This one is kind of "Airport" meets "Airplane", combining a mid-air emergency, (not the one in the actual "Airplane" which is based on another film from this period called "Zero Hour"), with goofy scenes involving the mostly silly passengers and their personal stories that would have looked appropriate in an "Airplane" film with no comic embellishments.
The director chooses to introduce us to the passengers by zooming in on their faces, graying out the rest of the picture and having them speak their thoughts. There's also major flashbacks about the personal problems of the main characters. As mentioned in other reviews a couple of characters seem to be shouting their lines as if we- or they- were hearing impaired. And stewardess Ann Francis smiles sweetly and issues a wise-crack as the plane is going down. These elements of the film make it major candidate for "Mystery Science Theater 3000" or one of the Medved brother's books on the worst movies of all time.
But that isn't what I remembered from this film many years after I first saw it. Ephraim Zimbalest Jr., the s tar of 77 Sunset Strip, and Troy Donahue, of "Surfside 6" and "A Summer Place" are in an Air Force jet flying west. As they were popular stars, one assumes they will make it though the picture. We are introduced to their back stories: a failed marriage and a pregnant girlfriend, (the same problem Troy had in "A Summer Place", the theme of which is played in a restaurant scene). These issues will go unresolved.
Then suddenly the passenger plane flying east from the west coast shows up and the planes are coming right at each other. The smaller plane bounces off the bottom of the larger one, taking out an engine from the larger one, then tumbles away and explodes- an explosion that makes it clear that the Zimbalest and Donahue characters were killed instantly. This had the same impact on me that the realization that Janet Leigh's character in "Psycho" is really dead had on me. I just didn't expect it and so that stayed with me all these years. because of that, I just had to watch the film again and came to realize how silly the rest of it is.
I wonder what I'll remember years from now?
The director chooses to introduce us to the passengers by zooming in on their faces, graying out the rest of the picture and having them speak their thoughts. There's also major flashbacks about the personal problems of the main characters. As mentioned in other reviews a couple of characters seem to be shouting their lines as if we- or they- were hearing impaired. And stewardess Ann Francis smiles sweetly and issues a wise-crack as the plane is going down. These elements of the film make it major candidate for "Mystery Science Theater 3000" or one of the Medved brother's books on the worst movies of all time.
But that isn't what I remembered from this film many years after I first saw it. Ephraim Zimbalest Jr., the s tar of 77 Sunset Strip, and Troy Donahue, of "Surfside 6" and "A Summer Place" are in an Air Force jet flying west. As they were popular stars, one assumes they will make it though the picture. We are introduced to their back stories: a failed marriage and a pregnant girlfriend, (the same problem Troy had in "A Summer Place", the theme of which is played in a restaurant scene). These issues will go unresolved.
Then suddenly the passenger plane flying east from the west coast shows up and the planes are coming right at each other. The smaller plane bounces off the bottom of the larger one, taking out an engine from the larger one, then tumbles away and explodes- an explosion that makes it clear that the Zimbalest and Donahue characters were killed instantly. This had the same impact on me that the realization that Janet Leigh's character in "Psycho" is really dead had on me. I just didn't expect it and so that stayed with me all these years. because of that, I just had to watch the film again and came to realize how silly the rest of it is.
I wonder what I'll remember years from now?