Biggles (1988)

We're on the Western Front in 1917 and the Germans have nearly finished work on a breakthrough secret weapon. This fiendish device emits high pitched, powerful sound waves that...I'd better keep this simple...destroy the sub-cleotic structure of an object's crone base, causing crystatin failure with subsequent nektonic surt degradation on a massive scale. This results in catastrophic softening of human flesh and brittle crumbling of metal structures and objects. At least that's how I think it works. If the Hun uses this weapon, it could change the course of history as we know it. There's only one man who can stop this madness...British Captain James Bigglesworth, "Biggles" to those who know him, adventurer, warrior, always there when things are the diciest, and yet driven by resolute honor. Biggles is the sort of man that schoolboys would look up to and who would devour the stories of his adventures. In fact, between the end of WWI and the start of WWII, British schoolboys did just that in tale after tale written by W.E. Johns. In this movie we discover something Johns apparently was unaware of. Some people, it seems, have time twins. When one of the time twins is in danger, his twin will be sent instantly through time and space to help. That's the pickle young American marketing hotshot Jim Ferguson (Alex Hyde-White), head of Celebrity Dinners, finds himself in. One moment he's worrying about whether the creamed corn looks like a dog's breakfast and the next he's running toward a downed British bi-plane in the middle of a blasted battlefield, with whiz bangs falling around. He rescues the pilot...who is Biggles (Neil Dickson). Only when Jim lands back to his own time does he get an explanation, from no other than Peter Cushing in his last screen role as the aged Air Commodore William Raymond, Special Air Force (Retired) who has quarters in 1A, Tower Bridge, London. Raymond was Biggles commander back then. He explains to Jim the phenomenon of time twins, something modern scientists still are only beginning to understand. More importantly, he explains the vital importance of Biggles' effort to locate and destroy this new German monstrosity. Biggles is aided only his loyal team made up of Ginger, Algy and Bertie. Facing Biggles is the might of the Hun, led by German fighter ace Eric Von Stalheim. Even though Jim's fiancée, Debbie, thinks he's crazy, Jim prepares himself to aid Biggles. Of course, before long, Debbie finds herself back in time, too. The movie is absolute nonsense, but good nonsense in my opinion. There's no nudge-nudge by the director or the actors to let us know they're in on the joke. They play it straight, which makes things all the more enjoyable. Neil Dickson is just fine as the strong-chinned, resolute, resourceful, brave, honorable, dashing Biggles. "I'll not put a bullet in your head, old boy," he says at one point to Von Stalheim, "because that's not how we do business!" Alex Hyde-White holds his own as the baby-faced but resolute Jim Ferguson, very much a creature of the 1980's who now finds himself bouncing in and out of WWI. "It looks like this town's been nuked," he says to Biggles when they find themselves in the middle of a ruined town square. "Nuked? What's that?" Biggles asks. "It's an American slang term. It means to overreact." And Peter Cushing, looking even more skeletal than usual at 73 but still a commanding actor and reasonably spry, brings the same kind of utterly believable delivery to his lines that he gave to mummies, vampires and werewolves. It was good to see him again. Biggles was unfortunate in being released a year after Back to the Future came out. As a time-travel adventure it didn't compare and quickly faded. Still, it's a fine example, in my view, of an affectionate, stiff-upper-lip boy's own adventure. Biggles isn't a great movie or even a memorable one, but it's competently made and it's fun. That's not a bad epitaph for a movie.

When I saw the name of this movie my first thought was: Wow! Did they actually get around to making a movie based on the old Captain W. E. Johns books? I had read quite a few of them as a kid, and while the characters were somewhat cardboard cut, the stories usually made some kind of sense and were fun to read. Not so the movie! In fact, about the only thing recognizable was the name of some of the characters... I have rarely seen any book(s) massacred the way this movie manages it (only close competitor must be the old Modesty Blaise flick from the sixties....).It is clear that the writer knows absolutely nothing about the Biggles universe - and since he is utterly talentless the movie ends up as a complete downer. My recommendation is to avoid any movie with a script written by this writer. Even when trying to look at it as a parody or comedy it fails, since it is not even funny.....Hopefully they will get around to making a decent Biggles movie at some point - the original stories definitely should make it possible...

**Spoiler warning** This movie is the very embodyment of what would happen when an eighties guy is transported back to WW1, commenting on things like nuclear weapons and punk hairdos to the bewilderment of the upper class gentlemens of the war. (I would have like to have seen all of the characters journey to the future, but that would be too much to ask^^).The best part of the movie, undoubtedly, is when Jim is transported into a nunnery wearing nothing but a towel and the nuns mistake him for Jesus -_- I would have to love to have known what was going through the boys' minds when they found him.A lot of people complain about the storyline but I think it's good and relevant. The only thing that irks me is that you never found out who went back and told the Germans to build the sound weapon and so altered time. That would have been a good thing - perhaps even if it was Stalhein himself when he was old.So, all in all, if you want a good time and a not-too-complicated storyline to have on in the background...get this.~~Lostoyannaya

Biggles was originally a WW1 pilot created by Captain W.E Johns in a series of dashing adventure novels. I'm not a purist and I don't mind new twists on old material, but this sci-fi/time-travel slant on the old stories strains the patience beyond belief. It's such a contrived, feeble concept - badly scripted, badly directed and badly acted - that only the most easily satisfied of viewers will enjoy it. You know you're in trouble from the moment the film's cheesy disco-style theme tune, "Do You Want To Be A Hero", kicks in during the opening credits. Young New Yorker James Ferguson (Alex Hyde-White) arrives home at his apartment only to be confronted by a mysterious old Englishman named Colonel Raymond (Peter Cushing). Moments later, there's a mysterious flash of lightning and Ferguson finds himself whisked back in time to a WW1 battlefield, just in time to save the life of ace pilot Biggles (Neil Dickson). It turns out that Ferguson and Biggles are "time twins" and that whenever one is in grave danger, the other will come zapping through time to the rescue. The wittiest moment in the film comes during the final credits, when a monicker comes up on screen reading: "Filmed on location in New York - London - and the Western Front 1917". Other than that, this is a witless affair indeed. It's quite sad to see the legendary Cushing slumming in such a weakly written cameo role. Some of the action sequences set during WW1 rise to the giddy heights of "mediocre", but the 1980s sequences are hopelessly tacky, and the twist ending in which our irritating hero is zapped back to a cave full of cannibal tribesmen is just plain awful. On the whole, Biggles is a monumental example of how low a point entertainment sank to during the era of cinematic junk that was the '80s.