Chain Lightning

Chain Lightning follows Matt Brennan, a celebrated bomber pilot from the Second World War who has left the military and taken a job as a test pilot for an aircraft manufacturer run by Leland Willis. At the company he runs into Jo Holloway, a woman he was involved with during the war, who now works there as a receptionist. Brennan clashes with the management over how much risk a pilot should be asked to take, particularly when the designer Carl Troxell pushes a new project: a supersonic aircraft, the JA-3, that is meant to be demonstrated to the military without an ejection seat. Brennan considers flying it too dangerous, and the disagreement drives the film's central conflict.

Stuart Heisler directed, working from a screenplay by Liam O'Brien and Vincent B. Evans, with Anthony Veiller producing for Warner Bros. The film sits between Heisler's Tokyo Joe and Storm Warning in his run of features. Humphrey Bogart plays Brennan, heading a cast that includes Eleanor Parker as Jo, Raymond Massey as Willis, Richard Whorf as Troxell, James Brown and Roy Roberts. On IMDb it holds a 6 out of 10 from around 1,800 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.4 out of 10 from a much smaller group of 28 voters, suggesting a modest but generally steady level of approval.