Gunbus

My review was written in October 1986 after watching the film at a Times Square screening room.

"Sky Bandits" misfires on all cylinders. Meant as a rollicking World War I adventure, mishmash of a feature is missing a plotoline. Touted as the most expensive (production budget pegged at $18,000,000), indie British film ever, pic doesn't deliver the expected values on screen and has a no-name cast that won'[t help it attract attention domestically or overseas. Distrib Galaxy International has unwisely opted for a national saturation release.

Originally titled "Gunbus" (after the small fighter planes featured), Thom Keyes' unsatisfactory screenplay opens with a reel of two young heroes (Scott McGinnis and Jeff Osterhage) making like Butch Cassidy & Sundance (the early days, that is) in montages of bank robberies. Switch this pointless material headed nowhere the boys are suddenly sent to France to fight in the Great War against the dreaded hun.

Misadventures for the duo include a gam of one upmanship with haughty British flyers, a little sack time with two pretty mademoiselles (Valerie Steffen, Ingrid Held) and a mission to destroy a vast Graf Zeppelin the Germans are using for bombing runs. With dogfighter prowess picked up instantly (heroes decide to try piloting biplanes on a dare), they save the day and are subsequently back in the west blowing up banks quicker than you can say "Blue Max".

Film plods along episodically wit no forward momentum to the sotry: every once in a while there is a dissolve and a new scene has beguyn. Since Keyes' script lacks humor, the boring repartee between the two wooden heroes is downright deadly. What producer Richard Herland and director Zoran Perisic deliver is a succession of pretty but very fake-looking model plane shots or process shnots. The excitement of aerial dogfights, which have entertained audiences in hundreds of war films and served as the inspiration for "Star Wars" is missing.

Cast is tgruly awful, with the only familiar actor, Ronald Lacey, hamming it up and American leads McGinnis and Osterhage lacking the charisma this sort of yarn calls for. Production, including David Watkin's photography, is technically adequate but wholly lacking in verisimilitude. For all the money spent, it would have been more convincing to use stock footage left over from "Hell's Angels" The comic book approach doesn't work.

With Rank, ITC and Thorn EMI as recent examples, experienced British producers have learned how difficult it is to try and compete with the Americans via big-budget projects; modest efforts like "Gregory's Girl" and "My Beautiful Laundrette" have been more successful. "Sky Bandits" will undoubtedly reinforce this conventional wisdom.

Gunbus was the UK title of this film. Some trench scenes were filmed at Marston Mortaine in Bedfordshire (Disused LBC clay pits). I know this because I was an extra for some scenes - my one and only venture into the film world. But I was a mere dot on the screen and absolve myself of any responsibility for this dire, almost unwatchable attempt at comedy. 18 million dollars? Well, the catering was good.

When two cowboys are captured in the old west trying to rob a bank, they are exiled to the front lines of World War I to fight alongside the British. They get into a bet to see if they can fly a Gunbus, they do but then end up in another base under an officer who is determined to hunt down a German airship.

I taped this film on the basis of the catchy name (it was called Gunbus in the UK) and I didn't really know what to expect from it in terms of plot, action etc so my expectations were pretty low. Surprisingly my low expectations were never even met once. The plot jumps around from the old west to WWI with little explanation, before we know it, the heroes are flying missions on German aircraft (despite not being able to fly). The film gets sillier towards the end as cars, broken aircraft etc are pieced together for an attack from the British – it would be laughable if it wasn't so bad.

The effects are what you'd expect from a cheap film of this period – awful. The back projections of the sky spins all over the place and the little model planes just look daft. The action stutters simply because it is so silly. Like another reviewer said, some of the designs are imaginative and daring (the big airship for one) but the effects aren't up to the job and the action just makes the whole thing silly.

The acting is pretty poor and isn't helped by the total lack of characters in the film. The lead actors have a bit of banter between them at the start but they stutter as they get lost in the silly mess that comes about. The only interesting things in the cast are a couple of pretty women, some really, really poor English accents and an appearance by Nicholas Lyndhurst from Only Fools & Horses.

Overall this is a pretty poor film. I'm sure some users will see it as trashy fun but I only see it as trashy. It doesn't really have anything of value going for it and all you're left with is the cracks in the film.

If ever there was a film needing a re-edit it's this one. It lurches awkwardly from one scene to the next with an air of making it up as it goes along. Which is a shame as within all its staleness there is a good film in there somewhere. Okay the acting from the two leads is bad and the dialogue they have to say is worse. There's an attempt to make them lovable rogues but they come across as objectionable idiots. Nonetheless the film is chock full of invention, excellent design and pyrotechnics. It just doesn't flow as it should. Not a bad film as such but could do better. Hence a re-edit would save its potential. BTW Gunbus is available on Amazon Prime but the transfer is awful; VHS picture and distorted sound. Terrific poster though.

As others have noted, this movie is filled with bad effects, flat acting and any number of other problems. Yet there are many moments where it seems like the movie might work. But just when things start to get rolling, the timing goes out and suddenly its the most boring thing you've seen.

Consider the opening. It starts with a bunch of fast action scenes of our heroic duo blowing up banks one after another in quick succession. One of these consists of nothing more than throwing a bundle of dynamite in the door, causing the entire building to explode into matchsticks. Dumb, but fun.

And then for no reason I'll ever understand, the next heist is shown in excruciating detail... this time they're drilling holes into the safe and setting up this elaborate system for pouring in nitro. I don't know how they managed to do it, but they dragged this scene on for minute after minute of excruciating nothingness as the two banter on mindlessly, setting themselves up all-too-obviously to get caught. The entire movie dies right there, the pace just kills.

And it keeps doing this, over and over. Then we're in Europe, where there's a bunch of fast scenes while they shoot down a bomber with their pistols and then fly off. An excruciating scene follows. And again, and again and AGAIN. Over and over it looks like they just might pull it off and save it, only to bore you to death seconds later.

Bizarre!