Desperate Cargo (1941)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

A gang of thieves led by a former pilot named Professor Carter hijack the Trans-Caribbean Airways seaplane known as the "Caribbean Cruiser" when it is making its way to Miami. Aboard the plane, the company's purser Tony Bronson, who has been given a lifeline after getting thrown in jail for a barroom brawl after discovering that his new girlfriend is a gold digger who conned him for a plane ticket to New York, is forced to help the gang steal the safe. Carter shoots the navigator & co-pilot dead & locks the crew & passengers in their cabins. Bronson is left alone in case he might become useful. Indeed Bronson attempts to stop the crooks by stealing one of their pistols.Desperate Cargo is an ancient crime thriller made during World War II. It is directed by William "One Shot" Beaudine, known for his work on The Green Hornet & also directing the horror-Western Billy the Kid versus Dracula. The plot is taken from a magazine serial written four years earlier.The film is an interesting heist thriller that has some reasonable excitement but is nearly sunk by the flat dramatics & cheap comedy angle that precedes the actual hijack. The theatrics exhibited by Julie Duncan & Carol Hughes as a pair of gold diggers who con hero Ralph Byrd for a pair of airline tickets are stupid & don't serve the story too well. It is a known fact that most, if not all, thrillers during the 1930s & 1940s had comedy routines forced onto them to suit the era, something that dates them badly when seen today. In its defence, Desperate Cargo is okay when seen against this backdrop but the actual heist, when it does occur, is a bit too low-key to actually work – the robbery needed more room in order to work properly. Having said that, the film has some routine fights & the scene where Byrd sneaks out of the plane in order to open the cargo compartment & free his fellow crew while the passengers keep the criminals at bay with their captured pistol is the highlight of the film.

An action movie about a hijack, with Byrd foreboding something of Willis' outline, but in a dissimilar role, and Jolley making a sharp mastermind, though the hijackers' plans are relatively easily foiled; it's also very unlike later disaster movies, and as such it's not really more than a heralding of certain elements of a much later genre, here the plot is a bit meager, and most of the story-line is a romance, with a virtuous purser and a reluctant swindler girl. What this movie has is some sympathy for its characters, a feel for them, which is nicely mirrored and boosted by a delightful cast: Byrd, Mulhall, Julie Duncan (who deservedly got the leading lady), Jolley, Harlan, Edwards, Hagney, H. Depp. Blanca Vischer and Vallin have bit parts. For the two 3rd s of romance, the leading man was perhaps less glamorous than required, but then again the movie's style has a predilection for ordinary people, and this everyday look of the lead may serve it; I like him, but am fonder of other nowadays unjustly underrated action players of the '30s.Young (the purser, the two girls, the racketeer) and older (the newspaperman, the dignified captain) players, and good character actors.The few passengers are cordially nettled for their blunders.The liveliest character is Ann, who tries to disarm a brute and is assaulted by him. And the actress' performance has a refreshing quality.An otherwise knowledgeable reviewer contributed a goofy review; the player who takes down his coat and shirt, and 'strips down to his undershirt', is Byrd, not Mulhall. The newspaperman is played by Mulhall, not by Byrd. The cheerful Edwards is Thornton, not Thomas. And the henchman ought to be a match for Byrd, not for the mild Mulhall.The undisclosed secret might be that this movie was aimed at an audience of women. The only convincing menace is the rape. The heist takes place on a plane that is hijacked and then set afloat, so there's no disaster impending, and no fright of the passengers because of an insecure flight; it might of been in a stagecoach or on a train, or in a railway station. Yet, there is an use of the sets, of the space, which gives this caper a modern look, more akin to '80s and '90s hostages dramas, than to '70s disaster thrillers …; the floating plane is filmed more like a building would be, with rooms, empty corridors …. But the gangsters, and with them the movie's director, seem to handle the heist clumsily, a bit loosely, a bit carelessly, like it had been an afterthought; instead of being the core, it's telegraphed, sketched, in what is mainly a romance (and I understand why this could be a woman's idea of a disaster movie, as the thing seems directed to a female audience). To viewers accustomed to 75 more yrs of heist movies, capers and hostages dramas, the heist plot seems somewhat silly. Is this all, the lead strips a bit and then swims near the floating plane? The thrust obviously was the romance, and not this reel of action. And the shocking brutality, if it may be called so, belonged to the rape attempt, not to the manly fights. The long setup isn't only a setup, but a romance. I expected to like this movie much more than I actually did (but the more I think about this movie as a romance, the more I like it). But if you don't misinterpret it as an action movie, as the misleading title prompts you to, there is a romance, quite charming and subdued beneath the screwball.

I kept picturing what an effectively done remake of this movie today might come up with, because it had all the neat elements needed for a thriller combining air travelers trapped with gangsters in a confined space with no way out. But in the 1940's it seems, and even later, there wasn't very much in the way of creativity to keep the suspense going for a sustained period of time. Can you imagine a henchman any more bumbling than Ryan (Richard Clarke) getting distracted by a pretty face, or losing a gun in his very first skirmish? And he came highly recommended! "Desperate Cargo" actually isn't all that bad, though the print I viewed was distractingly full of annoying jump cuts and quick scene changes. Most times continuity wasn't lost, but you had conversations sometimes interrupted in mid sentence. It was amusing to hear the island town of Puerta Nueve pronounced differently by at least three characters in the story.Ralph Byrd heads up the cast as purser Tony Bronson on a Trans-Caribbean Airways cruiser, quickly paired off with Ann Howard (Julie Duncan), one half of a singing sister act, the other half being Peggy Morton (Carol Hughes). You know, it would have been a nice touch if they actually got to do a number in the picture, I kept waiting for one. I really couldn't wrap my mind around the story's romantic angle for her and newspaper reporter Jim Halsey (Jack Mulhall), but let's give credit to Halsey for trying. It seems I. Stanford Jolley found some time in between a corral full of Westerns to appear here as the lead villain Carter; I liked the wheel chair gimmick, nice touch.All in all, as another reviewer on this board has noted, the film is largely forgettable once it's over, but the ride to the finale is entertaining enough. I've only seen one of Ralph Byrd's 'Dick Tracy' films, but he has the distinction, through no fault of his own, in having appeared in one of the movies on my all time Top Ten Worst list - "Blake of Scotland Yard". If you're faced with a decision, go with "Desperate Cargo".

This is the film version of amnesia, or Chinese food, five minutes after you watch it you've completely forgotten what you've seen. Thats not a bad thing because the movie is entertaining while you watch it but if you're looking for something that stays with you after you've seen it I'd try something else.The story concerns several people on a small island who are looking to get back to America. There's two show girl sisters, a reporter and a member of an airplane clipper crew. All are waiting for the plane that will take them to a new job. Into the mix add a band of crooks who are looking to hijack the plane and steal the valuables on board. Half the movie takes place on the island while the other half is on the besieged plane.There is nothing bad about the movie, except that it is forgettable. Then again seeing Ralph Byrd and realizing that this was one of his few starring roles outside of the Dick Tracy serials and TV show is sad. Byrd was an excellent actor with a screen presence that made you instantly like him. The trouble is that he became so identified with the Tracy role he was never really ever given the chance to star in anything other than low budget features after that. Seeing him here as a less than perfect member of the flight crew reminds one of how stupid Hollywood can be when choosing its stars.If you've got an hour or so to kill and you run across this, give it a shot. It won't tax you in the least and will leave you enough room for something meatier later on.