Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Bezenby Let's not beat around the bush here. This film is chronic. Basically an inventor has invented a plane that can be controlled remotely and wants to sell it to some big wig with the help of his eight foot tall buddy, probably named buddy. Basically, there's a point in this when you realise that absolutely nothing is going to happen for the duration of this film except romantic misunderstandings, a crappy battle of the sexes, some slapstick and a healthy dose of racism. Not much action until the last few minutes. Jesus. Only saved from getting a one from the random appearance of Jimmy Krankie at the end.

MartinHafer While you cannot blame the original film makers, the DVD copy of "Emergency Landing" was VERY rough--with a lot of choppy scenes and a scratchy print. I sure that looks like it comes from a '20 Movie Pack' for $5 by Mill Creek--which it did.A very young and inexperienced Forrest Tucker stars in this film. While he later became a good supporting character playing various tough or gruff roles, here he just looks young and lost. I think casting him as the handsome hero was a bit of a mistake and Tucker's personality in the film does nothing to sell the material.The film is about a radio control device for airplanes. I loved the crappy special effects when they tried it out on a model plane, as the plane made completely impossible turns and it made it obvious that it was on a wire. Well, apparently the US Army Air Corps is not the only group who want this ridiculous machine and 'the enemy' have sent out spies to steal it. Since the film came out just before the US entered WWII and this studio was afraid to make waves, they just used generic baddies and made them neither German nor Japanese.There is a guy named 'Pedro' in the film who superficially looks a lot like Leo Carillo's 'Pancho' from "The Cisco Kid"--but Pedro is played in a much broader and cheesier manner. He's like a walking bad stereotype of a 1940s Mexican. I am sure many will cringe when they watch his antics. And, they might cringe when a lady automatically calls Pedro by name. He is surprised she knows his name and she responds "...every Mexican is named Pedro...or Pancho". Wow...how enlightened! But unfortunately, the non-Mexican characters aren't a lot better. Women whine, act petulant and cry, guys stare as if they can't stand the studio lights and the actors look mostly like they're in a high school play.The bottom line is that the film is bad--really bad. The script, editing, direction by William Beaudine and acting are all uniformly bad. And, unfortunately, while the film is about spies, it's amazingly stiff and dull.

classicsoncall "Robot Pilot" starts out like it might be positioning itself as an espionage thriller, but unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your disposition), never even comes close. There are probably more comic elements present than might have been originally intended, so if you approach the flick as a romantic comedy, you might be more pleasantly surprised. Even so, you'll have to endure some pretty stiff acting from then newcomer Forrest Tucker in the lead role of Jerry Barton, a pilot who's half of a team that's developed a remote control device for guiding aircraft. The first attempt at showcasing the new technology for the Lambert Aircraft Company ends in a nosedive, so with Jerry and Doc Williams (Emmett Vogan) sent off packing, they arrive at their desert cabin to start all over again.Most of the rest of the story consists of Barton teaching the women a lesson after catching them with some gasoline taken from a government fuel shed. Make that teaching Betty Lambert (Carol Hughes) a lesson, as her Aunt Maude (Evelyn Brent) eventually learns that Barton is in cahoots with Betty's father to take the wind out of her sails. Throughout the story, it appears that Aunt Maude is having the best time of it all, while casting a romantic eye in the direction of good old Doc.The espionage angle is brought back to the forefront when a Lambert test bomber is hijacked by veteran character actor I. Stanford Jolley. That plane crashes, but it brings Jolley hobbling along until he arrives at Doc's remote cabin. Think about it for a moment, and I know these old films relied on this kind of coincidence, but how is it that Betty and Maude, and then Lambert employee Karl (Jolley), make their way clear across the country from 'back East', and wind up virtually within a mile or two of a remote cabin in a desert, which just happens to be where former Lambert employee Barton is holed up with his partner. Sort of defies all the laws of probability, yet it happens all the time in flicks of the era.I guess that's why the presence of Billy Curtis in the finale is so surprising and bewildering. As the traveling midget circuit Judge, Curtis slaps the girls with a twenty dollar fine for 'stealing' twenty gallons of gasoline, prompting Aunt Maude to directly deadpan the camera - "Did you see what I saw?" I think it might have been just another way of asking the viewer what they thought of the picture.

Leslie Howard Adams Because of a back-log of war orders, the Lambert Airplane factory is unable to try-out the robot-controlled plane developed by test pilot Jerry Barton (Forrest Tucker) and weather bureau observer, "Doc" Williams (Emmett Vogan). The pair lie in wait for factory owner George B. Lambert (William Halligan)while he is playing golf with his spoiled débutant daughter, Betty (Carol Hughes), and send up their radio-controlled model where Lambert cannot fail to notice it. But Jerry sets the model down in a pool of water and douses Betty, in a P.R.C. version of a "cute meeting." Hey, M-G-M has some cute meetings worse than this one, none which provided a lobby card showing skin-up-past the skivvies. In the scene, Carol Hughes is playing golf wearing a short white skirt---real, real short---and Forrest Tucker has picked her up...and the skirt has risen and there is a shot showing most of the bottom half of Miss Hughes' fancy panties and very shapely rear end. The still photographer caught it, and it was used as in inset on the one-sheet poster, the press book cover and on the Title Card of the 12x14 lobby card set, and also as a full scene on the 8th card of the set. The Breen Office also caught it, and P.R.C. had to hire an artist to come in and draw a white skirt extending well past Miss Hughes knees, and that is what is currently shown on the one-sheet, the press book cover and the 12x14 title card. But the Breen censor must have missed seeing lobby card number eight in the set, and Miss Hughes is still shown on it in all of her well-dimpled glory. And a mighty nice card it is. No, of course it's not for sale.Anyway, old dad Lambert authorizes Jerry and Doc to test their remote-controlled robot pilot on one of his planes for the Army. Jerry flies the plane up, bails out and Doc is to land the plane using his remote control box. But foreign agents, wishing to hamper the development of the robot pilot, have tampered with the controls, and Doc is unable to pull the plane out of a spin, and it crashes. Lambert fires Jerry and he and Doc return to the remote weather outpost to do more work on their invention.Cute Meeting number Two occurs when Betty, on her way to Hollywood to be a movie star, is driving across the desert with her Aunt Maude (Evelyn Brent) and runs out of gas,and Betty borrows some gas belonging to the U.S. government, and is caught by Jerry. He decides to place her under arrest, pending the arrival, in a week's time, of the U.S. Marshal. But, alas, nothing happens in this scene to incur the wrath of the Breen office, unless they made Martin Mooney write in Aunt Maude to ensure Betty and Jerry would have a full-time chaperon for the week, although Evelyn Brent is not the run-of-the-mill chaperon type. Patsy Kelly or Mary Treen must have been unavailable...thank goodness.Anyway, Jerry makes Betty and Aunt Maude do housework and chores, and seeing any character played by Evelyn Brent doing housework is, if not cute, unique. And the spies steal a plane, crash in the desert, show up and make some trouble, and try to get away in a car in which Betty and Aunt Maude are hiding in the trunk and some more stuff.