Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

jamesraeburn2003 An airline pilot called Nick Talbot (Robert Beatty) is presumed dead after his plane, destined for Guernsey, seemingly crashed into the English Channel as a result of severe weather conditions. Nick's best friend and fellow pilot Van (Zachary Scott) discovers his girlfriend, Nick's sister, Avril (Naomi Chance), is being blackmailed by a guy called Snell (Harold Lang) and he learns that during the war Nick had run a smuggling ring. Snell got Nick his job with the airline and he tells Van that its owner Boyd Spencer (Arthur Lang) runs an outfit smuggling gold and forged currency. Van visits Alexia (Kay Kendall), a former girlfriend of Nick's, on the pretext of buying some counterfeit dollar bills on someone else's behalf and he discovers that Boyd Spencer keeps an incriminating code book locked away in his office. When he breaks in, Van is ambushed and knocked down by another intruder who escapes on a motorcycle. Van chases him in his car but suffers a blackout and crashes. He awakes to find himself in a remote country cottage attended upon by - guess who? - Nick and his girlfriend Jeannette (Diane Cilento). Nick explains that he faked his death because Boyd Spencer had blackmailed him into smuggling forged currency and gold in his plane. He is a wanted man in France and Boyd Spencer used that to his advantage. Van encounters Boyd Spencer and his gang at their hideout in a martello tower and endangers his life in the process...An early offering from the legendary Hammer studio and celebrated director Terence Fisher made a few years before they shot to international fame with gothic horrors such as The Curse Of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy. The screenplay is by John Gilling whose own career would peak at that studio in the 60's where he co-wrote The Gorgon and directed notable chillers like The Shadow Of The Cat, The Plague Of The Zombies and The Reptile.Alas, fans of Hammer should prepare to be disappointed, as although some of their pre-horror stuff is excellent, this is a hackneyed little crime thriller in which its tale of currency and gold smuggling and an implicated pilot faking his death has all be done before. Gilling, who could be a versatile writer and director, simply rehashes tired situations from the b-pic playbook here. Terence Fisher's direction is not surprisingly lifeless here since it gives him very little to do. People wanting better examples of his early work at Hammer should check out Stolen Face and Four Sided Triangle, which both have strong links to his subsequent greatest works for them like the Frankenstein movies. It has to be said that what little action there is here is both slackly and clumsily executed.Zachary Scott, the obligatory imported American leading man, is competent in his role as the hero and something of a heavy too, but his relationship with his on screen girlfriend, Naomi Chance, herself a very competent performer, isn't sufficiently developed in the script so as to have that much of an emotional impact upon the audience. He is hesitant to marry her since he suffers from blackouts as a result of a war injury, which could wreck his career as a pilot if it came out and he fears that he is not good enough for her as a result of that. In addition, Robert Beatty's character, the disappearing airline pilot, simply wants to escape the country with Diane Cilento in order to both to escape Arthur Lang's gang and to keep his father from ever finding out the truth. He has always believed his son to be a great war hero and if he ever found out about his smuggling activities it would destroy him.All in all, Wings Of Danger (USA: Dead On Course) will be a disappointment to fans of Fisher and Hammer who are seeking out their frustratingly obscure early works due to the routine plot, its predictable development and indifferent direction. Funnily enough, this film is only very briefly mentioned in Wheeler Winston Dixon's marvellous book The Charm Of Evil: The Life And Films Of Terence Fisher who clearly felt that it did not warrant detailed analysis.

FilmFlaneur Taking advantage of arrangements favoured by the UK's Eady levy (a state film subsidy established after the war) in 1950, American producer Robert Lippert formed a business alliance with Hammer studios. Under the agreement, Lippert would provide American acting talent - frequently shop-worn stars or just supporting actors who fancied a profitable trip out of the country - while Hammer would supply the rest of the cast and the production facilities. Together they would split the profits. Famous for his concern with the bottom line, Lippert produced over 140 films between 1946 and 1955, characteristically genre pieces such as I Shot Jesse James or Rocketship XM. For the British deal, most of the films were noir-ish thrillers - and include WINGS OF DANGER.Zachary Scott does a professional enough job as a pilot who faces disaster through suffering unpredictable blackouts. To add to his woes, when his girlfriend's brother appears lost in a cargo plane accident, he falls into a police investigation over blackmail, counterfeiting and smuggling. Robert Beatty and Kay Kendall support in a solid tale never less than watchable, even if not ultimately memorable. Light tramlines from the source print are evident at some points - unusual for a set with generally good picture quality. Kendall seems out of place as a minor femme fatale, too nice to communicate the double-crossing her character demands. Scott's most important noir roles previously were probably Ulmer's Ruthless and Mildred Pierce; here the actor is not helped by fairly anonymous art direction and by a story never really bringing out his internal conflicts.

Terrell-4 You know there's a problem when half way through a movie that only lasts an hour and thirteen minutes it seems as if two hours have dragged by. Wings of Danger is another of those Brit noirs where a fading Hollywood name was cast in the lead in hopes of getting some play for the film in America. In this case, the problem with the film is the screenplay; there appears to be no motivation for Richard Van Ness' actions. It doesn't help that Zachary Scott as Van Ness is not too believable when he acts as a tough guy. Van Ness is a pilot working for Boyd Spencer Airlines, a freight-hauling outfit. Nick Talbot (Robert Beatty), a fellow pilot and friend he doesn't seem too friendly with, disappears in a storm over the ocean. Hints of corruption, smuggling, blackmailing and counterfeiting start to show up. But why should we care about any of this? Richard suffers from blackouts and knows at any time he could wind up in the drink or in pieces on the ground. Why does he keep flying? Not only don't we know, the black-out question never turns into a serious plot issue. It just disappears after a big thing is made of it at the start. Why doesn't Richard help the police when they first come to him? There's no reason except to give the screenwriters the chance to show that Richard doesn't take guff from anyone. Why does Richard decide to investigate for himself without telling the police? Who knows?. Since there's no believable motivation, we know we're watching a movie contrived on the assumption that the viewers will be too dull to notice. A major problem is Zachary Scott. Tough guys to be believable need to seem as comfortable doing violence with their fists as well as with their words. Scott's trademark as an actor, however, wasn't his physical presence. Scott's distinctiveness was his way of delivering lines that came across as either suave and sleazy (in his best roles, such as The Mask of Dimitrios and Mildred Pierce) or off-handedly condescending (in most of his other films). In nearly every role he had, he was a hard man to warm up to. If you can picture this in Scott's delivery, you'll have an idea of how the picture doesn't work, both in Scott's believability and in the screen writing: "Nick had taken a sock at the gale and it had socked him back and broken his neck. It was as simple as that. And yet there was a lot of loose ends and ideas that jabbed at my brain and fizzled out to the edge of nowhere..."

brice-18 When charismatic Nick Talbot (second billed Robert Beatty) disappears after flying into a storm after his partner Richard Van Ness (gravel-voiced Zachary Scott) has ordered the plane to be grounded, it seems not unlikely that (a) he's up to no good and (b) that we'll see him again before the movie's over. Made on a shoestring at Riverside Studios, Hammersmith but supposedly mainly set in Guernsey, this is quite a clever thriller with lively dialogue, though Richard's liability to black out when flying is too irrelevant. For nostalgic film buffs it's good to see naughty lady Kay Kendall a year before her breakthrough performance in 'Genevieve', Diane Cilento (at one time Mrs Sean Connery) as Nick's fiancée and camp Harold Lang as a blackmailer, but Naomi Chance is a boring heroine. I'd lost track of the malarkey before the end, but the finale has action and excitement.