Clipped Wings (1937) User Reviews

Not as bad as they say

[chessiebarbara-67260 · 5/10 · 2 September 2019]

I watched this to see Jason Robards, Sr., whose classic work on stage was well-known, as was his son Jason Robards, Jr. who carried on the tradition.

Jason Robards, Sr. had 234 film credits to his name, not including his theatre work.

By the way, IMDb is showing the wrong photo for this film. It's NOT the 1953 Leo Gorcey "Bowery Boys" film!

A mess

[Spuzzlightyear · 2/10 · 25 March 2006]

Mickey Braun. a young man who is in the jet core has "storm phobia" and all of a sudden is yanked out of service, so begins "Clipped Wings" a film that dives headfirst into ridiculousness shortly after it's dramatic beginning. Shortly after he's kicked out, he meets a girl, Molly and her shifty ex-pilot brother Raoul, played so feyly by Jason Robards (!!) you almost feel he's playing Paul Lynde. Soon, Paul Lynde.. er. Robards gets a telegram, and has to get back to his country home But Molly is suspicious of his brother, so Mickey and Molly (!!) decide to follow Raoul back to the country house to see what's going on. From there it's anyone's guess what the hell is happening. There's an oil smuggling ring going on, an FBI agent who is undercover with the gang, the even seedier leader of the gang, the Mexican assistant and so on. So much plot is going on, and so much stuff is thrown at you, and sort of left dangling (whatever became of the oil smuggling operation?) that you're beyond caring. It doesn't help that the Big Action Sequence at the end with two planes winds up duller than a door knob. I think it's best said during s sequence when one of the bad guys goes off, Molly asks Mickey, "Where's he going?" Mickey says, "I Don't Know". Exactly how I feel about this movie..

The dialog was written by a very talented lemur...and the acting wasn't bad considering they were all robots!

[planktonrules · 1/10 · 30 September 2015]

"Clipped Wings" is a super-low budgeted film. This does not mean that the movie is bad--there are plenty of cheap but good films. Unfortunately, this is NOT one of them--it's just cheap and terrible. I challenge you to watch this mess of a B-movie and not notice that the actors often have difficulty with their lines. It's a combination of terrible acting as well as even worse writing. The dialog is just very wordy, stilted and unnatural. For example, people too often use overly descriptive language when talking about themselves and others. Again and again, folks talk about "my sister", "my brother" and the like. They also can be sitting or standing next to a person and use their name instead of simply (and naturally) saying YOU or HE. It really sounds as if the writer never took much grammar in school--or perhaps they learned it from their dog.

As for the plot, it's overly complicated and dull. First, there's a prologue which wasn't necessary and could have been just explained in a few sentences. Then there are just so many plot elements and complications--like what you'd see in a three hour film, though it's only just a shade over an hour long.

The bottom line is that I am doing a public service in warning you against watching this crappy film. Don't make my sacrifice in vain....avoid watching this dull film and find something, ANYTHING else to see or do instead!

FYI--The poster currently displayed on IMDB for this film is an error. It's for the 1953 Bowery Boys film...not this 1937 debacle.

It's the worst of everything.

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 6 January 2019]

With acting that is either completely underplayed or totally overplayed, bad photography, editing and a script that looks like it was pieced together by fragments of other scripts, this indeed deserves its reputation as a poverty row disaster. Actors all they look like they are staring at cue cards, know their lines and only know how to Bellow them, or were half-asleep when the filming was in progress. A few scenes look like they were inserted from public domain footage, mostly the shootout scene towards the end.

For whatever it's worth, this is a story of two brothers, Lloyd Hughes and William Janney, with Hughes believed to be dead after fighting during World War One. The opening scene has Hughes comforting Janney as a child over a storm with a silly story about a white knight leading the battle through the storm, but that doesn't stop Janney from being kicked out of the air corpse 20 years later. Janney ends up on the ranch of his girlfriend, Rosalind Keith, where he finds Hughes alive and living under assumed name as a government agent. There, the two brothers deal with a gang of oil thieves, but their reunion isn't a smooth one.

Hughes sleepwalks his way through his performance, while Jason Robards Sr. (Father of the two-time Oscar winner) bellows every line that he is given. Janney and Keith keep looking off to the side or towards the camera for obvious cues. others in the cast are given such one-dimensional parts that they can only sneer their lines perhaps in disgust over the hideousness of their parts. This is poverty row at its worst, and with the public domain print being in pretty bad condition, I can't imagine anybody outside the most arduous of movie fans, attempting to get through it. At only an hour, it's not a disastrous waste of time, but it's an hour I probably won't waste in re-watching it again.