User Reviews

Just a rare film, and directed by an authentic grade Z film maker: Lewis D Collins, who also co directed some serials for Universal or Columbia Pictures, with Ray Taylor. I watched this feature from a fairly good copy, probably bootlegged - 16mm print. Not boring but predictable and forgettable among the thousands, if not millions, of others made during the thirties and forties. Talks more than action, as you can guess, but watchable. Collins made mostly westerns and adventure yarns, not crime flicks.

Enjoy this one although. Not a masterpiece, far from that, but Worth for gem diggers, as I always say.

Sometimes a film can be far too fast moving for its own good, and that is true in the case of this Columbia crime drama where paroled criminal Stanley Fields is followed by federal agent Jack Holt aboard a plane which is then hijacked and all the passengers taken to a country house where Holt must determine if the men kidnaping Fields are actually out to kill him or part of some sort of insurance racket. It's basically a "Crime Doesn't Pay" short stretched out to under an hour, padded with a lot of nonsense, no real character development and no intense atmosphere to speak of. In fact, I found the whole film innocuous and pointless, and felt that even with the short running time, it was a complete waste of time. Columbia has done much better with crime dramas, and you can blame the failure of this on the lack of a solid script and weak direction, and performances that lack any type of motivation outside of collecting a paycheck. The supporting cast doesn't include any memorable names outside of the coincidence of someone named Vicky Lester (the name chosen by Esther Blodgett to be her professional name in "A Star is Born") playing the pretty stewardess.