L'escadrille de l'enfer

ugly film--lots of degraded/fuzzy actual color stock footage. dropping torpedo?! Coursairs becoming Hellcats Hayden a bit one-dimensional and the men are rather mutinous! pretty much "Flying Leathernecks" Jack Larson

"Flat Top" is from a genre that few have heard of--crappy war films that are made up of HUGE chunks of stock footage. Rarely is the footage used well and in almost every case, the real footage is obvious because it's so grainy--and often a bit irrelevant. While I love a good airplane film, I hate most of these films because historical accuracy is unimportant--slapping together old clips into a semi-coherent movie to save a few bucks is all that matters. Can you tell that I was not a huge fan of this film?

As I said, the clips often are poorly done. In this film, it's better than many but as a guy who knows quite a bit about WWII aircraft, I was shocked to see what were supposed to be a Coursair fighter plane dropping a torpedo (this is like a guy giving birth--it just won't happen). Many times, instead of Coursairs, the film shows Hellcats--both excellent Navy fighter planes but they looked nothing alike. But when a Coursair suddenly becomes a Hellcat in mid-air (or vice-versa), it's just very sloppy. Also, and this is picky, I know, but they show post-WWII Coursairs as well (with the four screw propellers instead of three) as well as a Skyraider (DEFINITELY a post-WWII plane). And, as I pointed out above, the clips they used were in color but VERY fuzzy and often seemed like filler--and almost all the crashing into the deck shots have been used before repeatedly in other films!

As for the plot, it's VERY standard fare--and it pretty much "The Flying Leathernecks" and a bunch of other films all over again. You have a tough-as-nails commander (Sterling Hayden) and a second officer (Richard Carlson) who is more concerned about being pals with the men. Somehow these two completely incompatible approaches need to be reconciled. To make things worse, this isn't that interesting a film to plane and non-plane buffs.

Sloppy, derivative and not particularly good. Unless you are REALLY bored, you could do a lot better.

A story of a green squadron on a US carrier in the Pacific in 1944. When they land on the USS Princetown, they find their new CO is a cold, tough as oak, stickler for the book. The CO also delivers his lines as though he's made of oak. There is plenty of good flying action. I also liked the historical footage of battleships conducting shore bombardment. The plot is leaky and the squadrons' planes morph from Corsairs, to Hellcats and even to Helldivers. It is all pretty predictable and the characters are hard to feel attached to. But I think the hardest thing to stomach is the levity displayed by the US pilots when they are killing people. It's a war people, not a football game.

Das Boot, Enemy at the gates or even Tora Tora Tora are a much better bet for your evening battle flick.

This is a rather run-of-the-mill War movie on board an American flat top in the Pacific against the Japs. Definitely not in the class of "A wing and a prayer" or "Tora, Tora, Tora" and, without much background footage, even not up to the mediocre Midway. Education under fire with an as always impressing Sterling Hayden, not much else. Definitely a B-Movie under war movies issued during this area. Consumer commodity stuff not, if you want action, look at the above mentioned movies, if you want it along with history, choose Victory at Sea. Five out of Ten at best for the dogfight at the very end. Actually difficult to crunch out ten lines for this, isn't it.

Flat Top is a run of the mill war film with an old plot device about a conflict between the group captain and the executive officer on how to command. But considering this came from Monogram Pictures which was transitioning to Allied Artists, for what product normally came from that studio this could have been Gone With The Wind.

Monogram even sprung for color and utilized some real combat footage from the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The stars are Sterling Hayden and Richard Carlson as the skipper and his number 2. It's the usual story, the tough new skipper and the executive officer who is loved by the men under him. Both these guys and the cast beneath fill their roles out well.

Giving as a high a rating as I do for a Monogram Picture believe me it's worth your while to give this one a look.

I am into WW2 aircraft carriers and the Pacific War and I find this film to be a good one for its time. The editing is great and there is only a couple of war film segments that appear twice. Unlike Midway, they don't use modern carrier shots and even through it is not completely tied to a battle or campaign, every thing gets explained(In Midway, they didn't show the fact that the USS Yorktown CV5 sinks, or at least is supposed to sink). Over all, I'll give this film 3 1/2 stars out of five.