User Reviews

I am notorious amongst my friends concerning my leniency towards the plethora of Indiana Jones rip-offs that swamped, in the UK at least, the home video market but even I struggle to find much good to say about this slice of high adventure hokum!!! The beginning, as pointed out by another reviewer, does hold some promise with a sequence in the Bermuda Triangle - which in this movie isn't really too close to Bermuda but we are given hints of a slightly more intelligent fun film than we are eventually given. In the bizarre dimension our hero and his motley crew find the ships used in the infamous Philadelphia Experiment and this in itself hints that the movie is going to have some geek chic.

However, once they leave the mysterious unexplained dimension the movie plummets downhill faster than Indy in a Rubber Raft. It becomes a lazy collection of uninspired and misjudged scenes that vary between bland and just plain annoying. A low budget truck chase, followed by some badly and uninvolving fights followed by some admittedly quite pretty flying montages. These are mixed with some unexplained supernatural hokum and sequences that imply that the crew forgot to switch the camera on at times. The prime example of this is the sequence where Lt. 'Bomber' Harris is being attacked by a shark whilst diving being followed by a sub Indy sequence where he is hanging onto the side of the plane as the villains fly off - no explanation to where the shark is or how he got his heavy leather flying jacket back as I'm sure that it wasn't under his diving suit. I am sure that the finale wasn't just an excuse to blow 100 Australian Dollars on special effects and served a purpose but don't ask me what that might have been.

The filmmakers seem to assume that they can get away with the same levels of suspension of disbelief that Spielberg got away with in 'Raiders' and 'Temple of Doom' but that has to be earned. It's not the genre it's the style with which it is done - audiences will watch Indy climb onto a submarine and still be on it hours later because the care about Indy and are engaged by the film. Sky Pirates has not got that style or panache so we will never be on its side.

Couple this bad film making with some awful acting from Max Phipps (best known by genre fans for his role in Mad Max 2), a heroine that echoes Melody Andersons insipid turn in Flash Gordon played by Meredith Philips and prolific Australian actor John Hargreaves. To be fair the cast are not given much to work with when the scriptwriters blatantly copy dialogue from Dirty Harry movies and write one liners that are to humour what an elephant is to skateboarding. Example _ Harris rescues the heroine who has been tied up in a truck with the Bond style one liner of 'I didn't know you were into bondage?'. If you watch this film be assured your sides will be safe from any form of splitting incidents.

So terrible script, lazy and often embarrassed performances and appalling direction - is there anything of merit in this film? Not much! Brian Mays score isn't bad - it's derivative sure but it's done with a certain amount of panache. Hargreaves, a prolific and talented actor has enough rugged charisma to be watchable but it does make me wish that he had been in a better film than this as he would have made a tremendous pulp style action hero.

When all is said and done I wouldn't watch this film for whatever reason - as it isn't painful it's just boring!

The success of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) lead to the inevitable copycat movies and rip-offs, the best known being High Road to China (1983) with Tom Selleck (ironically the original choice to play Indiana Jones) as a WWI veteran pilot escorting heiress Bess Armstrong through the Middle East and Asia on a quest to find her explorer father; the TV series Tales of the Gold Monkey in which freelance flier Stephen Collins indulged in assorted hi-jinks on a chain of Pacific islands in the 1930s; and two awfully tacky movies, shot back-to-back, with Richard Chamberlain as Allan Quartermain - King Solomon's Mines (1985) and Allan Quartermain and the City of Gold (1986).

My favourite of these Raider wannabes is Sky Pirates (1986), an Australian movie that bravely tries to match the thrills and spills of it's Hollywood counterparts on a fraction of their budget. You can't accuse the producers of lacking ambition.

The plot makes use of various New Age conspiracy theories concerning the Bermuda Triangle, the Philadelphia Experiment, and aliens visiting Earth in ancient times and assisting mankind's development. Aussie ace pilot Flight Lieutenant Harris (John Hargreaves) is transporting a top secret cargo in August 1945. However, when a crew member tries to sneak a look at what they're carrying, all hell breaks loose, as - in the film's best sequence - the plane plunges into another dimension, where past, present and future all intersect (a fact cleverly illustrated by having the radio operator pick up wireless traffic about the assassination of JFK, the first moon landing, and a Mayday call from the Titanic, plus Harris having a near miss with a modern-day jet fighter). The plane ditches in a sea full of half-sunken ships from various time periods, and the survivors catch a glimpse of Easter Island before being instantly transported back to their original location and rescued.

Back in Oz, Hargreaves finds his superior officer, Squadron Leader Savage, refuses to back his version of events, and is court-marshaled. Discovering that Savage is intent on recovering the cargo - part of a stone tablet left on Earth eons ago by alien visitors - and uniting it with the other pieces to gain godlike power, Hargreaves escapes from army custody and tries to foil Savage's scheme.

Compared to the average Hollywood studio picture, Sky Pirates was made on the cheap, but that's not say that money hasn't been spent: good use is made of vintage aircraft, there's some splendid location filming on the real Easter Island, and several large scale action set pieces. The best of these has Harris climbing out onto the wing of an airborne DC3 to repair an engine while under fire from a pursuing Mustang fighter, and a truck chase that is copied wholesale from Raiders while using some nice Mad Max visual flourishes.

Sky Pirates wears it's references with pride. The aforementioned truck chase may not be as spectacular as the one in Raiders, but it's just as enjoyable. There's also a fight in a sleazy tavern, but at Ayers Rock as opposed to Raiders' Tibet. And if you don't spot the Jaws homage, then shame on you. But before we start to accuse this film of being totally unoriginal, don't forget that every aspect of the Indiana Jones movies was openly taken from the cliffhanger serials of the 1930s and 40s, and Sky Pirates succeeds in capturing that same pulp feel.

There are some problems: the personal animosity displayed between Harris and Savage at the beginning of the film is never explained, and Savage's motives for suddenly trying to seize the tablet fragments - and his plans once he has them - are also not revealed. However, the most disappointing aspect of the movie is the way it peters out with a rushed and anti-climatic non-ending, which strongly suggests that the production ran out of time and/or money. A great pity.

As for the cast, Hargreaves's performance seesaws between being wooden and extremely engaging, but ultimately he succeeds in making Harris a likable hero. Essentially, he is the movie, as the other characters are all functionary and underwritten. That said, Meredith Phillips has her moments as feisty sidekick Mitch, exactly the kind of girl you'd want to tag along while trying to save the world.