Sky Commando (1953) User Reviews

Stock Footage Heaven

[gordonl56 · 5/10 · 15 September 2016]

SKY COMMANDO 1953

This quickie was put out by the Sam Katzman's B-Unit at Columbia Pictures.

This one starts at an American airfield during the Korean War. An American pilot, William Bryant, blames his Commanding Officer, Dan Duryea for the death of his brother on a ground support mission. Duryea's executive officer, Michael Fox, takes Bryant aside and tells him a story about Duryea from the WW2. The film now goes into flashback with Fox narrating.

Duryea is charge of a squadron taking reconnaissance photos for missions to be flown by the US 8th Air Force. Duryea is known in the unit as a tough and hard commander, disliked by his men. His personal aircrew hold him responsible for the death of his popular co-pilot during a mission. Joining the crew is a new co-pilot, Mike Connors.

It is now time to introduce the female of the piece, Frances Gifford. Gifford is a war correspondent assigned to do a story on the recon group. Needless to say she falls for the dashing co-pilot, Connors, and the pair are soon an item.

The heavy bombers have just returned from a raid over the heavily defended German city, Bremen. They need someone to do a flight over the city to see if another raid is needed. Duryea and his crew draw the assignment. They are sent off into less than stellar weather conditions to get the pictures.

When they arrive over Bremen, the cloud cover forces their B-25 down low to get their photos. The ship takes a load of anti-aircraft fire and several of the crew are killed. The plane just barely makes it over the channel back to England for a crash landing. The remaining crew including a wounded, Connors, blame Duryea for being reckless and getting their comrades killed.

While Connors is in hospital to recover from his wounds, the unit is shipped off to North Africa. And so is war correspondent, Gifford. Connors follows once the medical repairs heal.

The unit is now switched over to flying B-24 Liberators and assigned to fly on the raid against the Polesti oil fields in Romania. They face heavy Axis resistance and Duryea's aircraft is shot down. The B-24 manages to crash land in Yugoslavia, where the crew is soon grabbed up by the local partisans. Duryea and the boys have valuable photos of the raid high-lighting several oil installations missed in the raid. The surviving crew makes it to the coast, to be whisked away by a partisan fishing boat to safety.

This is not a good film. It has that filmed in a week look to it for a reason. Principal filming only took 8 days. The rest of the production time was spent sewing together the myriad of combat footage used to pad out the run time. The story, if one can call it that, is sub-par at best, even for a Sam Katzman production.

The director, Fred Sears, pumped out close to 50 films during his (1949-1958) career. Quite a lot of it was low rent drivel like this one, but he did turn out a few watchable films such as, WORLD WITHOUT END, UTAH BLAINE, RUMBLE ON THE DOCKS, THE 49th MAN, CELL 2455 DEATH ROW and CHICAGO SYNDICATE.

This was the third film for Mike "Touch" Connors, who after a career in b-fodder, would strike gold with the long running (1967-1975) Private Detective series, MANNIX. It was also the last film for former star, Frances Gifford. One can only guess that Dan Duryea had no idea what he was signing up for when he joined this production.

The stock footage used is all jumbled up and has B-25, B-24, A-20, Stuka, various marks of Me 109, P-40, F-86 and P-80 aircraft being shown. There is even a segment used during the Polesti raid with C-47's transports on screen. The model work is also less than stellar.

Having said all this, it does only have a run time of 69 minutes.

I have seen worst

[searchanddestroy-1 · 28 March 2008]

Let's be fair. When you watch a Fred Sears' movie produced by the sinister, the infamous Sam Katzman, you can't expect to see a masterpiece.

This little war movie doesn't make exception. It's not really boring, only 69mn, and we can appreciate the presence of the young Mike Connors before he lost himself in Roger Corman films.

We can note the use - and not a few - of the stock shots, nearly one quarter of the film is only stock shots. Aerial gunfights. This scenes inside the airplanes on fire are ridiculous, laughable. And the poor Dan Duryea can't save this picture, as he saves his aircraft...

With Sam Katzman as the real boss of this film, Fred Sears couldn't make it. Absolutely impossible.

But I have seen worse. Sam Katzman movies - and especially serials - of course !!!

Not so much a movie as a raid on the combat footage library

[elijahbailey · 1/10 · 22 September 2008]

This film, with the merest of story lines to hold it together, is really just an excuse to cobble together stock combat footage, both American and German, of a mixture of American bombers, mostly B-25 Mitchells, but also B-17 Flying Fortresses, B-24 Liberators, and an occasional B-26 Marauder, all of which get intercut without regard to any sense of continuity. All cockpit interiors are of a B-25, interior fuselage shots appear to be B-26s, and in the latter half of this so-called "film", on a mission in B-24s, the close-up of the cockpit is a B-26. High-level B-24 group footage is mixed with Ploesti low-level training and mission footage without any regard to believability. Several crash sequences created for the movie are hokey-looking models. What little new-shot footage of flying done is all of training B-25s in a southwestern U.S. location without unit markings or tailcodes, intercut with stock footage of flying formations in combat paintschemes. The same stock shots of German 88 mm. anti-aircraft guns are reused several times.

When the main pilot's "B-24" is hit, the long-shot of it going down is a Boeing B-17, followed by a cheesy Liberator model crashing. Cut to five "survivors", supposedly down in Yugoslavia, who are repatriated within minutes, with the film wrapping up almost immediately thereafter.

As for a plot, there really isn't one. Bad acting, poor script - stay away from this stinker unless you just want to see combat film.

For those who must see every movie ever made about World War II.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 8 October 2022]

I'm a fan of Dan Duryea, but I must say that he is better as a film more villain or anti-hero than as a generic World War II hero. The film deals with his colonel character's dealings with lieutenant Mike Connors, a story told in flashback by Duryea's commanding officer, Michael Fox, rather perplexing due to the exposition of complex issues within flying missions, not really interesting overall unless the viewer has some knowledge of these kinds of issues or aware of the technical terms utilized. I found it rather boring and easy to be distracted during my viewing of it, even though it's obvious that the writers were well meaning in their motivations.

The only female role is a military journalist played by Frances Gifford so there's little as far as romantic subplot is concerned. The scenes of Duryea and Conners flying is intermingled with stock footage that is far too obvious to look realistic and conjunction with the rest of the movie. Duryea's character, even with being a devoted pilot, isn't sympathetic in any way, and Conners is purposely insubordinate in a way that would lead to a court martial, particularly in wartime. This fails overall to really pull the viewer into caring about either of the characters.