Nonureva Really Surprised!

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

swjg William Wellman's direction of an adaption of Ernie Gann's book of the same name starring John Wayne as "Dooley".Based on a true WWII incident which Gann was party to - the pilots of the Air Transport Command can't believe that "Dooley is down!" - somewhere in the frozen wastes to the North West of track, somewhere in the uncharted mountains. Dooley is their best pilot. If Dooley is down - what hope for the rest of them? Their commander agrees and writes Dooley off. Some of the men almost mutiny and insist on a search for one of their own.The film opens with perhaps one of the best depictions of a DC3 getting iced up till she is too heavy to fly and a desperate descent through cloud - hoping for the best - and miraculously breaking out at "lake minimums" (meaning just time to get the wheels down) before touching down on a frozen lake. While played for Hollywood effect - the wing boots busting off the ice and it clattering down the sides of the fuselage as the plane sinks into the clouds give the opening of the film a real sense of drama.The rest of the film slows right down and portrays just how hard a search and rescue attempt was back in the day - and even is now. The crew have lit a signal fire - but when on top of a hill realize themselves just how pitiful a signal it is.The hand cranked emergency radio uses hundreds of precious calories in order to send out a homing signal. The crews in the aircraft can barely hear it due to thunderstorms, static and competing AM radio stations on the same frequency.John Wayne as "Dooley" plays a remarkably understated "John Wayne" and is quite believable as a vulnerable pilot in command - sure of some of his decisions and instincts about staying put till help finds them while being remarkably unsure of himself. A very unconventional role for John Wayne.The crew on the ice are overflown and overlooked and start to die of the cold. What now for Dooley and his remaining men?

classicsoncall For a fair amount of time into the story I suspected that John Wayne was somewhat miscast as Captain Dooley, heading a crew of airmen who force landed their Corsair plane in a vast, uninhabited region of Canadian tundra. It seemed to place him in a passive position as opposed to say, leading a rescue team to find the unfortunate fliers. This all quickly changed during the telling of the story, as Dooley had to summon all the intestinal fortitude he could muster in order to buck up his men's spirits and make decisions in the face of diminishing food, fuel and prospects of a rescue.The picture has an unusually strong supporting cast, though considering the year it was made, a lot of these players probably weren't household names yet. Andy Devine certainly would have been for his many years in movie and TV Westerns, and Lloyd Nolan as well. But James Arness still looked pretty much like a young kid at thirty years old. He had an interesting scene where he got pretty emotional when one of Dooley's transmissions finally makes it proving they were still alive. Paul Fix, another staple character actor of the Western film genre also appears as one of the rescue pilots. You go down the cast list and you surprise yourself with additional names like Bob Steele, Harry Carey Jr., Fess Parker and Gordon Jones, and say, wasn't that Alfalfa Switzer in a co-pilot seat as Sonny Hopper? The film is like a trivia contest come to life.The most heart wrenching scene had to be when one of Dooley's crewmen (Sean McClory as Frank Lovatt) strikes out on his own and gets lost in the fury of an oncoming storm, talking to himself and attempting to back track his footsteps until he succumbs to the elements. There's a bizarre quality to the man's dialog, and the scene is given added poignancy when it's revealed he was within sight of the downed plane when he gives up."Island in the Sky" was made in conjunction with Warner Brothers and John Wayne's own production company BatJac, just about a year before another aviation movie starring Wayne, "The High and the Mighty". Both films were part of the Wayne estate following his death and held in limbo by the family for many years. The later film also has a stellar cast, but suffers in my estimation from a much heralded eleven minute countdown to survival that takes about three times as long in the telling, thereby exhausting the viewer's patience for a resolution. In terms of a recommendation between the two films, flip a coin and then pick this one.

Spikeopath Island in the Sky is directed by William A. Wellman and adapted by Ernest K. Gann from his own novel of the same name. It stars John Wayne, Lloyd Nolan, James Arness, Andy Devine, Harry Carey Junior, James Lydon, Hal Baylor, Sean McClory, Wally Cassell and Allyn Joslyn. Music is by Emil Newman and cinematography by Archie Stout and William H. Clothier.Captain Dooley (Wayne) and the rest of the crew of the Douglas C-3 Skytrain are forced to emergency land in an icy unchartered section of Labrador, Canada. While waiting and hoping for rescue, the men have to suffer hunger and extreme winter conditions. But as the rescue team formed back at ATH soon finds out, locating the stricken men will not be easy, thus the days start to tick by...Long out of circulation due to legal issues, Island in the Sky came out of the clouds in 2005 to be rightly reappraised. It's a film that is very much a mixed bag yet easy to recommend to classic movie fans.Tech credits are near exemplary, with Stout, Clothier and Wellman really making this something of an aviation themed essential. The cast, too, are almost across the board impressive with the principals each contributing something of worth to the story, and while Newman's score is not for everyone, it pitches the blends just right for dramatic and emotional worth. However, much of the drama is shunted off the runway by cutaways to scenes of pointless comedy relief, flashbacks that do nothing but take you out of the human survival interest and the narration tool is badly used. Yet with an air of authenticity about the portrayal of the search and rescue operation, the men under survival circumstance dynamic at film's core, picture comes out in credit to defy its obvious flaws. 7/10

nomoons11 I'll start off by saying that I'm no John Wayne fan. I never liked his wooden western portrayals. They were all alike. I didn't know what to expect with this one but what a surprise...it's an absolute winner.I think this one succeeds because John Wayne isn't the "whole" star of this. This film has an incredible cast that outdo Wayne in most scenes. Most of the film the supporting cast is what you see and boy they really get it done...with conviction.The premise is Dooley and his crew are on their way home from a trip and they run into bad weather over northern Canada and have to crash land the plane in a baron area on the Tundra. The other crew's at their home base in Maine find out and they all proceed to try and find where's he's at in time...before they freeze to death. Here's where the meat of the film is.I can't say enough how great the supporting cast is. They are this film. From James Arness right down to ole Alfalfa from Our gang. They all pitch in make this film a worthy watch.Take a chance on this one and you'll walk away cheering at the end.