Mystery Plane

Yes folks, back in the eighties, I tried to watch the TAILSPIN TOMMY adventures through a serial for Universal with Ray Taylor and Lewis D Collins as directors. I could never go beyond the third episode; unlike the Republic Pictures serials directed by the terrific William Witney and his sidekick John English...So now, four decades later, I try the film, not the serial. It is better, of course, because far shorter, not that boring, at least less than a fifteen episodes serial. It is an espionage actioner, rather fun to watch, at least to see what an actioner looked like during this pre WW2 era.

Monogram made a lot of movies, but some are just plain slow. This one seems to take longer than Titanic.

In the beginning, we see a young Tommy rescuing an aviator he idolized who'd landed in a lake after a barnstorming parachute jump. He brings the aviator, "Brandy" Rand, home, and shows him a crude aviation simulator, which "Brandy" "flies." From this, "Brandy" somehow determines that young Tommy might make a good pilot.

Flash forward. Tommy is a pilot, with friends, and he's developed a new bombing mechanism, which he's trying to interest the Government in. But he needs $300 to finish the project. Fortunately, a lady decides to take flying lessons, and that, plus some other "stashed away" money, and they're ready to demonstrate their gadget.

A protracted demonstration flight takes place, with the monoplane modified as a bomber drops its load at 30,000 feet. Given the extreme height, the bombing device astonishingly works, but both pilots in the aircraft lose their oxygen supply and are unconscious when the bombs let go. They recover in time to pull the aircraft out of a spin, and everybody's happy.

But the test is being observed by others, who want the invention to sell on the international market. One member of this group is the lady who signed up to take flying lessons. Another is "Brandy"! By a ruse that wouldn't fool a ten-year-old, they capture Tommy, his pilot buddy, and his girlfriend. They use threat of harm to the girl to force Tommy to replicate the blueprints for his invention.

While doing so, he and his friends overpower their guards and make a break for it! In a better film, all the above might take 45 minutes, but this film drags. I cannot recommend it, unless you just want to look at a few old aircraft, or to puzzle out why the film has the title it does.

As a kid Tommy Tomkins idolizes "Brandy" Rand a great pilot from the First World War. When "Brandy" comes to town as part of an air show Tommy rescues his hero when a parachute stunt goes wrong and he ends up barely treading water in a lake. Years later Tommy, now an ace flier, invents a bomb site which a gang of ruthless weapons brokers want. In an effort to get the site they kidnap Tommy, his best friend and girlfriend in the hopes of forcing them to give over the secret of their device. Complicating matters is the fact that Tommy's boyhood hero is now on the wrong side of the law.

That probably sounds a good deal more exciting than it is, especially since this is a very slow and dull movie. While the dialog scenes are fine and have a snap to them the film has long stretches of "action" where nothing happens. Its a throw back to the early days of Monogram where you had to suffer through lots of "silent" stock footage that was being used to fill out the running time. What I mean by this is we have Brandy supposedly doing a delayed parachute stunt and opening his chute 500 feet from the ground.We see him fall for a long time, then open his shoot and drift an incredibly far distance away to the pond. Its about five minutes of screen time but it feels like five hours (its also physically impossible even with the mismatched stick shots). Another example is when Tommy shows off the bomb site and flies and flies and flies and flies for no really good reason in order to get to the target and proper height even though everything else going on has him in close proximity to the target. Its long and dull and makes you want to reach for the remote.

I can't really recommend this. Its way too long at an hour and more likely to put you to sleep than keep you awake . If you want to see every movie based on a comic character then by all mean give it a shot, but I'd keep the remote handy.