L'escadrille de l'enfer

While other reviewers rush to relegate this movie to B-movie status and criticize its then-characteristic (for 1952) sloppy use of stock footage, I expect to be watching this movie again from time to time. This is truly one of those they don't make anymore.

The point no one else on here seems to have noticed is the 1950's era docudrama undertone it has that you typically won't see in the more story-focused A-list movie, and how much that quality adds to this movie. It might easily have been subtitled (with a drum roll), "Your United States Navy Aircraft Carrier In World War Two, And Today" ("Hand, SALUTE!"). While the plot and characterizations are thin, shopworn, cliched, and not particularly realistic bits of trite melodrama (there is some really classic corn here; and could the ever-stolid Sterling Hayden playing a hero ever do anything else?), the real story here is to give you some sense, however light, of aircraft carrier operations in the last year to year-year-and-a-half of the war, and in this it could be worse.

The plot commences by introducing the squadron members, with the evident aim of showing the slice of American life represented by the new pilots deploying for their first combat roles. From there it moves to a treatment (albeit, very light-weight) of operations and life aboard (including, significantly, the sometimes ample downtime these guys could experience, ranging from card games to the inevitable mail-call; it makes the point that life on board a ship is most often more than just eat-sleep-fight-repeat).

The light losses the ship and squadron experience are also believable for this period, since the vast majority of Japan's most skilled pilots had by then been killed in previous battles, most notably in the loss of no less than four big-deck carrier loads of their best naval aircrew at the Battle of Midway back in 1942, followed by their losses in the Solomon Islands beginning later that year and in 1943. Unlike the United States, Japan did not devote sufficient resources to training new pilots for combat, so that by the time our heroes in this movie show up, the average Japanese pilot was lucky to be able to take off and eventually make it back to safely land at his home field without injuring himself, with the question of being effective in air combat against a decently-trained and well-equipped enemy being something they could not begin to answer adequately. (Indeed, it was this aspect of Japanese military aviation which contributed to the adoption of "Kamikaze" tactics about the time this movie takes place; it was far easier in time, effort, and increasingly-scarce aviation fuel to teach a raw recruit how to take off and fly someplace, and then crash himself into something, than to make a real pilot out of him. With Kamikaze tactics not only did you not need to teach a guy how to fight his airplane, you didn't even need to teach him how to find his way home, and then land. To the contrary, such training would actually make him a less motivated Kamikaze, because he might then decide he had an option to crashing his plane against an American target, to his immediate and irrevocable death.) This state of affairs also explains the incredible toll of Japanese aircraft in the "Marianas Turkey Shoot", also depicted in the film, where hundreds of Japanese planes were shot down in a single day, losses which in normal World War II air battles would have been more like ten times less even on the worst of days.

Best of all is the use of all the genuine stock footage seen in this movie. While the casual cutting turns the film into a veritable continuity error festival, to plane-spotters that is all the better, because you get to see just about every American naval combat aircraft in the inventory at one point or another, in actual wartime operations and better still, in color. While many of the clips used have been used repeatedly over the ensuing decades in television, movies, and innumerable documentaries, until recent years they had been copied over (and over again) in black and white, and to see all these color originals must have been very unusual and a special treat back in 1952.

(At this point it might be worth mentioning that the use of F4U Corsairs in this movie is a significant anachronism. The Navy never deployed this kind of plane on carriers before Okinawa in 1945; surely the reason you see them in this movie is that by 1951 when it was shot, they would have been the last propeller-driven World War Two fighter aircraft the Navy still used, and so to get fresh, exciting, cinematic-quality footage of flight deck operations they would have to be substituted for the F6F Hellcats these pilots would have really flown in 1944 and before Okinawa in 1945, at a minimum. This is also the reason why all the rear-projection shots of squadron members in flight show F6F's in the background, a cinematic mixing of metaphors if there ever was one.)

Anyway, for these qualities I give this movie a seven out of ten; its plodding plot and characters are balanced out by getting a glimpse, however Hollywoodized, of carrier onboard life in the latter part of the war and post-war periods.

The army and the air force had their go at this plot, so I suppose it was bound to be the navy's turn. Richard Carlson in the man expected to take over the squadron of fliers when their boss gets incapacitated, but instead of the mild-mannered "Joe", they get the hard as nails "Collier" (Sterling Hayden). He immediately sets the cat amongst the pigeons by grounding one of their popular but reckless number and by proceeding to rule the team with a rod of iron. Naturally, this earns him the enmity of his command but with their carrier about to head into danger against the heavily armed Japanese Imperial Fleet, we all know that discipline is going to be key (and that there is precisely no jeopardy at all with the rest of the plot!). Carlsen tries a little here, but Hayden is about as wooden as the deck of the USS Princeton upon which much of this was filmed. In the end, it's really all about some impressive aerial photography of training sessions and dogfights that is fairly clearly sourced from archive. It's feel-good wartime fayre but its mediocrity isn't much to write home about.

My attraction to this B feature from 1952 is the above summary. Tragic perhaps to most, but to me, not even remotely interested in the Navy or war films or Sterling Hayden and Richard Carlson or anything to do with guns (it might as well have been a western too, for that matter, but it isn't) ... my only and complete fascination is that it was made by Monogram using interesting Cinecolor. I actually quite enjoyed FLAT TOP for about an hour then I lost the thread of the story. It seemed to be a never ending circuit of missions/Japs/well filmed interesting dogfights, pink explosions in cine-color and men in jets looking out the window. I think this was one of those films that worked well in huge theaters full of kids or servicemen. Monogram seemed to have well scammed a great idea to make a film: Get permission and co operation from the US Navy to film aboard one real aircraft carrier ( A: no sets needed) using lots of men in uniform (B: no costumes needed and C: hundreds of free extras) cobbled a story together about jostling dogfight commanders and some disciplinary tactics (scenes in small rooms using A+B and some outdoors/on deck filler scenes using C. The actual footage of some spectacular genuine dogfight action seemed to be plentiful (again, provided by the Navy or the War dept) as there was a lot of fight scenes and flying through explosions and bits of blown apart planes (all very interesting and adding to the reality) and on and on it went. Some back projection with actors wobbling and swerving their cockpit and presto: one Govt sanctioned movie as a Korean War propaganda and recruitment piece now showing thu 1952 in 10,000 theaters. Very profitable. My fascination with Monogram's production methods satisfied again. the Red/Bue cine-color was interesting as it resulted in tan skin tones with a lot of blue/grey (handy if you film an aircraft carrier and a sky) and a lot of orange/red (good for lifejackets and explosions). There was no yellow in the film and no actual green. It all worked as I am sure it was expected to. The music was excellent, the studio photography good too. Very well edited into 85 minutes. My research in Australia showed that it had a good run and stayed in play up until the 60s believe it or not. Monogram ceased to be a production name in 1953 when they changed name completely to Allied Artists. People criticize Monogram's inventive budget production methods but I find them ingenious.

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.

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.