Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Friday, May 18, 2018

CRASH LANDING (1958)

Hollywood responded to the boom in post-war commercial aviation rider-ship with disaster pics. Emergency Landings; Sabotage; Engine Failure; Overworked Pilots; Metal Fatigue; Crazed Passengers; Mid-Air Collision. An endless parade of catastrophe bringing a Golden Age of Terror at 10,000 Feet (at least in quantity) using the same formula of human-interest dramas with every reclining cabin seat. This Economy Class example of the form touches all the bases, but trimmed to bare essentials. Gary Merrill, hard-nosed pilot with a lamed plane to ditch in the ocean, learns how to ease up on the job and at home where little wife Nancy Davis Reagan gets second-billing but little screen time & little to do. (No wonder it's her last feature.) Up in the sky, the cabin holds the usual suspects: lonely singles looking for love; business partners at loggerheads; romance among the crew; Mother & child; boy & dog. Not a trick or trope missed. The real suspense is wondering how they’ll manage the show with all the cost-cutting. Start with the plane: tinker-toy miniature; a tighter-than-tight pilots’ cabin; an overused static shot of the sole audio speaker; and the big rescue, managed without benefit of either sinking plane or navy destroyer to pick them up. All we see are inflatable life-rafts and a navy dinghy to ferry survivors. Brought to you by prolific lowball producer Sam Katzman & the late Fred F. Sears, a director so quick & efficient, he had five films released after his early death (at 44) in 1957.

DOUBLE-BILL: The big budget HIGH AND THE MIGHTY/’54 (John Wayne/William Wellman dir.) is much plusher air-disaster porn, but just as idiotic. While the bargain basement CROWDED SKY/’60 (Dana Andrews/Joseph Pevney dir.) scores with inadvertent hilarity.

No comments: