Attractive and fun movie about time travels with frantic action, thrills , humor and spectacular scenes. A bold idea decently adapted in its execution but with a lousy musical score . It deals with a young businessman: Alex Hyde-White from present-day NYC is suddenly transferred into 1917 WWI .There he takes the identity of a spy and befriends a 1917 WWI flying ace : the husky Neal Dickson who has a genteel streak that conceals the viciousness required in war . The posh executive lnexplicably finds himself aboard a fighter plane over Europe.This is an amusing film with emotion, breathtaking scenes, dogfighting , wooden but likeable interpretation and a lot of twists and turns . The much-loved WWI heroics of Biggles , the pilot from Captain WE Johns series of books are updated to 1986 Manhattan via a time travel gimmick, being prior adapted in a long TV series .Time-travel fantasy in which an ingenious executive is transported to Europe WWI and suffering several adventures , risks and dangers. The time-travelling American young is played by the sympathetic Alex Hyde White as a naive executive and his buddy is Neal Dickson as Biggles who is the best thing in a passable film that hardly plays fair with buffs of the original . Support cast is frankly well such as Fiona Hutchinson, Marcus Gilbert , William Hootkins and special mention for the great Peter Cushing in his last acting , playing an important secret agent whose headquarter is in the Tower Bridge .The big drawback is the horrible soundtrack by Stanislas composed by synthesizer , it ruins the film. It packs a colorful and evocative cinematography .The motion pictures was professionally directed by John Hough including some flaws and gaps. Hough is a fine craftsman who has a long, uneven and eclectic career directing all kinds of genres . As he made terror movies: Hell's gate, Howling 4, American Gothic, Incubus , Legend of Hell house, Twins of evil ; Adventures: Treasure island, Escape to Witch Mountain, Return from Witch Mountain, Black arrow , The watcher in the woods, Dirty Mary crazy Larry ; Romantic drama: Duel of hearts , The lady and the highwayman, The dying truth ; Western : Triumphs of a man called Horse; Suspense: Eye witness and WWII : Brass target.

They released this movie on DVD last month (June '04). I can not find it in stores, and I do not want to buy it used because I want it to get credit for getting bought at Best Buy or Suncoast or some other place like that. I think it can be ordered online though. Suncoast.com has it for sure. I just looked as I was writing this. Did you know the opening theme, that violin opening.. is an opening that goes to a Deep Purple song called "Knockin At Your Backdoor." Except they cut the part out just before it starts to rock out. I was just told I needed to put 10 lines in a comment for some strange reason, so here it is.. line number 10.

No-one could have put money on this working. And, of course, in many ways, it doesn't. If I saw it for the first time now, I might hate it. However, I watched it endlessly as a child. An American in the 1980s finds himself shunted back in time to World War II and meets the famous Biggles. The time zones are linked by Biggles' commanding officer, now an old man, and the very 80s Jim finds himself part of a plan to prevent the Germans developing a new weapon. It's cheesy trash. I absolutely love it.

Biggles was originally a WW1 pilot created by Captain W.E Johns in a series of dashing adventure novels. I'm not a purist and I don't mind new twists on old material, but this sci-fi/time-travel slant on the old stories strains the patience beyond belief. It's such a contrived, feeble concept - badly scripted, badly directed and badly acted - that only the most easily satisfied of viewers will enjoy it. You know you're in trouble from the moment the film's cheesy disco-style theme tune, "Do You Want To Be A Hero", kicks in during the opening credits. Young New Yorker James Ferguson (Alex Hyde-White) arrives home at his apartment only to be confronted by a mysterious old Englishman named Colonel Raymond (Peter Cushing). Moments later, there's a mysterious flash of lightning and Ferguson finds himself whisked back in time to a WW1 battlefield, just in time to save the life of ace pilot Biggles (Neil Dickson). It turns out that Ferguson and Biggles are "time twins" and that whenever one is in grave danger, the other will come zapping through time to the rescue. The wittiest moment in the film comes during the final credits, when a monicker comes up on screen reading: "Filmed on location in New York - London - and the Western Front 1917". Other than that, this is a witless affair indeed. It's quite sad to see the legendary Cushing slumming in such a weakly written cameo role. Some of the action sequences set during WW1 rise to the giddy heights of "mediocre", but the 1980s sequences are hopelessly tacky, and the twist ending in which our irritating hero is zapped back to a cave full of cannibal tribesmen is just plain awful. On the whole, Biggles is a monumental example of how low a point entertainment sank to during the era of cinematic junk that was the '80s.