Tag: 1942

They Flew Alone

  By

★★½
“Puts the plain in aeroplane.”

This bio-pic of aviator Amy Johnson appeared in British cinemas a scant eighteen months after she disappeared over the River Thames. That put its release squarely in the middle of World War II, and explains its nature which, in the later stages, could certainly be called propaganda. There’s not many other ways to explain pointed lines like “Our great sailors won the freedom of the seas. And it’s up to us to win the freedom of the skies. This is first said during a speech given by Johnson in Australia, then repeated at the end, over a rousing montage of military marching and flying. I almost expected it to end with, “Do you want to know more?”

From the start, the film does a decent job of depicting Johnson (Neagle) as a likable heroine, who refuses to bow to convention – she’s first seen rebelling against the straw hat that’s part of her school uniform. We then follow her through university, though the degree apparently only qualifies her for jobs in a haberdashery or as a secretary (must have been a gender studies…). Unhappy with these dead-end occupations, she takes up flying, earning her pilot’s license and buying her own plane. It’s about here that the film really hits trouble, because director Wilson has no idea of how to convey the thrill of free flight. Endless series of newspaper headlines, ticker tapes and cheering crowds is about all we get, along with obvious rear-projection shots of Amy looking slightly concerned in the cockpit.

It’s almost a relief when the romance kicks in, represented by fellow pilot Jim Mollison (Newtron), who woos Amy while looking to set flight records of his own. Problem is, he’s a bit of a dick: quite why Amy falls for him is never clear. It’s clearly a mistake, with his drinking, womanising (or as close as they could depict in the forties!) and resentment at her greater fame and desire for independence eventually dooming the marriage – in another of those newspaper headlines. However, there is one decent sequence, when the husband and wife fly as a pair from Britain to America, largely through dense fog. This is edited nicely and, in contrast to all other flights, does generate some tension.

The bland approach includes Johnson’s final mission, depicted here as her running out of fuel while seeking somewhere to land in fog, bailing out, and drowning in the river. Cue the montage mentioned above, though the film does redeem itself with a final caption, worth repeating in full. “To all the Amy Johnsons of today, who have fought and won the battle of the straw hat – who have driven through centuries of convention – who have abandoned the slogan ‘safety first’ in their fight for freedom from fear – from want – from persecution – we dedicate this film.” It’s an honourable thought, considerably deeper and more well-executed than something which generally feels like it was rushed out, without much effort put into it.

Dir: Herbert Wilcox
Star: Anna Neagle, Robert Newton, Edward Chapman, Joan Kemp-Welch
a.k.a. Wings and the Woman

Perils of Nyoka

  By

★★★½
“Serial thriller.”

After the success of Jungle Girl, Republic looked to repeat the process the following year. However, despite bringing back the heroine, they were able to avoid paying Edgar Rice Burroughs again, because Nyoka was not a character who appeared in the original novel. It may also be why she has a different surname here, and her father is missing, rather than killed. Republic used a different actress too: Kay Aldridge replaced Frances Gifford, who was unavailable. Aldridge had recently seen her contract with 20th Century Fox expire, though had some qualms: “I did it with the attitude we had in that day that to make a B-western or a serial was a comedown for a featured player at Fox. It was a comedown in one way, but it was a comeup in another way because I was the lead. They paid me about $650 a week, which was pretty good money at the time.” Still, it proved her most popular role, though she retired from acting just four years later, to get married.

With a title clearly nodding to 1914’s The Perils of Pauline, this operates at a particularly breathless rush, even by serial standards, over its 15 episodes. The main plot has Nyoka Gordon in search of the Tablets of Hippocrates, both because they offer a cure for cancer, but in order to help find her father, who vanished mysteriously in the African wilderness years previously. Well, I say “African”. There’s really no effort at all made to make Southern California look like anything other than Southern California. Anyway, she’s joined in her quest by Dr. Larry Grayson (Moore, best known as TV’s Lone Ranger) and other scientists, but opposed by the evil Vultura (Gray) and her native minions, who wants the tablets for herself. Actually, from a modern perspective, Vultura probably has more of a claim to the artifacts than the tomb-raiding Westerners, Nyoka’s protestations about them belonging to “humanity” notwithstanding.

This was the first serial I had watched since Zorro’s Black Whip, and I really appreciated the relentless pace with which things moved forward. There’s literally never a dull moment, despite the usual overlap: opening of each episode recaps the previous cliffhanger, then details how (usually) Nyoka gets out of the peril in question. These escapes were a bit varying in quality: some of them were clever, others were more or less cheats, e.g. falling from a great height into a pool of water that wasn’t there previously.

But the show never gives pause to consider such things, moving on to the next treachery, chase or fight sequence. Of particular note is the antagonist also being a woman, and Vultura is every bit as smart, driven and hands-on as Nyoka. There’s potentially an alternative version of this where she is the heroine. It’s definitely an improvement on the “ignorant savages” portrayed in Jungle Girl. Indeed, Nyoka v2.0 is also a clear upgrade on the original, being much more self-reliant, certainly the equal of the men.

Admittedly, the pace is maintained at the expense of just about everything else. When you have perhaps 15 minutes in which to cram a recap, escape, move the plot forward and then set up the next cliffhanger… there’s never going to be much chance to get in a lot of character development. Everybody here is more or less what they appear in episode one, and there’s hardly anything in the way of an arc for anyone across the four hours. Hard to complain though, since it is for understandable reasons. What matters here is not any backstory, it’s a simple matter of hooking the audience into coming back the following Saturday for the next episode. Having shotgunned as many as five episodes back-to-back, I can’t argue with its success on that front.

I also feel I should mention the animals. Fang, Nyoka’s dog, is perhaps the smartest canine I’ve ever seen on a show: to be honest, he’s more intelligent than some of the human characters, and does a remarkable amount, especially considering his lack of opposable thumbs. There’s also a little monkey, belonging to one of her sidekicks, who chips in, while Vultura keeps a pet gorilla. That, however, is a guy in a not particularly convincing suit. Though considering it gets into fisticuffs with Dr. Grayson, I can understand why they didn’t want to use a real primate for that! Their cute presence do make me wonder if this was aimed as much as kids as adults. Though given the amount of violence – there are corpses everywhere, albeit bloodless ones – it feels a little inappropriate for children by modern standards.

The show proved popular enough to be re-released a decade later, under the rather confusing title, Nyoka and the Tigermen. A few years further down the road, it was converted into a 100-minute TV movie, Nyoka and the Lost Secrets of Hippocrates. Normally, hacking out such a large amount of content would render any cinematic product incoherent. But I can see how it would be possible here, though I dread to think how adrenaline-crazed that end product might be!

Dir: Bill Witney
Star: Kay Aldridge, Clayton Moore, Lorna Gray, Charles Middleton