Aces High

Enzo Matrix said the following on 29/08/2008 21:29:

It's a film that somehow reflects more of the the era it was made in more than the era it is portraying, something akin to the style of Flambards, otherwise Tom Brown's School Days with planes.

It must be coming around to Christmas already as this film was a midnight space filler at one time. Far better they give us High Flight (in colour) as that has not been on in more than a decade. Lots of Hunter and Vampire air display team footage taken (air to air) from one of the type.

From what I recall it was very disappointing as it was a really antiwar movie and pretty nihilistic. Most of the aircraft are ex-"The Blue Max" at least so they don't look bad. Plot sort of like a UK cross of the aforementioned "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and "All Quiet on the Western Front" except that Malcolm McDowell lives and nearly everyone else gets killed.

Cookie Sewell

PS Agree, "High Flight" with Ray Milland and Anthony Newley much better one, and would love to see it in color!

"Journey's End" with biplanes. ("Journey's End" is itself a very powerful play, but much of its power is due to the claustrophobic setting which intensifies the understated emotion. Don't miss the chance to see it in a theatre, acted by a good cast--but with airplanes? No.)

Somebody on YouTube compiled the main dogfight scenes from the movie into an eight-minute clip. The SE5s are mostly converted Stampes, and the German planes are a mix of Bucker Jungmeisters, replica Eindeckers, Stearmans, Tiger Moths and a VL Viima.

Stephen "FPilot" Bierce/IPMS #35922

snipped-for-privacy@aol.com said the following on 30/08/2008 01:46:

I didn't realise that there was a black and white version out there as the copy I have, recorded from one of the UK Gold cable channels about

You are welcome to a copy but as it's from a VHS recording to DVD, initially it's spoilt by the slight swimming of pixels but that's soon forgotten.

on 8/29/2008 8:46 PM snipped-for-privacy@aol.com said the following:

Maybe ask Ted Turner to colorize it. :-)

on 8/30/2008 7:19 AM Richard Brooks said the following:

Just checked on the IMDB site for the film. Under Additional Details, the UK version was in color, the US version in B&W. How did that happen?

willshak said the following on 30/08/2008 13:04:

I know! I couldn't work that out either when I first saw that.

Richard Brooks said the following on 30/08/2008 14:25:

Anyway, I've just uploaded a short clip of High Flight to Youtube for a while so that others may see some of the footage and demand that we all get to see the full film! ;-)

You can jump past the Title sequence at 1:52.

Thanks for the comments everyone. In the end I watched about twenty minutes of it, got bored and decided to do something more interesting instead..

producer?