User Reviews

This is a rarity--a movie with Lyle Talbot where he is the leading man. While in A-pictures he was usually a supporting player, he did star in some lesser productions during the early years of his long career.

Talbot plays a man who is oddly nicknamed "Three Star" (why, I have no idea) and he's a hotshot young pilot working for a small airline. While he was supposed to transport government agents and a top scientist along with his recent invention, Talbot is unable to fly because he's beaten by a gang of ruffians. With another pilot at the helm, the ship is lost and it's feared the secret formula was either destroyed or stolen, so it's up to the intrepid Three Star to save the day.

In many ways, this film plays like a movie serial condensed into a short film. With plenty of action and some decent suspense, it's a pretty good time-passer and interesting due to its aerial scenes as well as fast-paced plot. Deep? Not exactly, but still fun nonetheless.

Director: D. ROSS LEDERMAN. Story and screenplay: Roy Chanslor, Dore Schary. Photography: Warren Lynch. Aerial photography: Elmer Dyer. Film editor: Thomas Pratt. Art director: Jack Holden. Costumes: Orry- Kelly. Music played by The Vitaphone Orchestra, conducted by Leo F. Forbstein. Associate producer: Sam Bischoff.

Copyright 3 December 1934 by First National Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Rialto: 25 December 1934. Australian release: 25 February 1935. 7 reels. 61 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: An aviator and his girl friend battle spies who have sabotaged a plane carrying a new type of explosive.

COMMENT: Not a murder mystery, but a straight thriller, routinely if competently directed. However, it's unusual to find a little "B" picture decked out with such impressive aerial photography. And not stock shots either. All the aerial footage was obviously shot especially for this production.

Unfortunately, "Murder in the Clouds" is far less stunning on the ground than in the air. Not that the players don't try their damnedest to make it all succeed. The problems all lie in the script. It's such a wearily routine, totally tinpot affair, that it's very hard to believe that famous writers of the caliber of either Roy Chanslor (Final Edition, Front Page Woman, Johnny Guitar, Cat Ballou) or Dore Schary (Boys Town, Act One) had any hands whatever in its composition. Maybe they were just kidding around and assumed that the movie would be played for laughs rather than thrills!

This slightly boring espionage thriller is short on both length and thrills but saved by several flying sequences where the murder of a scientist on his way to Washington D.C. is shown in flashback and later a chase sequence involving the good guys and the villains. The plot is as twisted as crash wreckage and the performance by leading hero Lyle Talbot so ineffectual that you long for either James Cagney or even George Brent in the lead. The unique looking Ann Dvorak is both feisty and sweet as the stewardess heroine girlfriend, but the lack of chemistry between the two is obvious. With the technical achievements overwhelming the acting and the script, I have to mark this as a disappointment.

Spectacular aerial flying sequences shot by aerial lenser Elmer Dyer distinguish "Tarzan's Revenge" director D. Ross Lederman's criminal conspiracy caper "Murder in the Clouds," a Warner Brothers' B-movie toplining Lyle Talbot and Ann Dvorak. Clocking in at 61 nimble minutes, "Murder in the Clouds" will keep you entertained from fade-in to fadeout. Talbot is cast as blustery "Top Gun" type pilot 'Three Star' Bob Halsey who loves to perform daredevil aerial maneuvers that alarm his desk-bound boss at Trans-America Lines, Lackey (Charles Wilson of "Satan Met a Lady"), but who cannot fire him because he is such an impressive aviator. These reckless stunts worry Halsey's stewardess girlfriend Judy Wagner (Ann Dvorak of "Scarface") who keeps putting off marriage. Lederman and scenarists Dore Schary (later a top executive at MGM who championed social consciousness in films like "Bad Day at Black Rock"), and novelist Roy Chanslor, best known for his western novels "The Ballad of Cat Ballou" and "Johnny Guitar," focus on a case of industrial espionage. A scientist, Clement Williams (Edward McWade of "Arsenic and Old Lace"), has created a new kind of explosive, and a U.S. Government official, Brownell (Henry O'Neill of "), requests that Lackey furnish transportation for Williams to Washington on what Brownell stresses is a top-secret mission. What Lackey doesn't know is that office worker Jason (Arthur Pierson) informs the chief villain Taggart (Russell Hicks) about the flight. Naturally, Lackey assigns 'Three Star' to fly Brownell to Washington, while a group of unscrupulous villains led by urban Taggart want to get their hands on it, too. Taggart sends an accomplice to a local bar where 'Three Star' loves to get drunk. This time our pompous hero claims that he will only be drinking cream soda. Instead, 'Three Star' gets suckered into a bar brawl, and George Wexley (Gordon Westcott) volunteers to take over the flight without anybody warning Lackey about the change in pilots. Writing any more about the sophisticated set-up that enables Wexley to put the secret formula in Taggart's hands would spoil this snappy, fast-paced effort. "Murder in the Clouds" is a lot of fun.