Mercy Plane

PDC (later known as PRC) was an ultra-low budget studio that made mostly crappy films from the late 30s through the 40s. They were the epitome of the so-called 'poverty row' studios--renting out space at a real studio at night, keeping their budgets amazingly low and shooting time amazingly quick. High art, their films were anything but! Occasionally, despite themselves, PDC made a decent movie--more a mistake than by intent! Such is the case with one of their very early efforts, "Mercy Plane". While the film has plenty not to like, overall, it's far better than you'd expect from this outfit!

Speed Leslie (James Dunn) and Brenda Gordon (Frances Gifford) are rivals who compete in air races. Lately, although Speed assumes he's the better pilot, he's been losing race after race to her--all due to mechanical problems. Speed also assumes she's responsible for tampering with his planes. However, she's a sweet lady and stuck on him...and she doesn't realize that her brother is no good. The brother not only is responsible for the sabotage but much more...he's been stealing planes and reselling them abroad. So, when a top-secret so-called 'Mercy Plane' is about to be tested by Speed, the brother arranges for it to be stolen and Speed to be blamed. What's next and how can Speed clear his name?

While the film has a few silly portions, such as the way this top secret plane takes off and lands in the film, it's also reasonably exciting, has decent acting and actually kept my attention--something rare for this studio's work! If you are interested in seeing it, the film is available for free download from archive.org--a site often linked to IMDb films (though oddly not in this case).

James Dunn is a racing pilot. He also seems to be a member of the He-Man Woman Haters Club. He particularly has it in for Frances Gifford (his real-life wife at the time). She keeps beating him in all the races. He takes a job as a test pilot for the Mercy Plane, which is a hospital plane that can do vertical landings. But unknown to her, Miss Gifford's brother, William Pawley, is not just a simple plane manufacturer who is backing her racing. He's also the head of a ring hi-jacking (in the most literal sense) planes and selling them across borders.

It's a potentially interesting idea that's squashed by a script with horrid dialogue and poor dialogue direction by Richard Harlan. He was born in Lima Peru, and had directed several movies in Argentina before this. After this, he directed several movies in Mexico; I think it's an easy inference that he had issues with the English language, and the producing company, which would soon become PRC, couldn't afford a dialogue director.