Sky Liner (1949)

Just perfect...

Fantastic!

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Other reviewers have rated SKY LINER fairly highly, but I must have watched a different movie. The film I saw has a decent and involved set up, but a very long-winded execution that robs the premise of excitement and makes the whole thing more than a little boring. It's one of those hour-long film that feels like it goes on for at least double the running time, it's so drawn out.The narrative involves a bunch of characters taking a flight across America. Some of them are good (an undercover FBI agent, a dedicated stewardess), and others are very bad indeed (spies working for the Russians, a murderous safebreaker). Greed, treachery, and betrayal ensue, and there's a mild murder mystery for the good guys to solve, but it's all very slow and stately, with little to lift the spirits or the interest of the viewer.SKY LINER lacks a big name actor to play the protagonist because the one we do get is very bland. The supporting cast don't do much to distinguish themselves either, and some of the choices, such as the laboured comic relief, are very poor indeed, making for irritating viewing. Things do pick up for a great action-packed climax, but by then it's too little, too late.

When Sky Liner came out in 1949 this was Lippert Pictures trying to take advantage of current headlines involving espionage in the State Department. Joe McCarthy was a year away from his famous accusations in Wheeling, West Virginia about the Communists in government. But in 1949 Secretary Of State Dean Acheson was defending himself against right wing attacks about the Red Menace invading our State Department. Also remember that the Hiss case was coming to a head as well.So what we have in Sky Liner is spy Rochelle Hudson, secretary to a State Department bigwig apparently ready to defect. A Communist takes her boss's place after killing him and the two are on the way to a conference. You have to believe there's going to be a defection because once they discover the real boss's body, it's all over. And that's supposing no one at the conference will realize there's a phony planted among the delegates.Never fear because the FBI in the person of Richard Travis has her in his sights for a while and he also might get a twofer because foreign agent Stephen Bekassy is also on this transcontinental flight. It turns out as films in this era always did with the FBI protecting us from Red secretaries.Sky Liner is one of the dumbest films from the Cold War I've ever seen and one of the dumbest from Lippert studios. And that is going some.

Usually, films of this sort use fictional airlines; this film uses TWA. The "Air Liner" on the film is a Constellation, which became a shuttle aircraft between Boston and New York by the late 1940s.The story has an on-ground prelude, where one person is shot dead as he enters his office after hours without a word being spoken by the killer. But that's the prelude. A number of diverse people are passengers on the airliner, and some of them interact with each other on things established before takeoff.The flight crew are tipped off that there will be a "federal agent" aboard the flight, and one of the passengers, posing as a member of the diplomatic corps thus learns that a G-man was aboard.One thing overrating is the Sly Liner's restroom. It apparently was conventional in those days for more than one person to occupy the restroom at a time. (In all the times I was a passenger on a Constellation, I never checked out the restrooms, but the airline was TWA, so maybe...) Anyway, it was because more than one person used a restroom at a time that the dead body was discovered, one that turned out to have been the victim of a murder.Naturally, if it was a killing (unclear at first), the murderer had to be aboard. The airliner was diverted to a military base (for weather reasons) where a coroner does a quickie autopsy and determines that the cause of death was indeed deliberate) The airliner eventually takes off, while the F-man pits together the pieces.The murder weapon, though clever, might not be immediately recognizable by younger viewers, but was a clever, though understandable, idea of the time.Ebtertaining.

Yet another gem in the Forgotten Noir Collection Vol. 4 DVD set. I'm quickly becoming a fan of the late director William Berke. Although he worked mostly in B-movies, he was one of the better directors in that field. He has a knack for pacing and getting the best out of actors, in this case no name thespians. These films are usually short, some just over an hour and others just under an hour, but Berke makes the best of low budgets and fast pacing. This film involves espionage in the air, on the Sky Liner of the title. It's definitely not typical noir, but it is decent little film. Richard Travis plays a sky marshal for the government tailing a spy network and the story goes on from there. The cast of no names is pretty good led by Rochelle Hudson, the always steady Herbert Evans, Steven Geray and others. The script is good so credit should be given Maurice Tombragel and John Wilste. At less than 50 minutes long, this is a surprising little treat.