Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Powerful

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The third, and in my opinion, the best of M-G-M's three "Nick Carter" movies, all starring Walter Pidgeon, this one also features Donald Meek (again as the nervy but totally eccentric Bee Man) who is actually billed second to Pidgeon and even receives a splash credit in the trailer! Kaaren Verne does a good job as the alluring but suspicious heroine, Tom Conway is perfectly cast as the two-faced, lecherous villain, Joyce Compton plays dizzy twins (alas, not both in view at the same time!), and Chill Wills makes a delightfully rustic sheriff. Although this picture runs 72 minutes (compared to 59 for the first entry and 70 for Phantom Raiders), it is so admirably fast-paced by director George B. Seitz (taking a well-earned break from the Andy Hardy series) that it seemed to this viewer to be the shortest movie of the three. Both action and comic interludes are put across with style, and it's well produced too with all the usual M-G-M frills. The plot may seem somewhat dated, but that's part of the joy of discovery. Louis B. Mayer had no love for the Nazis (vide The Mortal Storm) and was keeping up the pressure!

Master detective Nick Carter as played by Walter Pidgeon tangles with fifth columnists in Sky Murder. During the course of the film a murder does take place in a millionaire's private plane and at the climax another is attempted, but foiled.United States Senator George Lessey tips the famous private eye to this nest of traitors, but the leaders are an illusive group. His Senate investigating committee is looking into this and he'd like Carter to work for them.Of course Walter Pidgeon does things in his own way with sidekick Donald Meek with his ever present bees. They key seems to be refugee girl Kaaren Verne who is being pressured and not quite leveling with Pidgeon or anyone else about her situation.Once again Donald Meek whom I usually love as a character actor is downright annoying in this as he was in the other Nick Carter films as the bee man. Sometimes he's more of a danger to Pidgeon than the bad guys.Take note of Dorothy Tree in this film, she plays a hardcore Bundist type and well. Tree who later had blacklist troubles saw the other side of the struggle as the underground leader in the famous camp classic, Hitler - Dead Or Alive.There's a little more MGM type gloss to these Carter films which is also a bit out of place. But MGM didn't know how to do it any other way in the days of Louis B. Mayer.

When I heard "Nick Carter," I was expecting a dark, noir-ish hard boiled detective story, along the lines of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. "Sky Murder" is anything but.I thought the first few scenes of the movie were so bad, I was going to give it a 3 and turn it off. (No movie can score higher than a 3 with me if I can't stand it till the end.) For some reason, though, and it wasn't any sudden change in plot or acting, I kept with it. It was more than three quarters of the way through, more than 45 minutes into the film, that I suddenly realized this is a rollicking adventure story aimed at eight-year-old boys, with no pretensions of being anything but a good time. It is a comic book come to life, sort of like the old Superman TV show from the fifties.Once I realized that, the movie became much more enjoyable.I don't know if an eight-year-old would enjoy it today, though. It's not full of fast action, has no gunfire, and of course it has no CG.So, without modern kid appeal, and, as other reviewers have shown, it doesn't hold much for adult viewers, I'm afraid this well-done and entertaining film is probably destined for obscurity.

Unaccountably, MGM's excellent Nick Carter movies became the shortest series of detective films on record. The Carter films took the middle ground somewhere between the serial-like Brass Bancroft pictures and the sophisticated semi-comedy mysteries like the Thin Man films. The Carter series were fast-paced with quite a bit of action, but with some hilarious humor too. Bartholomew the Bee Man was the most unique of all detective sidekicks--quite loony, but very helpful at the same time. The interaction between Donald Meek's Bartholomew and Walter Pidgeon's self-assured Nick Carter was the best part of the series, which had several other things going for it too.This final Carter film is a lot of fun, with Nick (unwillingly, at first) taking on a ring of Fifth Columnists (since this was filmed before the US entered the war, we're not told the villains are Nazis, but it's pretty clear anyway). Of course, the helpful and persistent Bartholomew is at his side--much to Nick's irritation. To further complicate things--and to make them still funnier--Joyce Compton is along for the ride too, as a delightfully brainless "detective" named Christine Cross. The plot gives us a new twist on the locked-room murder mystery: this time, a murder takes place in a locked airplane compartment! Karen Verne plays a German refugee suspected of the mysterious murder, and it's up to Nick to clear her--and protect her from the real killers, who are out to remove her at all costs. As in the first Carter film (NICK CARTER, MASTER DETECTIVE) there's a mastermind whose identity is not revealed right away, and an assortment of sinister henchmen. While trying to figure out the mystery (the who-dun-it isn't hard, but the "how dun it" certainly is) look for some great supporting players, including Chill Wills, Grady Sutton, Edward Ashley, and Tom Conway, soon to become a well-known film detective himself--the Falcon. Be sure to check out this movie and the other Carter movies, NICK CARTER MASTER DETECTIVE and PHANTOM RAIDERS. All three are shown on TCM from time to time, and I highly recommend them.