Load of rubbish!!

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I saw this film in the early 80s when I was in art school. I was transfixed. The flying grabbed me so hard that when I went home that night, I was pretending that my wheezy 1966 VW bug was a jet doing arabesques in the sky, which may have made for some odd looking driving. Maybe this is a film you have to see on a screen rather than on TV, but for me the flying WAS the movie. The rest was just an excuse to hang it together and promote an audience.Perhaps I should add that my dad was a pilot and when I was three, he took me up and did corkscrews and dives and flew upside down and I loved it, I was sworn to secrecy to never tell my mother who had made him quit being a crop duster because I was on the way. No roller-coaster has ever lived up to it and all my flying since then has been conventional. However, I found later from my fellow students that few of them drove home in a normal way that night.

Way back in 1949, Howard Hughes signed Josef von Sternberg to direct a tatty romantic comedy by Jules Furthman about a U.S. Air Force pilot (John Wayne) who falls in love with a Russian aviator (Janet Leigh, would you believe?) and marries the girl. The movie wrapped in May, 1951, but Hughes spent the next six years tinkering with it. Finally, using the process invented by the Tushinsky Brothers, he had the movie converted to SuperScope (an anamorphic 2:1). Released by Universal in 1957, it debuted a few months after "The Iron Petticoat", an equally inept Cold War comedy in which Katherine Hepburn played the Russian aviator, and Bob Hope the helpful American. Although "Jet Pilot" is a movie that does absolutely no credit to any of the people involved, either on screen or off, it's nonetheless an entertainingly gosh-awful foray into the comic strip fantasy land which Hughes obviously believed was the terrain of the United States Air Force. Wayne plays with an understandably puzzled frown, while Miss Leigh kicks up her heels as the silk petticoat.

"Jet Pilot" was another of Howard Hughes pet projects in which he displayed his love of flying. As was his habit, he never seemed to be happy with the final result, so much so that the film, completed in 1950, was not released until 1957.The flying sequences are breath taking filmed in glorious Technicolor against the backdrop of fluffy white clouds and clear blue skies. The story? Well that's something else.A Russian pilot, Lt. Anna Marladovna (Janet Leigh) flees her country and lands in the USA seeking refugee status. Col. Jim Shannon (John Wayne) is assigned to "look after" her and find out what she is up to. She is allowed to fly American jets along with Shannon, who shows her some new flying maneuvers. Naturally they fall in love, or so Shannon believes.This is when the story becomes a little stretch of the imagination. After Anna and Jim get married (to allow her to remain in the country you see), Anna is revealed to be a Russian spy in search of American military secrets. In an effort to find out what she is up to General Black (Jay. C. Flippen) and FBI agent Rivers (Richard Rober) arrange for Shannon and Anna to "steal" a jet and fly off to the USSR. He conveniently destroys the plane on landing and is taken to a bleak looking Russian camp for interrogation by Col. Sokolov (Rolnad Winters).Anna (aka Olga Orlief) at first supports the breaking of the supposed defector Shannon but true love intervenes. When she learns from the evil Col. Matoff (Hans Conried) of a plan to erase Shannonon's memory, they steal yet another plane (Russian this time) and.....................It's difficult to decide who was the worst bit of miscasting Wayne or Leigh. Wayne was a good twenty years older than the delectable Ms. Leigh and it shows. Its also hard to imagine the young Ms. Leigh, in her early 20s at the time, as a world wise Russian spy who speaks perfect English who is also an ace pilot.I'm sure that Mr. Hughes relished the flying sequences in this film as they are the best thing in it. Too bad he didn't pay closer attention to the "B" level script.Wayne's long time friend Paul Fix appears as his second in command Maj. Rexford.Released by Universal after RKO closed up shop in 1956.

I can watch this film just for the flying.I'd love to get my hands on all of the footage and remake it with a descent plot.Although intended to showcase American airpower in the 50's, it could be redone as cold war retro flick because the footage is still cool and beautiful. This the only place you will likely ever see some off that magnificent old hardware in use.We know the Duke was a hardcore anti-communist as was Howard Hughes. The two no doubt saw eye-to-eye on politics, ergo it is no surprise that they would both be involved in this movie, yet it was probably a bad idea for the Duke. Some people consider it his worst movie (through no fault of his own, the script is ludicrous). I doubt even the red hunting members of the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) could take it seriously.Still, it has a really cool theater poster. It's a painting of the Duke in an old P-2 flight helmet with the late/post WW2 style flying goggles (althought I believe they use the P-4 helmet in the movie. The P-4 is just a P-2 with a big retractable visor screwed on. The visor replaced the old style goggles). Again, it also has some great aerial footage, which is what you would expect from Hughes.