Something of a genre unto itself, airplane-in-distress pics came two-ways in the ‘’50s: corny all-star big-ticket items (THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY/’54; NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY/’51) or unintentionally comic ‘Bs’ with fading players (THE CROWDED SKY/’60*; ZERO HOUR/’57). So where does this mid-list British example from Ealing Studios fit in? Pluses include legit players like Michael Redgrave, Denholm Elliot, Michael Hordern, George Rose & Alexander Knox working off a script by R.C. Sherriff (of the anti-war JOURNEY’S END and a co-credit on NO HIGHWAY); producer Michael Balcon and composer Malcolm Arnold (Oscar’d for next year’s BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, 2021 his centennial). Minuses include a lot of conventional plotting & skyhigh boilerplate drama as a military flight gets into trouble due to bad weather & having 13 on board, now lost somewhere over Japan. Flatly megged by debuting Leslie Norman who faces the double technical challenge of barely adequate special effects as well as having to shoot in tight airplane interiors. What keeps it afloat (so to speak) is a truly wacky setup: both the crisis and the plane rescue contingent upon believing in a dream of future disaster reported by a high ranking nonparticipant. More interesting is Sherriff’s idea on how actions and responses can be influenced by knowledge of a premonition. The thinking similar to the well-known idea of how the very act of observation will inevitably alter whatever you’re observing. If only this paranormal angle didn’t feel tacked on to conventional airplane-in-distress suspense tropes.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Cover all possible skyborne dramatics of the films mentioned above in one divine parody: AIRPLANE!/’80. Of those listed above, CROWDED SKY is truly irresistible rubbish. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/12/crowded-sky-1960.html
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