MURDER IN THE CLOUDS

US, 1934, 61 minutes, Black-and-white.

Lyle Talbot, Ann Dvorak, Gordon Westcott, Robert Light, George Cooper, Henry O'Neill, Russell Hicks, Arthur Pierson.

Directed by D Ross Lederman.

This is not really a murder mystery. Rather, it is a 1930s story of industrial espionage.

With the coming of sound, there were all kinds of possibilities for outside photography – leading to developments in aerial photography. And there is a great deal of this, small planes, flights, acrobatics, dangerous action, right throughout the film. It was only 30 years since the Wright brothers. 20 years since the beginning of World War I. Audiences were obviously eager for this kind of visual action in the movies. It was a period of Howard Hawks and flight development and many films on air themes, culminating in the feature in the late 30s, Only Angels Have Wings.

The opening part of the film establishes the aerial skills. Then there is romance, and AnnDvorak as a flight attendant but with plenty of initiative and get up and go. Some praise to George Cooper for his character Wings, a pilot but prone to getting stomach upsets but who has to step up to the cockpit and achieve all kinds of heroics by the end of the film.

There is a flight company and its boss, approached by a government official, veteran Henry O’Neill, for a flight with a scientist with a special formula. He has a spy in his office who contacts the leader of the group, led by veteran Russell Hicks, who want to steal the formula and exploit it in Mexico.

So, the key pilot, Lyle Talbot, is hijacked by hired thugs and unable to take the flight. The heroine’s brother is a co-pilot – and the plane explodes, but later visualised at some length, the death of the pilot, the escape of the sinister pilot member of the game.

So, within the short running time, quite some action, confrontations, car journeys, more flights, shootings and battles in the air – and a happy ending and wedding bells.

One of the more effective short films, supporting features of the first part of the 1930s.