State Department official George Eakins (John McGuire), scheduled to leave for a conference in L.A., receives a sealed envelope containing his orders by courier. Eakins will never get on that plane to the Coast, however; a shadowy figure enters the office and pistol whips him, rendering him quite dead. His secretary, Amy Winthrop (Rochelle Hudson), immediately emerges as a “person of interest” because her seatmate (Steve Pendleton) on that plane—identified only as “Mr. Smith”—has told the airline people he’s Eakins.
"I...am The Whistler..." |
Steven Geray |
Where to begin with Sky
Liner (1949)? I’ll say this for it—it
makes Motor
Patrol (1950) look like La règle du jeu (1939). The tagline for this programmer reads “a fast
paced and different kind of mystery thriller,” but there’s nothing remotely “fast
paced” about Liner, and as for “different”—well,
it would be unfair of me to say, “What makes it ‘different’ is that there’s
nothing ‘thrilling’ about it” because it wouldn’t be the first movie I’ve
watched that promised excitement and suspense and delivered neither. It’s a static, talky B that keeps an
unblinking eye on a stopwatch until its 61 minutes is up, and then announces it’s
time for the wrap party.
Even then, the version of Sky Liner on the Forgotten Noir & Crime Collection Vol. 4
set (available at The Sprocket
Vault) is a truncated version of the film, running at 49 minutes (DVD
Talk’s Stuart Galbraith IV speculates it might be either a shorter UK
release version or a TV cut). The info
on the movie at the American Film Institute mentions there’s an “obnoxious
child singer” among the passengers…so it sounds like I lucked out here, because
the kid in the print I watched does no singing.
“Amazingly, Sid Melton isn’t
in this one,” observes Galbraith…but I was so bored watching the thing I kept
hoping Sid would emerge from the plane’s washroom at some point. Speaking of which:
Richard Travis |
3 comments:
"You are trapped in a waiting room for fifty minutes. SKY LINER is on TV, from which there is no... Escape!"
Okay, you're talking about how boring the film is, then complaining that this is a SHORT version!
"The food in this restaurant is terrible----and such small portions!"
RICHARD M ROBERTS
RMR pointed to the map:
Okay, you're talking about how boring the film is, then complaining that this is a SHORT version!
"The food in this restaurant is terrible----and such small portions!"
I guess I've never been a "count your blessings" kind of guy.
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