AIR HAWKS (1935)

Someone said once that the problem with socialism is socialism, while the problem with capitalism was capitalists. In other words, while socialism is an inherently flawed economic system, capitalism's credibility is undermined by capitalists who don't live up to the system's ideals. Popular fiction and cinema seemed to confirm this. Through the period of Code Enforcement and even through the anti-communist hysteria of the late 1940s and early 1950s, you hardly saw a film featuring competing businesses in which one of the competitors didn't cheat. A compact case in point is Albert Rogell's pulpy little programmer for Columbia.

Air Hawks is the film for those of you who think the only thing glaringly missing from Only Angels Have Wings was a death ray. We're still in the early days of commercial aviation here, with Independent Transcontinental Lines trying to earn a niche in the high-speed air-mail market. Since Barry Eldon (Ralph Bellamy) can't secure any more bank loans, he and his scrappy team of pilots have to prove themselves in the air. The established firm, Consolidated Airlines, appears to have all the advantages, but highly-connected casino owner Victor Arnold (the inevitably evil Douglas Dumbrille) advises Consolidated not to take chances. He has just the thing to end the competition: renegade scientist Schulter (Edward "Dr. Van Helsing" Van Sloan), who has perfected, on a small scale, a device to transmit a high-temperature current on a beam of light. In short, Arnold is suggesting that Consolidated hire a mad scientist to blast its competitors' planes out of the sky with a death ray. Consolidated likes the idea.

What more need I say? Van Sloan, gleefully playing for the other side, merrily incinerates a number of ITL pilots, the company's stock plummets, and Barry has to tell some Shirley Temple wannabe in a baby flight suit that Daddy will be flying another route for the foreseeable future. Air Hawks tugs at the heart strings, showing the scorched, mutilated baby doll Daddy was going to give to his daughter for her birthday, and in an extra macabre touch shows us that Barry has kept that grim memento in his desk until the poor tyke randomly finds it. Meanwhile, Barry's reporter pal manages to find and escape from Schulter's lair, while Barry tells the press that he'll personally set a speed record on the next high-altitude mail flight to prove ITL's viability.

 Slade Wilson's grandpa (Wiley Post) suits up for a Republic serial, but  Air Hawks wraps up in one long chapter.

Into the middle of this wanders real-life celebrity aviator Wiley Post, playing himself months before his fatal flight with Will Rogers. Tragic as Post's demise was, it probably didn't cost him further film opportunities, as his few mumbling minutes of screen time in Air Hawks proved him one of the most hopeless actors ever to recite lines before a camera. He volunteers to make the real mail flight, giving ITL added publicity, while Barry lures Arnold into his plane and takes him into the danger zone. The climax is a land-air battle as Barry dodges Schulter's mobile death ray while throwing bombs at the machine. The explosive climax comes complete with a dummy, presumably representing poor Schulter, blown out of the truck and flopping onto the dirt. It's all pure exhilarating idiocy carried out with succinct panache, and it's always fun to see Ralph Bellamy, at a point when he was already becoming the archetypal "Ralph Bellamy" who always loses the girl in romantic comedies, play the sort of two-fisted he-man he'd been more often in Pre-Code days. You can enjoy it as unpretentious camp with a dash of madness, and assure yourself that it's too silly to be subversive -- but was it?