Acclaimed Flop: While received well by critics, seen as ground-breaking for its time, and ended up selling a lot of tickets and going down in history as one of the very first sound blockbusters, the film's prolonged Troubled Production meant that Hughes had ended up throwing so much money into the project that it failed to turn a profit and didn't even manage to break even.
Cast the Expert: Howard Hughes hired real World War I aces to fly the planes in the climactic dogfight.
Dueling Works: With The Dawn Patrol. In fact, Howard Hughes even filed a lawsuit that The Dawn Patrol had plagiarized his script in an attempt to delay its release.
Fake Brit: Jean Harlow as Helen, though she doesn't even attempt the accent. The original Helen - Greta Nissen - was Norwegian.
Fatal Method Acting: Three pilots died in the shooting of the climactic air fight. Howard Hughes himself was severely injured when his plane crashed.
The Other Marty: Greta Nissen was the original Helen. But when the film was converted to a talkie, her thick Norwegian accent made it impossible for her to play a British aristocrat. Jean Harlow was cast instead after Howard Hughes found her in a revue.
Troubled Production: The Troubled Production of Hell's Angels was notorious at the time, and was dramatized 75 years later in The Aviator. Production began in 1927, but the film was first released in 1930. Due to Howard Hughes's overbearing production techniques, the original director walked off the picture. When sound was introduced with The Jazz Singer, Hughes decided to re-shoot the film as a talkie. The original actress for Helen had to be replaced for this reason. The climactic air battle was shot by staging an actual one, where Hughes even took the wing and flew one of the planes himself. He was seriously injured as a result. Overall about 137 stunt pilots were used in the sequence, which contributed to the already-bloated budget. Even more troubling at least two of these pilots died from the dangerous stunts they were asked to perform (it is suspected that the number of casualties in the performance of the stunts might have been higher, but that Hughes managed to hush this up). Due to production delays, James Whale, who was directing the talking scenes, was able to shoot an entire other film before Hell's Angels was even released.
What Could Have Been: Thelma Todd had a supporting role that eventually got written out of the script.
Colbert Bump: Both the Manga and anime were somewhat obscure, but when the English dub was announced to include the likes of Team Four Star The film got on a fair amount of fans radar.
Similar to some other anime, it's appearance (and a result of misleading titles) on the RetroCrush YouTube channel have also helped the anime gain attention.
Post-Release Retitle: The film was initially released in 2008 under its original title, but later retitled to just Hells on the 2012 Blu-ray release presumably due to copyright reasons.
The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The anime adaptation was produced in 2008 and screened at the Tokyo International Film Festival note however this was under the original name, it would later be retitled Hells for the Blu-ray . However, it wouldn't be released on Blu-ray until 2012.
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