Desperate Cargo (1941)

Lack of good storyline.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good concept, poorly executed.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

A gang of thieves led by a former pilot named Professor Carter hijack the Trans-Caribbean Airways seaplane known as the "Caribbean Cruiser" when it is making its way to Miami. Aboard the plane, the company's purser Tony Bronson, who has been given a lifeline after getting thrown in jail for a barroom brawl after discovering that his new girlfriend is a gold digger who conned him for a plane ticket to New York, is forced to help the gang steal the safe. Carter shoots the navigator & co-pilot dead & locks the crew & passengers in their cabins. Bronson is left alone in case he might become useful. Indeed Bronson attempts to stop the crooks by stealing one of their pistols.Desperate Cargo is an ancient crime thriller made during World War II. It is directed by William "One Shot" Beaudine, known for his work on The Green Hornet & also directing the horror-Western Billy the Kid versus Dracula. The plot is taken from a magazine serial written four years earlier.The film is an interesting heist thriller that has some reasonable excitement but is nearly sunk by the flat dramatics & cheap comedy angle that precedes the actual hijack. The theatrics exhibited by Julie Duncan & Carol Hughes as a pair of gold diggers who con hero Ralph Byrd for a pair of airline tickets are stupid & don't serve the story too well. It is a known fact that most, if not all, thrillers during the 1930s & 1940s had comedy routines forced onto them to suit the era, something that dates them badly when seen today. In its defence, Desperate Cargo is okay when seen against this backdrop but the actual heist, when it does occur, is a bit too low-key to actually work – the robbery needed more room in order to work properly. Having said that, the film has some routine fights & the scene where Byrd sneaks out of the plane in order to open the cargo compartment & free his fellow crew while the passengers keep the criminals at bay with their captured pistol is the highlight of the film.

I kept picturing what an effectively done remake of this movie today might come up with, because it had all the neat elements needed for a thriller combining air travelers trapped with gangsters in a confined space with no way out. But in the 1940's it seems, and even later, there wasn't very much in the way of creativity to keep the suspense going for a sustained period of time. Can you imagine a henchman any more bumbling than Ryan (Richard Clarke) getting distracted by a pretty face, or losing a gun in his very first skirmish? And he came highly recommended! "Desperate Cargo" actually isn't all that bad, though the print I viewed was distractingly full of annoying jump cuts and quick scene changes. Most times continuity wasn't lost, but you had conversations sometimes interrupted in mid sentence. It was amusing to hear the island town of Puerta Nueve pronounced differently by at least three characters in the story.Ralph Byrd heads up the cast as purser Tony Bronson on a Trans-Caribbean Airways cruiser, quickly paired off with Ann Howard (Julie Duncan), one half of a singing sister act, the other half being Peggy Morton (Carol Hughes). You know, it would have been a nice touch if they actually got to do a number in the picture, I kept waiting for one. I really couldn't wrap my mind around the story's romantic angle for her and newspaper reporter Jim Halsey (Jack Mulhall), but let's give credit to Halsey for trying. It seems I. Stanford Jolley found some time in between a corral full of Westerns to appear here as the lead villain Carter; I liked the wheel chair gimmick, nice touch.All in all, as another reviewer on this board has noted, the film is largely forgettable once it's over, but the ride to the finale is entertaining enough. I've only seen one of Ralph Byrd's 'Dick Tracy' films, but he has the distinction, through no fault of his own, in having appeared in one of the movies on my all time Top Ten Worst list - "Blake of Scotland Yard". If you're faced with a decision, go with "Desperate Cargo".

I don't know what one calls the genre of movies about passengers trapped on an airplane with criminals and summoning the courage to break free, but there are lots of movies with this basic plot, and what we have here may be one of the earliest entries into the genre. In order for the idea to work, the plane has to be big enough for people to move about from the cabin to the flight deck, and by placing the action on a clipper plane (at the time a state of the art luxury sea-plane), PRC, a notoriously low-budget "B" company, had plenty of opportunities to set a number of interesting confrontations in motion.After a solid set-up in the fictional Caribbean island town of Puerte Nueve, the plane finally takes off and it's all action from that moment on. Jack Mulhall is dashingly handsome when he strips down to his undershirt, and his fight scenes are convincingly brutal. Ralph Byrd, former silent lead, was in his 50s when he made this film, and thus plays a second lead, but he is great as a tough newspaper reporter with a touch of John Barrymore bravura and a hint of Adolph Menjou suaveness. The two lead women, Carol Hughs and Julie Duncan, are fun as a squabbling Broadway sister act on the skids. Extra bonuses include some great supporting cast members, including our old friend I. Stanford Jolley, the rat-faced villain of a zillion TV and theatrical westerns; burly Australian stunt/actor Frank Hagney as a two-fisted heavyweight bar bouncer; Thomas Edwards doing a comic Latino turn; silent screen star Kenneth Harlan as the airship's captain; and tiny bespectacled Harry Depp as a tiny bespectacled airplane passenger.Also, just for the sake of weirdness, check out Richard Clarke, who plays Carter's henchman Ryan. He is no rough-and-tumble match for Mulhall or Hagney, but he does play a tough, and so it is very unexpected to notice that he has the strangest speech affliction -- every time he says more than a sentence or two, his voice begins to shake and tremble like he is frightened or has some sort of nerve-malady. It's just very odd. All in all, this was a great little movie of its type. Sure, it could have been better -- a shorter set-up and more tension in the final scenes, a staccato musical score to heighten the drama, a cuter and more compliant lead actress -- but it is certainly worth a viewing.

After a slow-moving and sometimes aimless first half, the last part of this B-feature is not bad, with some good action and suspense. The likable Ralph Byrd stars in one of his better non-Dick Tracy roles, and Jack Mulhall helps out a little as a reporter. The last part also features an interesting setting on a seaplane, where a series of tense confrontations takes place.Byrd plays one of several persons waiting in a Caribbean port for the 'Caribbean Cruiser' to arrive. By the time it does, a lot of tensions and possibilities have been developed. A gang of criminals is plotting to take over the ship and rob it, while Byrd's character, the cruiser's new purser, has gone through a romantic disappointment with one of the prospective passengers and has gotten into trouble in a bar.Unfortunately, the movie takes a long time to set up all this, and it is sometimes muddled as it does. With a more carefully written script, the first 30-35 minutes or so could easily have accomplished at least as much in half the time. But the last 20-25 minutes are much better, as the various intrigues among the characters come to a head on board the cruiser. Given the obviously low budget, the setting itself works pretty well, furnishing a simple but interesting variety of sets for the climactic series of events.More recent film-makers have more or less established a relatively reliable formula for this kind of movie, by showing brief scenes that establish the personalities and agendas of each of the characters, and then getting into the action as soon as it is reasonably possible. Such an approach would have worked better here. It's not worth a lot of effort to seek out, but it's also probably worth a look if you like movies of its era and genre. If you do watch "Desperate Cargo", stick with it during the first half, because the last part does get better.