Aerial Gunner (1943)
By Bosley Crowther
Published: June 26, 1943
That gay rascal, Chester Morris, is being a cut-up again in Paramount's "Aerial Gunner," which came to the Rialto yesterday. He is giving the needle to Richard Arlen in the most aggravating ways—by stealing his girl away from him, by making embarrassing cracks and by doing everything possible to annoy him at aerial gunnery school. In fact, Mr. Morris is such a cut-up that finally everybody marks him punk. But at last comes that terrible moment when the giant Army bomber has been forced down on a South Pacific island and is surrounded by Japs. Who do you think it is that jumps out with a tommy gun and holds the Japs at bay while the other guys patch the wiring and go flying off into the blue? Nobody but Mr. Morris! Gee, what a wonderful surprise!
That's the sort of picture that "Aerial Gunner" is—heroics for the bumpkins in one-syllable clichés. There are a few interesting sequences in it of training at an aerial gunnery school and some routine, but always pretty picures of planes climbing up and sitting down. But never do they rise above the ceiling prescribed by a normal B-film. This is strictly a picture for the shooting-gallery trade.
AERIAL GUNNER; screen play by Maxwell Shane directed by William Pine; produced by Mr. Pine and William Thomas for Paramount.
Foxy Pattis . . . . . Chester Morris
Ben Davis . . . . . Richard Arlen
Peggy Lunt . . . . . Lita Ward
Sandy Lunt . . . . . Jimmy Lydon
Gadget Blaine . . . . . Dick Purcell
Sergeant Jones . . . . . Keith Richards
Private Laswell . . . . . Billy Benedict
Barclay . . . . . Ralph Sanford
