User Reviews

Donovan is listed on this site as FBI but clearly his character harks back to Wild Bill Donovan of what is always referred to as "the old wartime OSS" that gave rise to the CIA in 1947. Just after the war counter espionage etc was under the War Dept. This isn't about atomic secrets, just a uranium deposit, and it isn't about a couple on a plane but about a former OSS man. And it isn't about terrorists but business people making money illegally and immorally. If our hero was Donovan's best operative, I don't know how we won the war. He's so useless this might have been played as a romantic comedy and been more successful. He can't do anything without everyone knowing about it, can't hold onto what he thinks is the map (which he inaccurately describes as an envelope with papers written in Japanese when he actually never opened it), gets bashed over the head twice when the thin envelope was stolen, seems to have the passion of a dead fish and no sense of caution, and doesn't bother to make sure the bad guy is incapacitated before turning his back and walking away so Donovan has to save him. He doesn't even seem particularly upset when his ex, who stole for him twice and lied for him once, saving the day for him because of his ineptness, and his plane are blown up--I guess his insurance covered sabotage or maybe the US govt paid for a new one. He even has to have it explained to him that the explosion was meant for him! Donovan obviously knew his boy when he kept shoving him along and looking after him. Normally I don't like summing up scenes in mysteries but this contrived mess could have used one. I , egads, watched it twice and I still don't know the answers. Was the oxygen thing just a ploy to make the countess seem in danger over something else to rope in our halfwitted hero to help and protect her? Why did the heroine's brother owe the countess money? Why did the heroine act like an ATM for her brother? What did the countess mean when she said that Walker wanted to buy the letter from her so he could name his own price for the map from Claude? She also said that Walker wanted to buy her information to trade to Claude for the map. All I can think of is something was left on the cutting room floor about the letter which we are supposed to assume is the map. Didn't the countess notice the weird ring Claude gave his sister? Why did they travel en masse? Did the mysterious letter tie Claude to the countess and then everyone else stuck to them like glue? Couldn't they shake this circus? And was the boyfriend just an arrogant parasite? Did the ex happen to drop in after over four years and just happen to know the countess and just happen to have the skills needed to lift items from others? Did Donovan arrange for her to come the way he arranged for the man to confess to the murder and we weren't told about it. I particularly liked the way the group reacted when someone else confessed. They missed a bet not making this into a comedy.

LOVE IN HER HEART...BUT DISASTER IN HER HAND! Whoever wrote the tagline should have written the movie.

Is Hobe short for something?

My favorite line, from the ex with a smile, "No wonder people go around beating you over the head." My feeling exactly!

Hoot Gibson does a nice turn as the sheriff in his rather ill-fitting cowboy garb which went well with the rest of the largely unflattering costumes. The locations were lovely although not as interesting historically as scenes of downtown Las Vegas would be. Unfortunately recording in restrooms and great rooms of lodges was a problem for the sound people. I give it a star for scenery and for unintentional belly laughs.

FLIGHT TO NOWHERE is a plane-set potboiler from Golden Gate PIctures. It's notable for featuring Evelyn Ankers as the female lead; Ankers was of course famous for her turns in such Universal horror classics as THE WOLF MAN. The story is about a pilot hired to transport a group of people cross country on his private plane, only to discover that their intentions are less than honourable.

The film looks and feels cheap throughout and at 80 minutes in length it threatens to outstay its welcome and is frequently dull. There's no action to speak to and very little menace despite the best efforts of the actors involved. Alan Curtis tries hard as the heroic pilot but can do little with his dullard character.

Nobody is whom they claim to be in this film about a spy ring searching for a uranium plant and the various people involved. It all surrounds pilot Alan Curtis who agrees to forgo a weekend holiday to take some truly desperate people to a remote resort. All the action seems to happen off screen which makes the film extremely dull. There's a phony countess (Micheline Cheirel), her companion (Evelyn Ankers) and an FBI agent (Jack Holt). It starts literally with a bang as someone is murdered, that opening (before the credits appear) only lightly integrated into the later plot. A cast of famous "B" stars can't help this rise above its convoluted structure.

The most important datum to be taken from this film is that, in an eighth grade reading class, my friend, Chippy D'Amiano, read the word "Nowhere" aloud as "Now Here." Chippy was the kid whose essay on basketball began with the question, "Who, Why, When, Where, Plays Basketball?"

Moving right along, the second most important lesson to be learned from this film is that "Nowhere" is an anagram of "Erewhon", a novel written in 1872 by the New Zealander Samuel Butler. The novel was a satire of English society, somewhat like "Gulliver's Travels", and Butler described a fictional world in which artificial intelligence became so advanced that machines took a dominant role over human beings. Thus, ironically, the machines subjected themselves to Darwinian selection. Pretty cool, isn't it? The sins of the fathers and all that?

