Perfectly adorable

Lack of good storyline.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

"Air Hawks" is a B-movie from Columbia Pictures. Yet, despite its very low budget and modest cast, it is entertaining--in a breezy and light way. In other words, as long as you aren't expecting magic, you'll probably be reasonably pleased with this one.Ralph Bellamy stars as Barry Eldon--the head of a tiny air service. Yet, surprisingly, a much larger air transport company is afraid of the competition and try to buy him out. But, despite their very generous offer, Barry rejects it and has no intention of selling. Now here is were it gets very weird--his competitors find a goody mad scientist and pay him to create a death ray in order to knock Barry's planes out of the sky!! I saw a similar plot in several other low-budget films--perhaps influenced by Tesla's odd experiments with death rays and electricity.Overall, this is a nice little adventure film--and makes a decent time-passer. However, it is also worth seeing for one odd reason--late in the film, Wiley Post plays himself! And, only three months later, this famous aviator would die in the same crash that killed Will Rogers. Fascinating coincidence, huh?

Air Hawks (1935) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Really weird Columbia "B" picture about a small, independent airline company, ran by Ralph Bellamy, who are competing for a contract against a major company. The major company fears they're going to lose the contract so they hire a mad scientist (an uncredited Edward Van Sloan) to build a death ray so they can shoot down the rivals planes. The business and romance side of this film are certainly routine but the sci-fi/horror elements are what really makes this film unique. Bellamy is good in his role bringing his usual charm to the screen but Van Sloan is downright over the top as the mad scientist but this brings a few laughs. I'm somewhat shocked this film got past the code back in the day since some of the violence, which includes pilots burning and crashing their planes, is pretty strong. Another interesting note is that real life pilot Wiley Post has a role here and we would die in a real crash soon after with Will Rogers.

Barry Eldon runs an air service trying to get a government mail contract (what an original idea for an aviation film) who is having his planes crack up for some unknown reason. Victor Arnold, hiding behind the appearance of a respectable businessman, is the man behind the attacks who uses the services of Professor Schulter, who has created a destruction ray which is being used to bring the planes down. Facing ruin, Eldon plans to take his new speed plane on a round-the-world flight to show the country that he will risk flying his plane, but beforehand he plans to try to expose Arnold as well as find out who he is taking orders for, and this information may come sooner than he thinks when Eldon and Arnold are up in a plane targeted by Schulter's machine. Basically this B film used every cliché from every aviation movie made through that point and for a few years after so there is nothing special w/ the general plot, however the film actually uses a couple of nice plot devices of having a femme fatale whose ultimate purpose is unknown to us. The most fascinating part of the film is the appearance by famed aviator Wiley Post, only a few months before his fatal airplane crash. Enjoyable film, Rating, 6.

'Air Hawks' is a rousing good adventure story, starring Ralph Bellamy in one of his rare outings as a two-fisted action hero. (Bellamy was more typically cast in romantic comedies, as the guy who lost the girl to a better man.) Here, he plays a former Army pilot who sets up his own low-budget air-courier service. Bellamy hopes to get a lucrative federal contract, flying bags of mail cross-country. A previous air service lost the contract because their 'planes kept mysteriously crashing.Veteran movie villain Douglass Dumbrille is in this movie, cast as a 'respectable businessman', so it's obvious who's behind the air crashes ... and that's not a spoiler. The action cuts back and forth between Bellamy's good-guy flyboys and Dumbrille's secret hideout, so the audience know the reason for those 'plane crashes well ahead of Bellamy. Hoping to get the mail contract for himself, Dumbrille has engaged the services of an eccentric professor named Schulter ... who has invented an 'electrical ray': a gigantic unwieldy device that he points into the air, which conveniently bollixes any electrical motor that passes overhead. I would have thought that most 1930s aircraft were powered primarily by internal combustion, with electricity being only secondary. But Schulter's gizmo works a treat, and pretty soon the pretty aeroplanes are dropping like stones. Professor Schulter (a very brief role) is played by Edward Van Sloan, who famously played the ethically-responsible scientist in several monster movies, so it's very interesting to see him here as a scientist who uses his knowledge for evil purposes. The presence of Schulter's electrical ray makes 'Air Hawks' technically a science-fiction movie, but the whole film has the feel of a Saturday-morning adventure serial, with the emphasis on thrills rather than gadgetry.The most interesting name in this cast list is that of Wiley Post, who is now remembered only as the pilot in the fatal 'plane crash that killed Will Rogers. (Matters were not helped by the Broadway musical 'The Will Rogers Follies', which reduced Wiley Post's entire life to a cheap plot device.) It's unfortunate that Post is so poorly remembered. In the 1930s, most Americans knew of Post for his record-setting exploits as a pioneer of high-altitude flight. He invented a pressure suit designed to keep an aviator alive at high altitudes. Post was also the first pilot to fly around the Earth, and the first person to experience jet lag.Many 1930s films (especially those made at Warner Bros) featured a useful cinematic device, in which brief clips of the principal actors are shown during the opening credits, with the actors' names (and the names of their roles in the film) superimposed on these images. This very helpful practice enabled filmgoers to match an actor's name to a face. That device is used in the opening credits of 'Air Hawks', with Wiley Post prominently listed as playing himself. After that brief clip, however, we see no more of the great aviator until more than halfway through this film, when Wiley Post ambles onto the screen very briefly to offer a few words of encouragement to Bellamy's beleaguered pilot. It's clear that the filmmakers worship Post, and rightly so. Except for newsreel footage, 'Air Hawks' is Wiley Post's only film appearance, so it's regrettable that his participation is so brief. (Maybe he had to catch a flight.) I also enjoyed a brief appearance by Elise Cavanna, the tall and gawky (yet attractive) comic actress who performed so memorably in a couple of WC Fields movies at this time.'Air Hawks' is a delight from start to finish, one of those movies that nostalgia enthusiasts talk about when they say that Hollywood "doesn't make 'em like that any more". I'll rate this movie 10 out of 10.