"Dead on Course" is sort of like an American film noir movie but made in the UK. And, like many European films from the 1950s, they lured an American actor (Zachary Scott) to star in the film-- presumably to give the film greater international marketability. Unfortunately, it's still a relatively bland film.Richard (Zachary Scott) is a pilot working for his small air transport company. His friend, Nick, knows Richard's secret--that he occasionally blacks out due to some old injury! So using this as leverage, Nick takes off in a plane during crappy weather---and the plane crashes. What follows is a dark story involving smugglers and Richard trying to sort out who his real friends are.The best thing about this film is Zachary Scott and his dialog. It's pure noir--and works very well. But the rest of the cast all seem very dreary--with limp dialog and an almost complete lack of menace. Not terrible...just not all that interesting.

Taking advantage of arrangements favoured by the UK's Eady levy (a state film subsidy established after the war) in 1950, American producer Robert Lippert formed a business alliance with Hammer studios. Under the agreement, Lippert would provide American acting talent - frequently shop-worn stars or just supporting actors who fancied a profitable trip out of the country - while Hammer would supply the rest of the cast and the production facilities. Together they would split the profits. Famous for his concern with the bottom line, Lippert produced over 140 films between 1946 and 1955, characteristically genre pieces such as I Shot Jesse James or Rocketship XM. For the British deal, most of the films were noir-ish thrillers - and include WINGS OF DANGER.Zachary Scott does a professional enough job as a pilot who faces disaster through suffering unpredictable blackouts. To add to his woes, when his girlfriend's brother appears lost in a cargo plane accident, he falls into a police investigation over blackmail, counterfeiting and smuggling. Robert Beatty and Kay Kendall support in a solid tale never less than watchable, even if not ultimately memorable. Light tramlines from the source print are evident at some points - unusual for a set with generally good picture quality. Kendall seems out of place as a minor femme fatale, too nice to communicate the double-crossing her character demands. Scott's most important noir roles previously were probably Ulmer's Ruthless and Mildred Pierce; here the actor is not helped by fairly anonymous art direction and by a story never really bringing out his internal conflicts.

You know there's a problem when half way through a movie that only lasts an hour and thirteen minutes it seems as if two hours have dragged by. Wings of Danger is another of those Brit noirs where a fading Hollywood name was cast in the lead in hopes of getting some play for the film in America. In this case, the problem with the film is the screenplay; there appears to be no motivation for Richard Van Ness' actions. It doesn't help that Zachary Scott as Van Ness is not too believable when he acts as a tough guy. Van Ness is a pilot working for Boyd Spencer Airlines, a freight-hauling outfit. Nick Talbot (Robert Beatty), a fellow pilot and friend he doesn't seem too friendly with, disappears in a storm over the ocean. Hints of corruption, smuggling, blackmailing and counterfeiting start to show up. But why should we care about any of this? Richard suffers from blackouts and knows at any time he could wind up in the drink or in pieces on the ground. Why does he keep flying? Not only don't we know, the black-out question never turns into a serious plot issue. It just disappears after a big thing is made of it at the start. Why doesn't Richard help the police when they first come to him? There's no reason except to give the screenwriters the chance to show that Richard doesn't take guff from anyone. Why does Richard decide to investigate for himself without telling the police? Who knows?. Since there's no believable motivation, we know we're watching a movie contrived on the assumption that the viewers will be too dull to notice. A major problem is Zachary Scott. Tough guys to be believable need to seem as comfortable doing violence with their fists as well as with their words. Scott's trademark as an actor, however, wasn't his physical presence. Scott's distinctiveness was his way of delivering lines that came across as either suave and sleazy (in his best roles, such as The Mask of Dimitrios and Mildred Pierce) or off-handedly condescending (in most of his other films). In nearly every role he had, he was a hard man to warm up to. If you can picture this in Scott's delivery, you'll have an idea of how the picture doesn't work, both in Scott's believability and in the screen writing: "Nick had taken a sock at the gale and it had socked him back and broken his neck. It was as simple as that. And yet there was a lot of loose ends and ideas that jabbed at my brain and fizzled out to the edge of nowhere..."

When charismatic Nick Talbot (second billed Robert Beatty) disappears after flying into a storm after his partner Richard Van Ness (gravel-voiced Zachary Scott) has ordered the plane to be grounded, it seems not unlikely that (a) he's up to no good and (b) that we'll see him again before the movie's over. Made on a shoestring at Riverside Studios, Hammersmith but supposedly mainly set in Guernsey, this is quite a clever thriller with lively dialogue, though Richard's liability to black out when flying is too irrelevant. For nostalgic film buffs it's good to see naughty lady Kay Kendall a year before her breakthrough performance in 'Genevieve', Diane Cilento (at one time Mrs Sean Connery) as Nick's fiancée and camp Harold Lang as a blackmailer, but Naomi Chance is a boring heroine. I'd lost track of the malarkey before the end, but the finale has action and excitement.