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Adventures of the Flying Cadets
USA 1943
produced by
Henry MacRae (associate) for Universal
directed by Lewis D. Collins, Ray Taylor
starring Johnny Downs, Bobby Jordan, Ward Wood, William 'Billy' Benedict, Eduardo Cianelli, Regis Toomey, Robert Armstrong, Charles Trowbridge, Joseph Crehan, Addison Richards, Leyland Hodgson, Ian Keith, Philip Van Zandt, Joan Blair, Selmer Jackson, Jennifer Holt, Pat Flaherty, William Forrest, Louis V.Arco, Louis Adlon, John Bagni, Robert Barron, Sven Hugo Borg, Jean Del Val, James Dime, Jimmy Carpenter, Earl Kent, John Merton, Jack Perrin, Gene Roth, Emmett Smith, Dirk Thane, Sigurd Thor, Bill Healy, Ralph Dunn, Wiliam Yetter sr, Bud Osborne, Kermit Maynard
story by Morgan Cox, screenplay by Morgan Cox, George H. Plympton, Paul Huston
serial
American World War II Propaganda
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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The USA, World War II: A masked Nazi-villain called der Schwarze
Henker or the Black Henchman is killing one high-ranking
US-general after the other, including Major Elliott (Charles Trowbridge)
the mentor of a quartet of aspiring fighter pilots, the air cadets (Johnny
Downs, Bobby Jordan, Ward Wood, William 'Billy' Benedict). But somehow,
the Black Hangman fixes it that allevidence for these murders leads to the
air cadets, and they soon find themselves on the run from a murder charge
(interestingly, other clues lead to a place in Africa called An-Kar-Ban
which has nothing whatsoever to do with the air cadets, but nobody seems
to notice).
Eventually, the air cadets figure that the Black Hangman wants to find
out the whereabouts of An-Kar-Ban, and they turn to Gault (Robert
Armstrong), one of the very few people who might know where An-Kar-Ban is,
for help, and when he agrees to help them they trust him without -
which is very unfortunate since Gault really is the Black Hangman.
Fate has it that the air cadets go to Africa with Gault where he,
unbeknowest to them, plans to sell An-Kar-Ban, a region incredibly rich in
helium, to the Germans, despite the fact that the Gestapo and especially
their top agent Heiger (Eduardo Ciannelli) are constantly trying to
double-cross him.
Eventually though, the air cadets see through Gault's treachery, find
An-Kar-Ban, free the old professor (Selmer Jackson) and his lovely
daughter (Jennifer Holt) - who are there basically because serials like
this need an old profesor and his lovely daughter, and are all picked up
by Allied Forces - but so is Gault, and he is hell-bent on turning the
tables on everyone else, and it seems as if he is succeeding, he only
makes one mistake when he fails to kill a certain Captain Carson (Regis
Toomey), the only man who can prove the innocence of the air cadets
without a doubt - which Carson does in the end, also seeing to it that
Gault gets his just desserts.
Serials were never good on subtlety, narrative logic or nuanced
characters - and this probably goes double for propaganda serials, made
first and foremost to discredit the Krauts and the Japs and show the
superiority of the Yanks. Adventures of the Flying Cadets is of
course a propaganda serial, and it shows in almost every scene: Subtlety
is totally thrown out of the window, characterisations are invariably
one-dimensional and plotholes are gaping like nobody's business ... and
yet, Adventures of the Flying Cadets is a pretty good serial: It's
fast paced and high on action and it managhes to entertain throughout. Of
course it's not high art (after all, it is a serial) and by no
means a classic, but it's totally enjoyable cliffhanger-fare - and
sometimes there's nothing better than that.
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