When I first saw this movie at the Oklahoman Theatre as a 7 year old with my friend, Ronny Brown, we thought this movie was awesome! Well, not exactly. Upon viewing 50 years later and currently, SABRE JET leaves a lot to be desired. A whole lot! It was in Cinecolor when released in 1953...a sort of poor man's technicolor. Fighter pilot, Colonel Gil Manton's (Robert Stack) estranged wife, Jane Carter (Coleen Gray) arrives at Itazuke Air Force Base in Japan during the Korean War, as a reporter to write a story about "women who kiss their husbands goodbye in the morning and wait for them to come home at night." Only these husbands return from aerial combat against MiG-15s or facing AAA fire in interdiction work in North Korea. The last person Manton wanted to see was Jane. Robert Stack, normally a favorite of mine, plays the part like someone going through the motions to collect a paycheck, with the facial expressions of a guy with a cork stuck up his rear. It's no wonder that Coleen Gray appears nervous throughout, with a lack of chemistry between the two actors. Much better acting jobs were done by Richard Arlen (the Academy Award winning WINGS from 1927) as base commander General Robert E.Hale and Julie Bishop as Marge Hale, the General's wife. Much has been said about WWII stock footage shown throughout the movie, showing aircraft that never appeared in Korea, so I'll skip that. Korean War F-86 aces Bill Wescott and "Boots" Blesse, as technical advisors from the USAF, apparently had little to say about the implausible plot of having Sabres flying from Itazuke Air Base in southern Japan to MiG Alley in northwest Korea. Way too far! However, the film's focus on the wives demanded that they return to Japan. Wives certainly were not to be found at the South Korean Sabre bases at Kimpo and Suwon during wartime. It is 470 miles from Itazuke to MiG Alley, or a round trip of 940 miles. Round trip from Kimpo air base to the Yalu River (northern boundary of MiG Alley) was 460 miles. After a 20 minute patrol and/or dogfights in MiG Alley, it was a stretch for Sabres to return to their South Korean base with much fuel left. Sabre pilots were instructed to head home on "bingo" (low fuel gauges). Another goof was the Stack character's desire to fly an F- 86 fighter interceptor one day, then jump into an F-80 Shooting Star fighter bomber the next day to do air-to-ground work. Also, the General Hale character flies into MiG infested areas on a reconnaissance mission alone, which would have never happened. Of course, no MiG 15s were available to play themselves, so Sabres were painted light blue with red noses and red stars to double as MiGs. A Korean War F-86 veteran stationed at Nellis AFB in Nevada during the filming of SABRE JET told me that pilots would watch the painted up "MiGs" taxi by for take off, and they would give those guys the "one finger" salute! The most memorable scene in the movie from the theatre as a kid was when a 50 cal. round from Col. Manton's Sabre hits a MiG pilot, who pulls off his oxygen mask with copious amounts of blood coming out of his mouth. In edited versions of SABRE JET on late night B&W TV a few years later, that scene was far less dramatic.The Fox brothers, neighbor buddies (in the 50's) and I took turns wearing my leather jacket, a homemade MiG pilot helmet and oxygen mask, filling our mouths with ketchup, then recreating that scene and taking photos of each other when the blood (ketchup) ran down my jacket. Lots of fun until my mother saw my ketchup stained jacket! If the "Sabre Jet" name was to be used as the title of a feature film, I wish that this honorable, legendary jet fighter could have been memorialized in a better movie. For a much better Sabre vs MiG movie, get a DVD of THE HUNTERS.
9 Reviews
Lots of soap opera among this sabre.
mark.waltz18 July 2020
Warning: Spoilers
A year after this independent programmer came along, a daytime soap opera, "First Love", dealt with the struggles of pilots and their wives. The film was notorious for a blooper where the two leading ladies (Patricia Barry and Rosemary Prinz) struggled to keep the laughter out of a scene where another word was substituted when one of the pilots stumbled over the line "Chris cracked up the plane." The soap opera style acting of leading ladies Coleen Gray and Julie Bishop is utilized greatly in a military drama that s rare in its usage of wives as major characters and not just as set design, but the dialog and story is straight out of a radio washboard weeper.
