Vince Heldon (Howard Keel) is a divorced father of two children, Don (Lee Aaker) and Janet (Linda Lowell), who lost the custody battle with his ex-wife, Nora (Patricia Medina), and now only gets to see his kids six weeks out of the year. Vince has remarried, his wife, Julie (Jane Greer), bonding immediately with the kids. At the end of their six week visit, they put the kids on a plane back home only to hear that the plane crashed somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. Vince, a pilot, undertakes the rescue mission with friend and co-pilot, Brandy (Keenan Wynn) to find the crash site, hoping to find his kids if they survived. The search radius is immense though, and the search is made more difficult when Nora arrives on-site, wanting to take over. Out in the wilderness, Don and Janet struggle for survival, coping with dwindling supplies and a marauding mountain lion.
There is no way this movie should have been as bad as it actually is, but somehow and some way, it ends up being truly bad. Let's get the few positives out of the way early because it won't take long. Keel and Greer are very good together with a genuine chemistry between them. Keel is most well-known for his singing ability in MGM musicals, but he shows he is more than capable of playing a leading role without actually singing. Above all else -- especially his past demons rooted in his marriage with Nora -- he puts everything on the line to find his kids. Greer too as the stepmother delivers a good performance, a woman in a tricky spot who does what's best for the family as opposed to what's best for her. That's about it in the positives though so let's get to the roasting!
With a movie that doesn't even reach a length of 75 minutes, one might think you're heading into an action-packed, tense, adrenaline-pumping movie that never slows down. Of course, director Joseph H. Lewis might not have gone along for that line of thinking. With just 73 minutes to work with, Lewis finds a way to make this movie boring, mostly with a fascination of planes flying around, taking off, landing, stuff like that. At least a half hour has to be long shots of planes flying over the Canadian wilderness, repeated over and over again. The scenery is gorgeous, but there's a limit as to how much you could and should show, especially in an already short movie.
Then there is the soap opera aspect of this MGM gem. The search and rescue mission for two little kids seems like a natural enough jumping off point for a highly dramatic story, doesn't it? I thought so. Even Keel's Vince and Greer's Julie seem to think so. The Nora character on the other hand....well, she forgot. Their failed marriage obviously tore both people apart, but Nora came out on top as Vince retreated into the bottle, losing custody of his kids. From the second she arrives to "help" the rescue mission, Nora seems more concerned about her ex-husband than the safety of her own two children. Maybe this is just a poorly written character, but her motivations seem ridiculous. What mother in her right mind is more worried about putting their ex in their place than rescuing the children from certain death?
And now we come to the portion of the review where I feel bad for ripping a child actor, but as one performance here shows, it needs to be ripped. Just nine years old at the time, Lee Aaker is a strong point for the movie, the brave, resolute and protective brother who's going to do whatever he can to save his little sister. God bless little Linda Lowell, but she could be the most excruciatingly annoying child I've ever seen in a movie. It's not just that she whines, but how she whines; a high-pitched, gravelly, sobbing whine that goes right up your back. I tried to rationalize, thinking a little girl just survived a plane crash and is alone in the woods. But she screams, whines, and screams some more, never delivering a line that is not screaming. On the positive, Aaker at one point delivers a line so perfect it was almost as if the screenwriters knew his little sister would be that annoying. As she complains and whines, he mutters "Now why wasn't I born an only child." I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt this way.
Which brings us to the finale as Vince says 'Screw it all' to his ex-wife and the air official who's grounded him from flying. That pesky mountain lion is back, chasing the two kiddies up a tree, Don holding off the advances with a tree branch. Vince arrives in time to save them, literally getting involved in a fight with the mountain lion, one of the most unintentionally hilarious scenes I've ever seen. Oh, and the kids are rescued, Vince ends up with the family he deserved, and Nora is resigned to a life of being a complaining shrew when Wynn's Brandy puts her in her place. Bad movie that just keeps getting badder.
Desperate Search <--- TCM clips (1952): * 1/2 /****
No comments:
Post a Comment