Flight to Fury

In the early years -- from the late 1950's throughout most of the 1960's -- before EASY RIDER turned Jack Nicholson into a charming scoundrel-playing superstar, he frequently collaborated with two low-budget directors: the multi-genre exploitation icon Roger Corman and b-action auteur Monte Hellman...

But in the case of FLIGHT TO FURY, Hellman, shooting the first of two movies in the Philippines along with the war drama BACK DOOR TO HELL, is following Corman's footsteps...

Or perhaps it's the other way around since the 1970's had more girls-with-guns/women-in-prison Corman productions, while Hellman's FURY is a bag-of-stolen-diamonds SIERRA MADRE inspired thriller where Jack... manipulating regular guy Dewey Martin... provides devilish-grin glimpse into his own cinematic future...

Only this younger Jack has very little intoxicating charm: from a cabana tavern town where he sets Martin up with a hot local girl that gets him into hot water, igniting a Wrong Man Noir that soon derails into a slow-moving airplane ride to an even slower crash and aftermath...

All while introducing assorted passengers such as femme fatale Fay Spain, who had starred in THUNDER ISLAND, also written by Nicholson... and she's somehow linked with both crooked Filipino Vic Diaz and affable American pilot John Hackett, who, the same year and location, wrote and appeared in Nicholson and director Hellman's BACK DOOR TO HELL...

And yet, despite the pulpy potential, every twist and turn moves only forward, lethargically -- a shame this FLIGHT didn't remain grounded in that sleazy town, before Jack became a dull boy.

A plane goes down in the jungle carrying several people who want to lay hands on some stolen diamonds that the pilot is carrying. The opening thirty minutes or so are very dull, but it improves slightly after that. Nicholson isn't bad in a major supporting role, but his writing on the film is weak. (According to director Monte Hellman, who co-wrote the story, Nicholson wrote the script on the three week cruise from San Francisco to Manila, sitting in the ship's lounge and incorporating the conversations he had with anyone who passed by into the script. It plays like that's true, with some fairly random and not very interesting dialog early in the film.) Dewey Martin makes a dull hero. The jungle locations aren't bad.

This film was made back-to-back with "Back Door To Hell," a somewhat better WWII film that also features Nicholson in a supporting role. Hellman was busy at nights editing "Back Door To Hell" at the same time that he was shooting "Flight to Fury."

A B-movie with maybe a slight notch of extra fatalism, Flight to Fury is Monte Hellman with a near-disposable piece of low-budget work that's somewhat made up for by some stirring action set-pieces and a chase that makes up the best part of the movie in the last ten minutes. Dewey Martin plays Joe, a man with a particular goal he's after, which is never really too specified despite some interesting, shady dealings early on (according the site here it's gold). Jay (Jack Nicholson) gets involved almost through a very smooth-operating sociopath scheme, as he kills Joe's one night stand and somehow gets involved in the expedition. On the plane, with some other nefarious characters including a Japanese fellow (Vic Diaz), the plane crashes, leaving a few dead and the rest on a trip to get help. But since they're in the Phillipenes, they get caught. Will they escape?

Hey, it's a B-movie after all. The premise isn't that great, but unfortunately Hellman doesn't get things truly in gear until the 2nd half (the scenes on the plane are actually really dull, maybe the point but dull nonetheless). Once the stakes get raised and the characters get more and more on edge- and casualties and bullets fly- then the fun of Hellman's dread-in-B-movie-land gets going stronger. Luckily he has Nicholson as co-star, who even in a less demanding role here gives the goods, as aside from the 'Japanese' guy on the crutches there isn't much in the way of even just decent acting (with the possible exception of that sexual assault scene on Destiny in the hut by the captor). And much of the motives and the dialog, also provided by Nicholson, seem underdeveloped and not good enough for just a 73 minute running time. Then again, it's good that material like this doesn't over-stay its welcome.

I also will probably want to check out just the last ten minutes some other time, as it makes for a very nifty chase scene, in the empty black & white photography, and has a few memorable shots of Nicholson holding a gun and his limp-shot arm. Not a total waste but nothing special, the kind of little movie that probably played a lot on midday TV back in the 70s.

Although very much a B picture, Monte Hellman's "Flight to Fury" is still worth seeing. It's best known as one of Jack Nicholson's early movies but it still has kind of an interesting plot. Nicholson plays one of a group of people after a fortune in the Philippine jungle. The beginning of the movie is a little slow but it picks up once they board the plane and the real action begins in the jungle.

Aside from Nicholson, the cast includes Dewey Martin and Fay Spain. Spain is best known as Hyman Roth's wife in "The Godfather Part 2" (so she starred in an obscure B movie from the '60s but also in a Best Picture winner). There's also Vic Díaz, whom Quentin Tarantino calls the Filipino Peter Lorre, and Joseph Estrada, who later became president of the Philippines.

It's definitely an interesting movie. Jack Nicholson showed a slight tinge of the sarcastic attitude that he brought to his more famous roles.