Married to colonel Robert Stack, Gray comes to live with her husband on the base and he finds out that she is now a reporter, looking for a scoop. Stack and Gray do nothing but bicker while Gray and her husband ("Wings" star Richard Arlen) lead a happy marriage until tragedy strikes. There's really little action until the 75 minute mark, so what you get really doesn't involve a jet. Leon Ames joins Stack and Arlen for the more military parts of the story, but this one really doesn't paint an interesting picture of behind the scenes activities of the Korean war, and very well could have been about the Second World War or even the first world war.
Married to colonel Robert Stack, Gray comes to live with her husband on the base and he finds out that she is now a reporter, looking for a scoop. Stack and Gray do nothing but bicker while Gray and her husband ("Wings" star Richard Arlen) lead a happy marriage until tragedy strikes. There's really little action until the 75 minute mark, so what you get really doesn't involve a jet. Leon Ames joins Stack and Arlen for the more military parts of the story, but this one really doesn't paint an interesting picture of behind the scenes activities of the Korean war, and very well could have been about the Second World War or even the first world war.
Today marks the 75th anniversary of the United States Air Force as an independent branch of the Armed Forces.....
tarwaterthomas18 September 2022
Warning: Spoilers
....so I wanted to share my thinking on this Korean War saga known as SABRE JET. It arrived on the silver screen the same year the so-called "police action" ended with a cease fire and armistice (which North Korea never got around to signing so technically both South and North Korea are still at war even though both nations have co-existed on the peninsula). Robert Stack, as humorless as ever in these features, heads the cast as USAF Colonel Gil Manton who commands a squadron of North American F-86 Sabres at Itazuke Air Base in Japan. The flyboys take off from there, fly across the South China Sea, drop munitions on North Korea targets, and return to their anxious wives and families in time for dinner. Well, one day the base gets a visitor, and her name is Jane Carter (Coleen Gray), a newspaper reporter for a metropolitan publication. She wants to interview those anxious Air Force wives. Most any other time it would not be a problem for Colonel Manson, but the trouble is that she happens to be his estranged wife! He needs her like he needs a hole in his head. That's why he's being a real grump. See, what happened was she bolted out on their wedding anniversary to interview the wife of a prisoner on Death Row, and it was one of those up-close and personal interviews. The idea that Colonel Manton Is married is news to everyone, and that included Brigadier General Robert Hale (Richard Arlen) and his wife Margie (Julie Bishop who was in real life the wife of Air Force Brigadier General Clarence Shoop). Gil Manton wanted his better half to stay home and raise a family, but Jane wanted to pursue her profession in the tradition of Nellie Bly. Those two have been separated for two years, and Gil Manton had kept his marital status on the down low. In the meantime, there are missions to plan and targets for F-86 action. But this time around, the squadron takes off in Lockheed F-80 Shooting Stars. I'm guessing that the F86s were down for maintenance. So while Colonel Manton and his squadron are bombing targets and getting into dogfights with Soviet Air Force MiG-15s (actually F-86 jet fighters painted Soviet Air Force markings to include the red star on wings and tail), Jane Carter is interviewing those Air Force wives who admit that while they worry about their husbands, they can't let it show because the pilots have to concentrate on the missions and they have to be the ones to make happy. If you're getting the idea that the women are acting like a bunch of Stepford Wives, just remember that times were way different back then. There's an upcoming mission of taking out a North Korean base where a bunch of MiG-15s and Yak-9 piston-engine planes are situated. General Hale would like to lead a strike mission of F-86 and F-80 fighters and B-29 Superfortress bombers. The F-80s would take out the anti-aircraft defenses while the F-86s would handle the dogfights. Problem is, higher headquarters would have to approve the mission and the wet season is happening in one week. General Hale can't wait around for those rear-echelon weenies to get the lead out of their pants, so he takes off on an unauthorized reconnaissance mission with no escort, but a teletype message reveals that the target is another location and what General Hale is flying into is a trap: a stronghold loaded with enemy