Review of Hell's Angels (1930) by L.m. O — 18 Sep 2008

This is Hughes as director at his best. It is a nice blend of straight silent film style filmmaking and heavily influenced German segments. There are many things that we will never see on film, like this film.

Most important is the "real" mock battles with the British spitfires and German fighters. Nothing will ever be seen like it again. It is not only a piece of history not even seen in "All Quiet on the Western Front" but it is also exciting and gripping to the viewer.

The highlights are most definitely the Zeppelin scenes. This is like nothing ever seen in film, long before we saw the "Hindenburg" burst into to flames, it was a common site to see massive airships blow up and fall to the ground in great heaps of flames and shrapnel over the British and French skies.

This film also has the plot between the two brothers (Monty and Ray) and the German Scholar (Karl). Rare in many films today all but one of the main characters die.