Warner Bros entry into the airplane disaster movie lacks a bit in the star power department - it's full of familiar faces but no big names, people like Dana Andrews, Effrem Zimablist Jnr, John Kerr, Troy Donahue, Anne Francis. Much of it is hokey, full of cliched characters and scenes with characters thinking aloud to themselves.
But you know what? I kind of liked it. There's always something happening, and it's handled professionally enough. Effrem worries about trashy wife Rhonda Fleming who sleeps with everything that moves (kind of like Jessica Lange in Blue Sky), John Kerr disapproves of co pilot Dana Andrews' bad parenting of Andrews' son, Troy Donahue worries about being married and training to be a pilot, the navigator comes in for comic relief, two geeky passengers find each other attractive but can't admit it, a old flame of Keenan Wynn's sits next to him but he doesn't recognise her, some passengers have a terminal illness, John Kerr is romancing air stewardess Anne Francis who is a reformed slut with a long lost baby, Kerr wants to be a painter and had a famous painter father. Plot, plot, plot, plot, plot.
Then in the last 15 minutes it gets awesome - Zimbalist crashes into Andrews' plane... and Zimbalist and Donahue die when their jet blows up! Then the wisecracking engineer gets sucked out and dies and some of the passengers die. Everyone else gets home alright but it's a great shock and worth the film.
Dana Andrews is a perfect pilot, John Kerr far too smug, Donahue alright, Zimbalist all craggy integrity, Fleming is OTT, Anne Francis very likeable. There are lots of character actors, some crappy model work for the crash, too much characters listening to their own thoughts, a lot of the characters seem to repeat the same tropes (there's several show biz plots - painting, actor, producer; several tramps; several bad parents). Briskly directed.
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