warplanes and anti-aircraft artillery. General Hale is shot down, of course, and Colonel Manton assumes command as he is next in line. Which makes him the bearer of bad news as he has to tell Marge that Robert isn't coming home ever and her two sons won't have a daddy anymore. Gil winds up leading the strike mission to knock out the North Korean fighter base, with the B-29s dropping their munitions (a clever way by the filmmakers to integrate World War II footage of the Superfortresses in combat). The climatic scene included aerial combat footage of German Messerschmitt planes getting blown up on the flight line and in the air. The filmmaking was a little bit on the sloppy side; the scenes situated at Itasuke Air Base in Japan were actually shot at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. By the way, Gil and Jane reunite at the end, and it looks like their marriage is going to make it. A few years after SABRE JET arrived on the silver screen, Carl Krueger produced the western drama COMANCHE (1956) with Dana Andrews for United Artists in Technicolor and in CinemaScope. Krueger was still somewhat active in the 1960s. He ginned up a novel called WINGS OF THE TIGER, about Air Force fighter pilots during the Vietnam War. The novel was published in 1966, of course. Krueger planned on a feature film based on the novel, and it was going to be filmed in Technicolor and in Super Panavision 70, and made by his production outfit Galaxy International. Unfortunately that proposed movie version never made it to the silver screen. Carl Krueger just never got the breaks, was all. SABRE JET was filmed in color, and it was printed up by the Color Corporation of America but as of 2022 it's only available in black and white, and bleached out at that. With a far bigger budget, this could have been much better. The aerial photography by Thomas Tutweiler was surprisingly excellent. The scenes between Gil and Jane Manton were realistic, but the acting by the cast members were strictly by the numbers. Still, it was a positive depiction of the Air Force. The reason why the Sabres and Shooting Stars could not land and take off in South Korea was because the landing strips there were either dirt or gravel, and that would have damaged the turbine engines on the jet planes. Harmless viewing, so check it out.
Great stock footage -- from the wrong war!
henri sauvage27 May 2003
Warning: Spoilers
Uninspired melodrama combines with lavish use of stock footage in this cheapie Korean War propaganda flick.
Although the Sabre jet surely qualifies as one of the most beautiful fighters ever built, you have to get more than halfway into this movie before you even see one. You can learn a thing or two about combining stock footage (in this case, beauty shots of F-84 Thunderjets and -- eventually -- the F-86 Sabre) with WWII-era gun camera footage into a slovenly simulation of ground attacks and aerial combat, but that's about the only excuse I can imagine for enduring this gobbler.
I'm not one of those sticklers for absolute accuracy in every detail of a military film, but this one is such a brainless mishmash of piecemeal splicing it's often quite hilarious (if you're an aviation history buff). For instance, in the climactic battle, where they're supposed to be strafing and bombing an airfield full of MIGs, the planes getting chewed to pieces and blown up on the ground are obviously WWII-vintage propellor-driven aircraft, German, Japanese and -- if I'm not mistaken -- some American planes, courtesy of Japanese gun cameras. During the dogfight that develops as the Sabre jets fly escort for the bombers, pay attention and you'll see a P-38 and a LuftWaffe BF-109 go down in flames!
Outside of its revolting message about the proper role of a military wife and its strident Cold War ideology, one truly shameful moment in this film occurs when the hero (Robert Stack) is ordered to blow up an ammunition dump hidden in a house somewhere along a road. So how does he identify this concealed dump? By randomly shooting up houses until he gets the right one! ("Sooner or later, I just gotta hit paydirt...")
Don't waste your time with this threadbare nonsense, when there are far better films -- like "The Bridges At Toko-Ri" or even "The Hunters" -- covering the same subject matter.
Although the Sabre jet surely qualifies as one of the most beautiful fighters ever built, you have to get more than halfway into this movie before you even see one. You can learn a thing or two about combining stock footage (in this case, beauty shots of F-84 Thunderjets and -- eventually -- the F-86 Sabre) with WWII-era gun camera footage into a slovenly simulation of ground attacks and aerial combat, but that's about the only excuse I can imagine for enduring this gobbler.
