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A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

Murder in the Air (1940) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Fourth and final film in Warner's Brass Bancroft series with Ronald Reagan in the lead. This time out enemy agents are destroying various sites and now they have their eyes on destroying the entire country. Reagan goes undercover and gets inside the gang to try and stop them before more damage is done. This is probably the second best in the series (behind the third film) and fans of "B" movies will certainly have enough here to keep them entertained. The film, running just 55-minutes, makes for some nice entertainment because it throws pretty much everything in except for the kitchen sink but then again that might have ended up on the cutting room floor. The entire movie goes at a very fast pace and it leads up to a very good ending set on a Dirigible, which of course has to crash into the ocean. I wish this sequence would have gone on longer but what's here is nice. Reagan is very comfortable in the role and manages to turn in his best performance of the series. His tough act is a lot more believable here than in the previous three films and Eddie Foy, Jr. is back for comic relief. John Litel and James Stephenson co-star.

After spies and saboteurs wreck havoc across the United States, Federal agent Ronald Reagan (as Brass Bancroft) and comic sidekick Eddie Foy Jr. (as Gabby Watters) go undercover to investigate. Secret Service head John Litel (as Saxby) gives Mr. Reagan the identity of dead spy "Steve Swenko". Reagan seeks James Stephenson (as Joe Garvey), who is being investigated for "Un-American Activities". Reagan has to deal with detectives pulling off his shirt to strip search him. Then, he must handle beautiful blonde Lya Lys (as Hilda Riker); the wife of the man he is supposed to be impersonating orders Reagan, "Talk fast and give the right answer!" Eventually, the plot leads Reagan to board "The U.S. Dirigible 'Mason'" - apparently, so that filmmakers can edit in some exciting footage of a Hindenburg-type airship. Reagan, now undercover as seaman "Steve Coe", is ordered to destroy the airship "Mason" because it carries a new U.S. Defense weapon called the "Inertia Projector". This weapon, according to the script, "makes the United States invincible in war." Who, and what, will survive "Murder in the Air"? This is a patchwork movie for the future President.*** Murder in the Air (1940) Lewis Seiler ~ Ronald Reagan, Eddie Foy Jr., John Litel

Murder In the Air was the fourth movie to star future President Ronald Reagan as agent Ross Bancroft. This is at present the only one of this series I've seen and was rather impressed.A man with a tattoo of a circle and arrow is found dead after a rail crash and he turns out to be hobo with £50,000 on him. Bancroft and his sidekick are sent to investigate. The investigation eventually sends them onto an airship, Mason, which could be blown up...Murder in the Air is worth catching if you get the chance as it is rather hard to get hold of. A good way of spending just under an hour.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

President Ronald Reagan has been accused of being a second rate actor, mostly due to his appearance in BEDTIME FOR BONZO. However he actually appeared (albeit in many supporting roles) in respectable, even good films. Early in his career he was earmarked for some type of stardom by the "Brass Bancroft" films.I have never seen any of these "Brass Bancroft" Secret Agent films made by Reagan in the late 1930s, but this one has always intrigued me. Supposedly the destruction of the Naval Airship Mason is actually based on some footage of the destruction (in 1935) of the last Naval Zeppelin "U.S.S. Macon" which was lost in the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur. I'm not expecting anything along the lines of the film of the Hindenburg Crash, or of the Challenger explosion, but it would be curious to see it.