The movie. Yes, the movie. Well, it was released in 1945, it's about this charter pilot, Alan Curtis, who is hired to fly half a dozen suspicious characters to a resort in the middle of the desert. There are familiar faces among the passengers. We may note the presence of Jerome Cowan (aka Miles Archer); the succulent Evelyn Ankers, who is almost murdered during the flight, though it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to spoil her looks by killing her. Jack Holt is at the resort, an FBI agent, or so he claims. You may remember him from "They Were Expendable," as the Army General in the Philippines at the start of the war, whose lines there include, "Send us more Japs" and "It's a Mogami class cruiser; that mean anything to you?"

If you read a description of the plot in some TV guide, there will be attention given to a Nazi plan to develop a secret radar with unspecified powers. But it's not really about that. It's about a letter that supposedly contains clues to -- well, to something or other of importance -- and about a ring that is actually a map.

That letter enters a kind of roundelay in which it gets passed or stolen from hand to hand until the viewer loses track of it completely. Twice is passes through the hands of the stolid, humorless hero, Alan Curtis. Each time, he's coshed on the sconce, falls unconscious, and the letter is stolen from his pocket. Afterward his unwitting ex wife offers him a cup of coffee. "One lump, if I remember?" Curtis touches the back of his head gingerly and says: "This time it's two lumps." Don't judge too hastily. It may be the best line in the movie.

Rarely have I seen a movie with such an appropriate title. "Flight to Nowhere"---you can say that again!!

The film begins with a Korean agent being murdered. This is an unusual scene in that you get to see the dead man's face up close--something very odd for 1946.

The scene abruptly changes to a small airport. A countess is coming up with 1001 reasons why a charter pilot should take her to Death Valley of all places! Then, after he agrees, she shows up at the place with a group of friends. Everything about this woman seems phony--and poorly acted--plus why in the world would anyone take their friends to Death Valley...to a resort! But the pilot's old WWII boss (Jack Holt) tells him that he SHOULD take those folks to the desert for a 'little vacation'. This all seemed really silly--and what would these society folks be doing in the middle of this god-forsaken place?! Once at this resort(?), all sorts of intrigues occur--and in each case the poor pilot ends up getting bashed over the head. In real life, the guy would have suffered massive brain damage--but true to a bad film, he's just fine. And, true to a bad film, his ex-wife just happens to be staying in DEATH VALLEY!!! Then, inexplicably, the group flies to Las Vegas. Why? I dunno. Then more folks start bashing each other over the head and there is a whole lot of pockets being picked for maps and rings...and frankly it's all just a confusing mess. Bad writing, overacting and too many plot elements results in a bad film BUT one that isn't funny or engaging--like some bad films. It comes off like a third-rate Charlie Chan knockoff merged with a movie serial--at best. Not worth your time unless you like dull low-budget B-movies.

***SPOILERS***Totally ridicules film about nuclear espionage involving a group of mixed nuts trying to find a secret map that discloses the largest uranium deposits on earth. That's somewhere off a sleepy lagoon in the South Pacific once held by the Japanese government. It's former OSS agent and now commercial pilot "Handsome Hobe" Carrington, Alan Curtis, who gets himself involved in this mess by flaying a group of people to the Desert Inn in scenic Death Valley. It's there that "Hobe" is contacted by his former boss OSS big shot and now FBI secret agent Bob Donovan, Jack Holt, who fills him in on what he's to do in preventing this group of global racketeers from getting their hands on a secret map that will lead them to the uranium deposit.

The movie goes on endlessly with "Hobe" getting in and out of one mess after another as well as getting romantically involved with two of the women members of the group Catherine Forrest, Evelyn Ankers, and the mysterious Countess, from parts unknown, Maria de Fresca, Micheline Cheirel. It's on his flight back to Las Vegas that "Hobe" finally discovers whet's going on with his passengers minus Tom Walker,Gorden Richards, who was murdered back at the desert inn but seems too, with him getting his head bashed in twice, uninterested and just wants to get a good night sleep and forget about the entire matter.

***SPOILERS*** Still with Agent Donovan urging him on "Hobe" does finally get to the bottom of this atomic spy conspiracy only after the top man Jerome Cowan, Gerald Porter, who was in fact working for the Japanese during WWII as a spy tried to murder him when he got too close to the truth. Which was of all things at a stable where fellow spy and horse breeder Joseph Ruehl,Michael Visaroff, kept his killer stallion whom he used to do his dirty work for. Check out silent movie cowboy sensation Hoot Gibson, no relation to as far as I could see to Mel, as the Death Valley County Sheriff Bradley.

Despite the title, there is precious little flying in this movie; it mostly takes place in a hotel and the garden and pool outside.

The hero pilot, Hobe Carrington, is trying to get hold of a secret document, and does, twice, for a short time before getting hit on the head from behind each time, and knocked unconscious. Each time, he wakes up, rubs the spot, and goes about his business without any apparent signs of concussion. I think, even in 1946, you weren't allowed to fly passenger aircraft immediately after suffering a concussion. However, the show must go on.

Will the bad guys get the uranium? Will the hero wind up with his ex-wife or the blond? Will you be able to understand the dialog despite the really loud violin playing "background music" at 20 db louder than the actors speak? Watch it and see (if you have nothing better to do with your 1 hour and 14 minutes).