Monday, July 08, 2013

Movie review - "Jet Storm" (1959) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

The least well known of the collaborations between Stanley Baker and Cy Endfield, who also gave us Hell Drivers and Zulu. This is a quite enjoyable British disaster movie, with a fast pace, great cast and silly plot - Baker is the pilot on a flight across the Atlantic, when he discovers passenger Richard Attenborough wants to blow up the plane in revenge for his kid being run over.

How this is revealed is, to be honest, quite dumb - Attenborough threatens the person he thinks killed his kid, then his wife figures out he's got a bomb, and Baker tries to get it out of him, he won't tell, so Baker tells the passengers and they get worried, but sit in their chairs and worry.

It's really bizarre and British with everyone obeying the captain (some are reluctant) and acting in their subplots. There's mad Attenborough, his bewildered wife, a Jewish holocaust survivor, a politely sexy air hostesses romancing the co-pilot, a separated couple who rediscover their love playing cards, a fat Welsh comic (Harry Secombe!), a drunken loud widow (Hermione Baddeley), a pop singer who gets stressed out (Marty Wilde, who sings the title tune), a socialite, a sexy flirt (Diane Cilento), a little kid, and a lynching. Something for everyone really - notably a climax where the captain sends an eight year old kid to sweet talk the psychotic bomber!

A great cast - in addition to the well known leads (who turn in good performances), Secombe and Wilde,  there's Mai Zetterling, George Rose, Virginia Maskell, Elizabeth Sellars, Patrick Allen, Sybil Thorndyke, Neil McCallum, Megs Jenkins, Paul Eddington, David Kossoff, Cec Linder, Jocelyn Lane, Bernard Braden, Barbara Kelly, Lana Morris and Jeremy Judge. It's a movie that is often stupid but never dull and I liked it a lot.


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