and Vicki plots with her lover Jeff to get the note back and get out of her relationship with her husband. It doesn't quite work out for Vicki in the end. —Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@fak-cbg.tu-muenchen.de>