I'm not one of those sticklers for absolute accuracy in every detail of a military film, but this one is such a brainless mishmash of piecemeal splicing it's often quite hilarious (if you're an aviation history buff). For instance, in the climactic battle, where they're supposed to be strafing and bombing an airfield full of MIGs, the planes getting chewed to pieces and blown up on the ground are obviously WWII-vintage propellor-driven aircraft, German, Japanese and -- if I'm not mistaken -- some American planes, courtesy of Japanese gun cameras. During the dogfight that develops as the Sabre jets fly escort for the bombers, pay attention and you'll see a P-38 and a LuftWaffe BF-109 go down in flames!
Outside of its revolting message about the proper role of a military wife and its strident Cold War ideology, one truly shameful moment in this film occurs when the hero (Robert Stack) is ordered to blow up an ammunition dump hidden in a house somewhere along a road. So how does he identify this concealed dump? By randomly shooting up houses until he gets the right one! ("Sooner or later, I just gotta hit paydirt...")
Don't waste your time with this threadbare nonsense, when there are far better films -- like "The Bridges At Toko-Ri" or even "The Hunters" -- covering the same subject matter.
Air combat in the Korean War
lefkowj10 June 2000
A very good movie concerning the men who flew combat aircraft known as Sabre Jets during the Korean War. Robert Stack does an excellent job as a brooding combat pilot presented with the daily anxieties of life and death in the air over Korea while embroiled in a reunion with his ex, who is stationed at the same Air Force base as a journalist. Good interplay between Coleen Gray and Robert Stack in this role. The plot, of course, has been used before in WWII movies, but the urgency of the then new jet aircraft and jet combat makes the situations more tense. The air combat scenes are spectacular if you'll forgive the painting of American aircraft as Russian built MIG's. Along the same lines but based more on real characters is The McConnell Story, made two years later in 1955. Sabre Jet is a movie that will appeal to air combat fans with a decent storyline as well.
Another day at the office
bkoganbing5 December 2012
This independent United Artist release is a small nugget of gold among a lot of aviation pictures made on much bigger budgets. Sabre Jet makes good use of aerial combat footage from Korea, nicely integrated into the plot of this film which is really about the home life of our fighter pilots flying missions in the Korean War from a base in Japan.
I doubt the enlisted men of the Air Force did this well, but for our fighter pilots the Air Force provided housing and the wives and children lived on the base and though it looks tacky, it's like any other suburban community. The pilots just take off in the morning, do their bit in Korea and then come home for supper to home and hearth. The only difference is that some do make it home and some don't in Sabre Jet.
Coleen Gray is a reporter and the estranged wife of Colonel Robert Stack whose been given an assignment to do a human interest story on the wives and she chooses Stack's base for the assignment. The two are estranged as Stack is an alpha male who wants the women home, barefoot and he'll take care of the pregnant department.
It's a bit rough with Stack for her, but Gray gets a lot of good material from the other wives at the base. They want to talk about their men, they're proud military wives. Her best material comes from Julie Bishop the wife of base commander Richard Arlen. In fact some of the best scenes are with Bishop and Arlen and their two boys.
The last 10 minutes or so are devoted to an aerial dogfight and the combat footage is well integrated into the black and white film. Like many other air films post World War II Sabre Jet is a recruiting film for the new United States Air Force. So for that matter is Top Gun made a generation or two later.
Stack, Gray, Arlen, and Bishop and the rest aren't big in the hero department. They're the guys who have a tough day at the office and the women who wait for them. Sabre Jet shot on an F string budget is a nice film, no frills, but good performances throughout and nice aerial combat footage.
I doubt the enlisted men of the Air Force did this well, but for our fighter pilots the Air Force provided housing and the wives and children lived on the base and though it looks tacky, it's like any other suburban community. The pilots just take off in the morning, do their bit in Korea and then come home for supper to home and hearth. The only difference is that some do make it home and some don't in Sabre Jet.
