Wings Over the Pacific (1943)

User Rating:

4.5/10   

Director:

Phil Rosen

Writer:

George Wallace Sayre (story)

Release Date:

23 July 1943 (USA)

Genre:

War | Action | Drama

Tagline:

Amazing adventures of a plane-wrecked Yank... follow him as he finds native white girl, Axis spies, Jap raiders!

Plot:

An American officer discovers a Nazi plot to take over an island in the Pacific on which oil has been discovered. |

Cast

Inez Cooper	...	Nona Butler
Edward Norris	...	Lt. Allan Scott, USN
Montagu Love	...	Jim Butler
Robert Armstrong	...	Pieter Van Bronk
Henry Guttman	...	Lt. Kurt Heinmann
Ernie Adams	...	Harry Adams
Satini Pualoa	...	Native Chief
John Roth	...	Taro (Chief's Son)
Alex Havier	...	Japanese Officer
George Kamel	...	Native
Jody Gilbert	...	Native woman with Black Eye
Jimmy Lono	...	Native (as James Lono)
Hawksha Paia	...	Native
Josephine	...	Josephine the Bear

Runtime:

60 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Approved

Company:

Monogram Pictures Corporation

There's trouble in Paradise

(There are Spoilers) strange as well as nutty war movie that even from a studio like Monogram is a, unintentional, laugh a minute with US Navy and German Luftwaffe planes shooting each other down over Sunday Island in the South Pacific. It's never really explained how a German in a Lufwaffe fighter plane got himself shot down over the Pacific theater of War when he was supposed to be in Europe or North Africa some 1,500 miles west. In fact on the other side of the International Date-Line?

On the island we see that it's run by this weird hermit Jim Butler, Monlagu Love, who's looked upon by the natives as if he were a God. Butler a WWI vet and war hero moved to Sunday Island some 14 years ago when he was wiped out in the stock market crash of 1929. This was for him to get away from the rat race, and great depression, back home to live out his life in the tranquil and quit South Pacific but his life is now to take an abrupt change. With the two flayers the American USN Lt.Allan Scott ,Edward Norris, and German Lt. Kurt Heinmann ,Henry Guttman,landing safely on the island they have to learn to live in peace with each other despite the war between their two's country's going on the other side of the world.

Heinmann for his part is so ridicules in his Nazi beliefs that it's hard not to realize, by everyone on the island, that he's doing everything he possibly can to get in touch with his allies, the Japanese. This is to alert them about Sunday Islands huge oil reserve that are bubbling and oozing all over the place like the famous Old faithful at Yellowstone Park; oil that the Japanese and Germans desperately need to sustain their war machine. Let. Scott meanwhile is so involved with Butler's pretty young daughter Nora,Inez Coopewr, that he completely forgets about the devious German flier Lt. Heinmann who's doing everything to contact the Japanese and get them to invade Sunday island.

It later turns out that Heinmann has an ally on the island the charming and lovable, but German espionage agent, supply boat captain Pieter van Bronk, Robert Armstrong, who's been spying on Sunday Island. Van Bronk has been reporting back to the Fatherland for almost ten years about Sunday Island being rich in oil and having an airstrip for German, or Japanese, aircraft to be used in case of a future war with America.

The film gets more outrageous as it goes along with the island's chief Satini Pualoa's son Taro, John Roth, getting killed by Van Bronk who's later killed by the angry natives. The bumbling Henimann trying to kiss, or rape, Nora has Scott coming to her rescue and ends up being in one of the most laughable fights in move history with Henimann being taken away, after Scott knocked him out, and dumped into the Pacific Ocean by the natives. During this mindless spectacle The tied up Nora had to keep from watching it in order not to crack up.

Butler who wanted together with his "butler" on the island Harry ,Ernie Adams,to remain neutral during the war finally sees the light and gets together with Scott and the natives to take on the Japanese army who land in the middle of the dense and impassable jungle on a jumbo cargo plane. Scott Butler and the natives make short work of the invaders with less then a dozen guns and a lot of spears and arrows, this against some 100 heavily armed and fanatical Japanese troop.

Just too much to take with too little, if nothing at all, to take seriously even for a Hollywood war propaganda movie at the height of WWII; and yes at the end Scott and Nora tie the knot and live happily ever after.