Arctic Flight

Wayne Morris (Mike) is a pilot who provides a service on the US side of the arctic zone to those northernmost communities. However, stray a little too far and he could venture into the Russian zone. If this happens, he is dead. Morris is a cautious pilot and does not risk deviation from his flight route. School teacher Lola Albright (Martha) and polar bear hunter Alan Hale Jr (Wetherby) both use his services in this film. You know that something will go wrong but what...?

The film has a good setting amongst the remote Eskimo settlements and it is interesting to note that people live in these places. It also has cool places to go - they have a bar! It advertises itself as a cocktail bar but realistically, you can only get whiskey. And the film's highlight occurs at this bar when we see the Eskimos partying. And it's authentic. They all sit around singing the same rhythm whilst a few of them get up on the dancefloor and cut some shapes. What you are watching is an Eskimo rave - check out the moves. All without jukebox music - they make their own.

The film trucks along but there is a lack of excitement. It is a spy story and whilst the cast do ok, Albright is a horrible character. She put me off the film and certainly doesn't invest you in the boy/girl romance that she is involved in. We also get some gratuitous fighting in scenes that should be over in seconds but are strung out unrealistically.

It's an ok film. I'm glad I've seen it but don't intend to watch it again. A better film that is set amongst Innuit communities in the Arctic is 'The White Reindeer' from the same year. It's a Finnish film and involves the supernatural.

Wayne Morris is a bush pilot up around where the US and the USSR are separated by the couple of miles between Little Diomede Island (the US) and Big Diomede Island (The USSR); from December until June the sea freezes and you can walk between the two. Morris explains all this to Lola Albright, the new schoolteacher on Little Diomede, and they wrangle a bit about his dislike of the Russians and other stuff. But enough of this movie courtship! He has a job flying Alan Hale Jr. Hale wants to shoot a polar bear for a rug.

It's not a great movie, but producer Lindsley Parsons flew the cast and crew up to Little Diomede for some location work. Most of the outdoors stuff has been covered by other movies, but there's some interesting byplay between the old-timers and the natives in a relaxed way. Director Lew Landers directs his performers in a low key fashion that works well.

I can just imagine teenage boys in 1952 rushing to the Saturday matinee to see this one. It has testosterone-fueled action, a romantic subplot, and political commentary to round it all out. While it doesn't make for climactic cinema, it does sufficiently make for a fun ride.

What really surprised me was the concept of racial tolerance. Alaska would not become an official state for at least seven years, yet this movie goes out of its way -- at least in one or two scenes -- to include Eskimos as worthy. When one takes into consideration the horrible injustice Hollywood has inflicted on minorities and the outcast, regardless of reason, it's surprisingly refreshing to see it addressed in this movie.

Nice mix of on-location shooting and in-studio scenes.

Won't watch again but am glad I did see it.

"Nanook of the North" (1922) was a huge box office hit, that led to Eskimo pies (now sold as Klondike bars), so it's easy to see why Monogram Pictures hoped that this low budget film might do well. It's a mystery that wonderful Lola Albright is here rather than in a series of A list pictures, but this show offers a panoply of 1950s obsessions. Big Wayne Morris sweeps her up into his arms as she kicks her legs reflexively, ready to run if her feet hit the ground, and he ties her to a dogsled, advising her to "Relax and enjoy the trip:" the caveman prevails. A Russian spy is subdued by a one-armed, red-blooded, all-American hero, a myth that continues to resonate about a nation, we're reminded, that borders our own. Reds are poised on the frozen tundra, ready to shoot anything that moves. Sitting in a heated movie theatre, watching people cope with "60 below zero" is another pleasure.

Alan Hale Jr. Is known to most as 'Skipper' from "Gilligan's Island"...a nice, likable sort of character. But in "Arctic Flight", Hale plays a communist agent who is trying to get secrets to his evil overlords in the Soviet Union!! Normally, I don't mention important plot points like this, but since IMDB already divulges what sort of character Hale plays, then mentioning how against type this is for him is certainly in order.

Now the communist agent is not the only plot. In fact, this character doesn't come into the story until about the midway point. The first portion is devoted to an annoying woman (due to bad writing) and her really annoying meet cute with Mike Wien...the man who is a bush pilot who operates the only airline in the area. She is a school teacher who wants him to take her to an island...but he doesn't want to since it's on the US-Soviet border and he doesn't want to get shot down by mistake. Well, he relents and takes her...though she is annoying and cliched and should have been written better.

After completing this task, he's offered a huge amount of money to fly a millionaire on a polar bear hunt. But John Wetherby isn't interested in bears...but poses as a nice rich guy in order to make his nefarious plan hard to anticipate. Eventually, he's going to force Mike to take him to Russian airspace....like it or not!

This film is a definite sign of its times. The Cold War (no pun intended) was at its hottest and US-Soviet relations were at their lowest point. As a result, many Hollywood pictures were about communist spies and the like...and I can only assume the Soviet film industry was doing films about the wicked West.

So is this any good? Yes and no. Morris is very good...with a nice, casual sort of performance. The school teacher, as I mentioned, was not written well and eliminating this plot completely would have made for a better film. Well worth seeing despite its faults...plus, I did like the exciting finale.