The main reason for Hell's Angels' popularity is the spectacular flying filmed and re-filmed for years by Howard Hughes. Paramount's Wings had shown exciting aerial combat but it was nothing compared to Hughes' two major flying sequences, which made a minimal use of special effects and miniatures. Almost all the aerial scenes including star closeups were shot while aloft and the realism is at times stunning. Thirty or forty biplanes careen through the sky in one close combat sequence. Hughes' flyers were a rough bunch of veterans eager to make big money and just as eager to prove their stuff on camera, and many shots look as though the pilots were taking some heavy risks.

The first flying scene is a giddy combination of expert special effects and anti-Hun sadism. Pacifist good-German Karl is the bombardier on a dirigible crewed by Kaiser fanatics. He misdirects the bombs away from Trafalgar square and into a lake. When the RAF closes in, the German commander lightens ship by sacrificing his crew, ordering them to jump to their deaths. It's a disturbing and macabre scene. I'm given to understand that the main dirigible model was built on a vast scale, and when it explodes (in crimson tints) the effect is staggering. It really looks huge.

Hell's Angels also gave Hughes an excuse to rebuild a German Gotha biplane bomber for the final battle. It's actually James Hall strapped into the open-air gun position up front, in what has to have been the most dangerous acting assignment of the era.

Self-styled tough guy Howard Hughes had his writers concoct a story with plenty of his favorite subject matter, loose women and battling male egos. Everywhere the student-heroes go there are willing barmaids and society wives to seduce, until the brothers finally come up against the blonde bombshell herself. Jean Harlow is ludicrous as an English socialite but we soon stop listening for an accent in favor of watching her slink around in her skimpy costumes; she's pre-code glory all the way. For Hughes, women were unreliable playthings and Harlow's Helen exists only to humiliate one brother and reject the other. Just when we think Helen is going to be redeemed and the lovers reconciled, she opts for big-time harlotry in a petting party with a drunken British officer. The boys have to make do with more good-time girls.

The language is pretty raw as well. The flyers shout very atypical dialogue from plane to plane: "Jesus Christ!" and "You son of a bitch!" Hughes apparently could ignore the censors, something he couldn't repeat for his next filmic outing The Outlaw, which also took years to film.

The film has some interesting politics. The war is seen as a hypocritical travesty and Hughes seems to agree with a street agitator that it is folly to fight in a war that is really about the profits of capitalists. The soapbox orator is labeled an anarchist and beaten by the crowd. But his line of reasoning is later adopted by the "bad" brother Monte and equated with plain cowardice. The only true love and loyalty in the movie is represented by "good" brother Roy; he selflessly takes Monte's sins upon himself until the very end. Compared to the romantic excesses of later stories like The Dawn Patrol, Hell's Angels is hardboiled to the extreme. Captured by the sinister Germans and accused as spies, the brothers' fate is not sentimentalized.

When sound came in in mid-production, Hughes scrapped the entire dramatic side of his story and had it reshot with spoken dialogue. Some silent-style intertitles are still there to translate the German in the dirigible sequence. James Whale was brought in to "stage" the dialogue scenes but the experts say that he basically directed them as well. An English evening dance party was also re-filmed in two-strip Technicolor.

Jean Harlow was a last-minute replacement for a silent actress with a heavy foreign accent. You can't say that she is a good actress but she's certainly the shape of things to come. A full-blown sex goddess in the modern mode, Harlow's sexual attraction hasn't dated a bit, and she set the standard for what could be gotten away with in the pre-code era.

Universal's budget DVD of Hell's Angels is probably timed to coincide with the Martin Scorsese film The Aviator. The encoding and audio are particularly good; the film's original tracks make it hard to hear the shouted words over the roaring airplane engines, and this is the first time I could understand all of the dialogue.

The restored image is unusually good, with the Technicolor scene retaining the limited, muted palette of hues. The movie even has its original intermission card accompanied by a brief musical track - that probably accounts for the running time being upped from 127 minutes to 131.

There are no extras. The package is excitingly illustrated but the copy text misrepresents the story as being about three men competing for the attentions of Harlow.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Hell's Angels rates:
Movie: Very Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: None
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: December 30, 2004