Arctic Flight

This B-movie rises above it's limitations to make an exciting, unusual thriller Set in in Alaska, with at least some location work, surprising for a Monogram picture, it feels cold just watching it. The background is populated with Eskimos/Inuits which helps, although the story involves white people. Reliable Wayne Morris is a freelance pilot, hired by jolly Alan Hale to help help hunt down a polar bear, for sporting reasons. With many references to how close Russia is, and with the Cold War in full flow, it isn't a shock when the plot turns into a spy thriller Lola Albright, always underused by Hollywood, is a feisty frontier gal, who loves Morris The most alarming scenes involve the polar bear hunt, as the beast is ruthlessly shot down and skinned, it's remains discarded on the ice, as Hale claims his trophy. Harsh scenes for modern viewers. But the rest is mostly a fine, tense thriller, directed by veteran Lew Landers, with a sure hand

Mike Wien (Wayne Morris) is a bush pilot in Alaska. He's contracted to fly Martha Raymond (Lola Albright) out to Little Diomede Island. She's the new teacher for the small native community right next to the Russians on Big Diomede Island. Everybody is worried about the Russians. Wien's next client is wealthy John W. Wetherby (Alan Hale Jr.) on a polar bear hunt. It turns out that he's a Russian spy.

This movie faces the difficulty of faking the Arctic Circle. To be fair, it does do a lot of filming at the location, but that's why the studio work looks so fake. None of the interiors look lived in. The bar may as well be in a western. It is a B-movie after all. That can't be helped. I do wonder about recording dialogue outside in the snow. It may be something technical or budgetary that they have to add that stuff later. As for the story, it moves a little too slow for my taste. It's a romantic melodrama for the most part with Wetherby sticking his nose into the couple's lukewarm flirting. The movie does have a lot of native people doing background work and that's fine for its times. I would prefer to have Wetherby outed much earlier and this movie turning into a thriller, a mano a mano in the snow.

I can just imagine teenage boys in 1952 rushing to the Saturday matinee to see this one. It has testosterone-fueled action, a romantic subplot, and political commentary to round it all out. While it doesn't make for climactic cinema, it does sufficiently make for a fun ride.

What really surprised me was the concept of racial tolerance. Alaska would not become an official state for at least seven years, yet this movie goes out of its way -- at least in one or two scenes -- to include Eskimos as worthy. When one takes into consideration the horrible injustice Hollywood has inflicted on minorities and the outcast, regardless of reason, it's surprisingly refreshing to see it addressed in this movie.

Nice mix of on-location shooting and in-studio scenes.

Won't watch again but am glad I did see it.

Alan Hale Jr. Is known to most as 'Skipper' from "Gilligan's Island"...a nice, likable sort of character. But in "Arctic Flight", Hale plays a communist agent who is trying to get secrets to his evil overlords in the Soviet Union!! Normally, I don't mention important plot points like this, but since IMDB already divulges what sort of character Hale plays, then mentioning how against type this is for him is certainly in order.

Now the communist agent is not the only plot. In fact, this character doesn't come into the story until about the midway point. The first portion is devoted to an annoying woman (due to bad writing) and her really annoying meet cute with Mike Wien...the man who is a bush pilot who operates the only airline in the area. She is a school teacher who wants him to take her to an island...but he doesn't want to since it's on the US-Soviet border and he doesn't want to get shot down by mistake. Well, he relents and takes her...though she is annoying and cliched and should have been written better.

After completing this task, he's offered a huge amount of money to fly a millionaire on a polar bear hunt. But John Wetherby isn't interested in bears...but poses as a nice rich guy in order to make his nefarious plan hard to anticipate. Eventually, he's going to force Mike to take him to Russian airspace....like it or not!

This film is a definite sign of its times. The Cold War (no pun intended) was at its hottest and US-Soviet relations were at their lowest point. As a result, many Hollywood pictures were about communist spies and the like...and I can only assume the Soviet film industry was doing films about the wicked West.

So is this any good? Yes and no. Morris is very good...with a nice, casual sort of performance. The school teacher, as I mentioned, was not written well and eliminating this plot completely would have made for a better film. Well worth seeing despite its faults...plus, I did like the exciting finale.

Wayne Morris is a bush pilot up around where the US and the USSR are separated by the couple of miles between Little Diomede Island (the US) and Big Diomede Island (The USSR); from December until June the sea freezes and you can walk between the two. Morris explains all this to Lola Albright, the new schoolteacher on Little Diomede, and they wrangle a bit about his dislike of the Russians and other stuff. But enough of this movie courtship! He has a job flying Alan Hale Jr. Hale wants to shoot a polar bear for a rug.

It's not a great movie, but producer Lindsley Parsons flew the cast and crew up to Little Diomede for some location work. Most of the outdoors stuff has been covered by other movies, but there's some interesting byplay between the old-timers and the natives in a relaxed way. Director Lew Landers directs his performers in a low key fashion that works well.