Coleen Gray is a reporter and the estranged wife of Colonel Robert Stack whose been given an assignment to do a human interest story on the wives and she chooses Stack's base for the assignment. The two are estranged as Stack is an alpha male who wants the women home, barefoot and he'll take care of the pregnant department.
It's a bit rough with Stack for her, but Gray gets a lot of good material from the other wives at the base. They want to talk about their men, they're proud military wives. Her best material comes from Julie Bishop the wife of base commander Richard Arlen. In fact some of the best scenes are with Bishop and Arlen and their two boys.
The last 10 minutes or so are devoted to an aerial dogfight and the combat footage is well integrated into the black and white film. Like many other air films post World War II Sabre Jet is a recruiting film for the new United States Air Force. So for that matter is Top Gun made a generation or two later.
Stack, Gray, Arlen, and Bishop and the rest aren't big in the hero department. They're the guys who have a tough day at the office and the women who wait for them. Sabre Jet shot on an F string budget is a nice film, no frills, but good performances throughout and nice aerial combat footage.
Awful Movie
james-rollins-13 July 2007
This has to be the worst aviation movie ever.
At first, when I saw it listed on my upcoming viewing list, I was excited, as I had never seen this picture. Now I know why I had never seen it.
I almost feel like digging up the writers, producers and director of this bomb and ask for compensation for the time I wasted watching it.
The use of stock footage is badly edited and contains many shots of WWII aircraft and if you are an aviation buff at all, you have seen these shots a hundred times and can recognize each aircraft used. American and German WWII aircraft abound in this Korean era story. There is not even an attempt to make these shots work as Korean era combat.
What was the budget for this turkey? Using F-86 aircraft poorly disguised to represent MiGs is terrible. Yuck, horrible. Mere words cannot express how bad, with a capital B, this picture is.
Avoid it at all cost.
Pass it by. This movie stinks !
At first, when I saw it listed on my upcoming viewing list, I was excited, as I had never seen this picture. Now I know why I had never seen it.
I almost feel like digging up the writers, producers and director of this bomb and ask for compensation for the time I wasted watching it.
The use of stock footage is badly edited and contains many shots of WWII aircraft and if you are an aviation buff at all, you have seen these shots a hundred times and can recognize each aircraft used. American and German WWII aircraft abound in this Korean era story. There is not even an attempt to make these shots work as Korean era combat.
What was the budget for this turkey? Using F-86 aircraft poorly disguised to represent MiGs is terrible. Yuck, horrible. Mere words cannot express how bad, with a capital B, this picture is.
Avoid it at all cost.
Pass it by. This movie stinks !
Movie Confused about Aircraft and Wives
nebula-3702927 July 2021
Warning: Spoilers
You'd think that a movie called Sabre Jet would be about Sabre Jets, wouldn't you? Well, despite an opening scene with shots of some F-86 Sabres, they have the pilots flying F-80s, Shooting Stars (an older straight-wing aircraft). Also, on the first mission the aircraft apparently have an unlimited supply of munitions, enabling them to attack a few dozen ground targets. However, the movie isn't really about the planes, or the Korean war, but about the Air Force wives. The main part of the melodrama is Robert Stack resenting his wife doing the unspeakable: having her own career. The Horror! The Horror. How dare her do such a thing in the 1950s?
Welll,,,, yeah, but--
doug_hile2 January 2008
Agree with you guys about some of the stock footage. TOP GUN, it ain't, but, even the bad stuff is good, since,,, ya can't see any real Sabre Jets anymore,,, except for ONE that has been restored and does the air shows. Early Robert Stack is priceless, considering his Elliot Ness, and Airplane work with Zucker and Abrams. The part that always got me was the Korean pilot who got shot up, and rips off his face mask. In the theatrical version I saw, that was when a black and white movie switched to color for all the blood in the cockpit. Yeeecht!~! The McConnell Story is a bit better, and The Hunters is better yet, especially for the flying sequences, but this one was thoroughly enjoyable for a ten year old kid who loved airplanes and lived for those Saturday Matinée double features. So, yeah, it's a turkey, but, what the heck --- Gobble Gobble~!!~! ;-)
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