JohnHowardReid
Director: LEWIS SEILER. Screenplay: Raymond Schrock. Photography: Ted McCord. Film editor: Frank Magee. Art director: Stanley Fleischer. Gowns: Howard Shoup. Music: William Lava. Dialogue director: Harry Seymour. Assistant director: William Kissell. Sound recording: Robert B. Lee. Producer: Bryan Foy.Copyright 17 April 1940 by Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. A Warner Brothers-First National picture. New York opening at the Palace: 3 July 1940. U.S. release: 1 June 1940. Australian release: 14 March 1940 (sic). 5,027 feet. 55 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Spies attempt to make off with the plans for the U.S. Navy's "inertia projector". COMMENT: This follow-up to Smashing the Money Ring (1939) is adequate enough as a support, although the promised sci-fi "inertia projector" (which supposedly turns off all machinery including trains, cars and street lamps) turns out to be rather tame. Never mind, Miss Lys makes an attractive femme fatale, while Mr Reagan plays the all-American hero for rather more than the part is worth. The scenes on the dirigible are worth waiting for. Mr Foy, of course, is a pain, but at least he drops out of the action for a spell. The film's chief disappointment lies in the casting of that fine actor James Stephenson who is forced to make the best of a rather silly role as chief of a foreign spy ring.
Neil Doyle
The fourth in the "Brass Bancroft" series is the best. Once again, RONALD REAGAN plays the confident government man whose job it is to expose spies led by JAMES STEPHENSON, the accented villain. It has the flavor of an extended Saturday afternoon serial, the kind that movie fans came to expect as a steady diet during the '30s and '40s.All the ingredients for such an adventurous tale are here--a mysterious man with a tattoo on his arm; a ring of spies; good guys putting themselves into dangerous positions by posing as gangsters; and the inevitable conclusion with the spies efficiently disposed of by U.S. agents on their trail.And once again, one gets the impression that Ronald Reagan was indeed being groomed for stardom as an Errol Flynn type of action star in his early days. He once described himself as the "Errol Flynn of the B-films" and it's an apt description.Simplistic spy story made a year before Pearl Harbor, has its best moments when it uses actual footage from a dirigible disaster at sea with the footage blended evenly with studio scenes aboard the dirigible before it crashes. It's the last twenty minutes or so that makes the whole thing worth watching.Fortunately for Reagan, it wasn't long after this one that the studio began putting him in A-films where he eventually earned his leading man status and became a dependable fixture throughout the forties.
fedya-1
Ronald Reagan the actor is often panned, largely in my opinion because of his politics. Those who would denigrate his acting career should watch a movie like "Murder in the Air". It was designed as a B-movie, and barely reaches that level. But the reasons for that are not Reagan's fault. Reagan is saddled with a threadbare plot about saboteurs wanting to destroy a government weapon, and he's a T-man who has to infiltrate the ring. This is bad enough, but the climax is set aboard a dirigible, which, three years after the explosion of the Hindenburg, is wholly unrealistic. Worse, Reagan's cast alongside a bunch of near-nobodies (Lya Lys??); and, with a running time of only 55 minutes, there's not much time for a good story to develop. But Reagan tries his best, and succeeds in making the movie reasonably watchable.
Chris Gaskin
Murder In the Air was the fourth movie to star future President Ronald Reagan as agent Ross Bancroft. This is at present the only one of this series I've seen and was rather impressed.A man with a tattoo of a circle and arrow is found dead after a rail crash and he turns out to be hobo with £50,000 on him. Bancroft and his sidekick are sent to investigate. The investigation eventually sends them onto an airship, Mason, which could be blown up...Murder in the Air is worth catching if you get the chance as it is rather hard to get hold of. A good way of spending just under an hour.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.
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