AIR HAWKS (1935)
Article #882 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-14-2003
Posting Date: 1-11-2004
Directed by Albert Rogell
Featuring Ralph Bellamy, Tala Birell, Douglas Dumbrille

An airline company is suffering from attacks from a rival company intent on putting them out of business.

The opening fifteen minutes are mostly concerned with the business and romance ends of the story and are pretty dull, but once you get to the laboratory scenes and the introduction of a ray gun that can take a plane out of the sky, this little programmer picks up tremendously. Plotwise it’s pretty standard stuff, with the ray gun being the usual science-fiction gadgetry popular at the time, but the solid and efficient pacing, acting and direction all lift the movie somewhat higher off the ground than the first fifteen minutes would leave you to believe. In fact, this may well be one of my favorite ray-guns-taking-down-airplanes movies, an idea that was used ad nauseum during the thirties and forties.