FLIGHT TO NOWHERE (1946)

In Honolulu, a man who has just attended a party is shot, and we see the killer remove some paper from his pocket. The man was an agent and that paper was a secret map of uranium deposits which foreign spies want badly, and which federal agent Bob Donovan is determined to get back. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, pilot Hobie Carrington (Alan Curtis) is hired by the Countess de Fresca to fly her and some friends to Death Valley for a weekend stay at a resort. Hobie is initially reluctant to do so, but after some half-hearted flirting and the promise of a free dinner, he accepts the charter. The motley crew includes the lovely Catherine Forrest (Evelyn Ankers); her brother Claude, a former POW; Jan Van Bush, who is sweet on Catherine; and the somewhat mysterious Gerald Porter (Jerome Cowan). Before the plane takes off, Donovan tells Hobie, a former wartime spy, that all his passengers were at the party in Hawaii where the agent was shot, and asks for Hobie's help to find out if any of them have the map. In Death Valley, the group meets up with a mining executive named Walker, and Hobie runs into his ex-wife Irene. Soon the question becomes who doesn’t have the map. Hobie sees an envelope with Japanese characters on it in the Countess' purse. He steals it, but the Countess retrieves it. Irene agrees to steal it back, and it turns out that Claude has been trying to sell it to Walker. Meanwhile Jan tries to force himself on Kathy and Hobie comes to her rescue. Porter is revealed to be a G-man, but is he really? Walker is murdered, and everyone—including agent Donovan—winds up in Las Vegas where a ring with an encoded secret about one of the group turns up. More deaths occur (someone is killed by a horse, another person blown up in a plane) before all is cleared up.

Typical for a B-action film, there is more narrative than the filmmakers can handle, leading to plot holes and unmotivated action. I was even confused about the moral status of Claude, the former POW turned traitor—he seems more weak and confused than evil, though he does get punished for his sins. There's a stray plotpoint involving the fact that the Countess is recognized by Irene as a fake—she's a former chorus girl—that comes to nothing. The fight scenes are awkward, and some dialogue glitches were left in (a fairly common B-movie happening). Still, at around 70 minutes, this is entertaining enough for B-movie fans. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that leading man Alan Curtis is charmless, but he tends to fade into the background, especially with such a large cast of characters surrounding him. Ankers (pictured with Curtis) is fine, though Cowan, usually an asset, is not used well here until the climax. The rest of the supporting cast is OK. It appears that actual location shooting was done in Las Vegas (before it was a bustling town), so that's kind of fun to see. [YouTube]