There's a murderer in the skies shooting down passenger planes and causing general chaos throughout the heavens.
An investigative team has been called to bring this madman to justice.
A small meeting has been held between five Ace Pilots of the former Great War. All of which were meant to meet together in order to patrol the skies and bring down the Menace.
But there's a catch.
One of these men might very well be the famed Pilot X.
As it was shown by previous evidence that only a veteran could be capable of the crime. There unfortunately suffering with some form of PTSD.
In reality the best thing to do would be to call up a few head shrinks, get all these Pilots together and go through a long and arduous mental psych evaluation.
To determine if any of these people suffer with PTSD, multiple personality syndrome or just to see if they're problematic in modern society.
Though that wouldn't have landed them anywhere.
In the film it turns out the actual Pilot X was the sixth member of the team. The would-be American who was tasked with organizing the entire investigation. How nobody suspected him from the start is a little beyond me.
I can see a reluctance in the chief investigator as he's the guy who task this man with the investigation.
But you'd think you'd want to keep tabs on him all the same. Especially given that you have a safe room in the middle of your respective building where you can monitor everybody's location from the onset.
Also why wasn't there a phone in the safe room?
The man who overlooks the entire monitoring operation determines who the actual culprit is and goes to make a call to the police chief. But he has to leave the safe room to do it, and in doing so gets killed.
This is an incredibly cheesy and cheap film. And yet it's surprisingly entertaining. It has a premise that looks like it was out of an old Clue game and the idea of having five different Ace Pilots of different nationality from every major power in the first war. . . Will it's just Bonkers.
But man if it doesn't make for some amusing scenarios.
Especially the crotchety German guy at the beginning. Obviously half the audience watching the movie with assumed that he'd either be the villain or the first victim and they'd be right if they guess the ladder.
There's some pretty good playing choreography in this movie too.
I don't know how much of the stock material was made for the movie and how much of it was just former film reel from either a different film or maybe military exercises. But it's still pretty interesting to see them peppered throughout the movie.
Film loses a bit of momentum as the story progresses. I think it's down to the shrinking cast as none of the actors are given any proper character development or even all that much motivation. Really you're just there to see how the overarching case is going and everyone involved is just circumstantial. You might get the odd conversation with the American pilot and his girlfriend, or a little bit of bickering between some of the other Ace Pilots. But no one's giving a particular moment to shine.
Except maybe the one British pilot who had something of a mental breakdown starts screaming about the horrors of War.
It also doesn't help that the film has a few audio and visual issues. Most of which is not the fault of the movie itself. Whoever was working the wheels back in the day or put this editing together later on probably screwed something up.
So occasionally the sound will cut out or scenes will transition in really unnatural ways.
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