Reported Missing!

Count the pulp magazine conventions in this one: a mysterious invention, disappearing airliners, a mysterious masked villain, a stalwart hero who is a pilot and an inventor, his two buddies who provide a little (very little) comic relief, and a pretty stewardess who is the hero's girl friend. Oh, yes, and the FBI man who appears in the nick of time and helps the hero save the day. Somehow it all adds up to an entertaining B movie, so long as you don't look too hard for plot holes or object to pretty basic production values. Stock footage of vintage 1930s airplanes provides another point of interest.

1937's "Reported Missing" was one of the few non genre entries in the popular SHOCK! package of classic horror films issued to television in the late 50s. After the opening credits roll to the familiar cues from 1935's "WereWolf of London," any connection to the genre is swiftly forgotten. William Gargan, who remained busy at Universal for the next decade ("The Crime of Doctor Hallet," "The House of Fear," "Sealed Lips," "Destination Unknown"), stars as pilot Steve Browning, whose new invention, a 'drift indicator,' helps planes avoid mishaps in inclement weather. The latest flight using the device is reported missing, and a search party fails to turn up any evidence, until Browning himself discovers that the plane crashed into a mountain, headed in the opposite direction from its destination. An FBI investigation also reveals that all money and valuables were missing. When a Denver flight crashes in identical fashion, with a huge amount of cash stolen, Browning connects the dots to prove deliberate robbery as the common motive rather than pilot malfeasance. The culprit's identity isn't hard to spot, but the method is not revealed until the thrilling climax in the air, making this one of the more watchable non horror SHOCK! titles, which never aired on Pittsburgh's CHILLER THEATER. Lovely Jean Rogers, fresh from the "Flash Gordon" serial, and playing Boris Karloff's daughter in "Night Key," provides the worthy subject of a romantic triangle, while Hobart Cavanaugh and Joe Sawyer provide some light comedy relief, more tolerable than many similar Universals of the era. Brief appearances from well known players like Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, Charles Trowbridge, Jack Carson, and Milburn Stone.

This is a pretty good B mystery from post Laemmle Universal in the late 30s when the studio had absolutely no A talent pool from which to draw.

It involves a pilot/inventor Steve Browning (William Gargan) who has devised a "drift indicator" to help planes that are stuck in inclement weather stay their course. Steve has a girlfriend, Jean (Jean Clayton), who is a flight attendant - stewardess back in the day. He has close friends who are pilots themselves. Then there is his girlfriend's brother, Jack, who is also a pilot. So the maiden voyage of a passenger plane takes off with the drift indicator onboard and Steve's best girl's brother Jack at the helm. The plane makes it through inclement weather alright, but then it crashes in clear weather, and furthermore it is going the wrong way! There are no survivors, and the pilot and copilot are in weird positions in the plane. The second plane carrying the drift indicator crashes too, and this time the airlines can take no further chances. So they tell Steve that given the body count, they can no longer make use of his drift indicator since it was the only common denominator.

Then a THIRD flight crashes. This time there is no drift indicator to blame, but one hundred thousand dollars in bonds were stolen from the wreckage. This is a common denominator, since valuables were stolen from the first two planes, but not this large amount of money. So Steve now believes a thief is to blame, but is not sure how he is operating. He sets out to solve the crime to get justice for the other victims, especially his girl's deceased brother/pilot. Things get quite interesting and tense from this point forward, but they also begin to get a little obvious too. Some red herrings are thrown in to try and throw you off the track, the problem is you'll probably SEE them as deliberate red herrings. I would have added another star if not for this.

William Gargan carries the lead here very well. One of the weird things thrown in is the schtick going on between two of Steve's friends that carries on the length of the film. Rather than coming off like Laurel and Hardy though, the two act like a married couple that has been married two decades too long. The question I had is where was the FAA during all of this? Why didn't they ask the same questions that Steve did? The answer is the FAA had not been formed yet, and there was very weak government oversight over aviation at this time. That's why Steve's only options were to appeal to the airlines themselves or to the police. There was really no other oversight authority over domestic passenger flight.

I'd recommend this as a worthwhile way to spend an hour or so of your time.