Tailspin Tommy in The Great Air Mystery Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

Tailspin Tommy in The Great Air Mystery Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 26, 2018

One of the interesting sidebars to the already generally fascinating Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers was its inclusion of at least parts of various “serials”, the weekly episodic adventures that were designed to keep people flocking back to theaters on a regular basis, even if they weren’t that excited about whatever the main feature that week was. Typically these serials would feature heroes (or, in the case of the Kino Lorber release linked to above, heroines) who would fight for truth, justice and the American Way, albeit with some kind of cliffhanging danger threatening their existence as any given episode came to an end. There’s much the same structure at play in Tailspin Tommy in the Great Air Mystery, a 1935 follow up to the previous year’s Tailspin Tommy. The character had appeared in a well liked comic strip in 1928, one which appeared in the wake of Charles Lindbergh’s legendary cross Atlantic flight, and while I’m not over acquainted with either the comic strip or the previous serial, Tailspin Tommy (Clark Williams) is really offered here as more of a “type” than a fully fledged character with a ton of backstory and contextualizing. There are only two things you really need to know about Tommy — he flies planes, and he’s a magnet for danger.

Kind of hilariously, the back cover of this release mentions valuable oil reserves on "Nazi Island", when in fact the tropical paradise depicted in this serial is actually called Nazil, which I'm assuming was meant to evoke Brazil. Tommy and his coterie of allies, which include buddy Skeeter (Noah Beery, Jr.) and romantic interest Betty Lou Barnes (Jean Rogers), encounter all sorts of precarious situations in the dozen chapters of this piece*, including a crashing dirigible (shades of the Hindenberg, speaking of Nazis and/or Nazils), car crashes and (just for good measure) an erupting volcano. The effects work is frankly a bit on the quaint side, but some of the sequences, like the aftermath of the dirigible downing in the water are actually rather well done and add to the excitement that at least young audience members probably felt as they watched the tale unfold.

*Some online sources suggest there were 15 chapters to this serial, but I noticed nothing major missing.

Tailspin Tommy in The Great Air Mystery Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Tailspin Tommy in the Great Air Mystery is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of VCI and MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. The front cover of this release touts that it was "remastered in 2K from the original 35mm fine grain", and while some grammarians might opt for "an" rather than "the", by all measures this is a decided improvement in VCI's sometimes spotty history with their high definition product. There are obvious and understandable variances at play here since a lot of stock footage is intercut with scenes shot specifically for the serial. The stock footage, some of which looks like it may have originally been sourced from smaller formats, can look fairly rough at times, with a more pronounced grittiness and much more visible damage as well as variable and at times slightly problematic contrast. The "newly" shot material looks quite good by comparison, having been scrubbed of a lot of age related wear and tear, and with generally very nice looking contrast and black levels. Unfortunately, it does appear that that "scrubbing" may have also been applied to at least some of the grain. There is grain here, but this has a slightly filtered look at times which tends to give this a slightly "video"-esque appearance, at least when compared to the still quite grainy looking stock footage. That said, this is head and shoulders above some other VCI Blu-ray releases I've reviewed over the past few years, and certainly augurs that their product is getting on the right track.

Tailspin Tommy in The Great Air Mystery Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Tailspin Tommy in the Great Air Mystery features an LPCM 2.0 mono track that hasn't fared quite as well as the video element, though things are certainly still acceptable. While damage is never that evident, the entire track has a rather thin, boxy sound that is especially apparent in some of the effects scenes where the low end can sound fairly anemic. Dialogue makes it through the gauntlet well enough, without any problems involving things like dropouts.

Tailspin Tommy in The Great Air Mystery Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements offered on this Blu-ray disc.

Tailspin Tommy in The Great Air Mystery Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Tailspin Tommy in the Great Air Mystery harks back to a simpler time when dashing heroes always prevailed over the bad guys and who similarly always got the girl by the end of the story. This is an enjoyable enough serial that has some goofy moments of peril for our heroes (and heroines), and it manages to intercut some fun footage of daredevil piloting which may appeal to early airplane enthusiasts. This may simply be too quaint for more jaded types, but for those considering a purchase, VCI has released one of its nicer looking Blu-rays with this offering.