Zero Hour!

In 2010 Zero Hour! is as funny as Airplane!, only it wasn't meant to be at the time. Kudos to TCM for showing it immediately following Airplane. Great to see Dana Andrews when young, and planes had cockpits you could just walk into. If you're a fan of Airplane, or post-war movies, this is a must see.

i hadn't seen it in decades before TCM showed them back to back last night, great job TCM.

What, the review has to be 10 lines long? Well, just picture during this black and white movie while Joey is in the cockpit the Captain saying, "Jimmy, did you ever see a grown man naked?"

This was enjoyable to watch just being a fan of 50s movies, double so being a longtime fan of Airplane!

Arthur Hailey co-scripted this adaptation of his "story" (actually his play, the uncredited "Flight Into Danger") along with director Hall Bartlett and producer John C. Champion about an airliner crippled mid-flight when the crew and most of the passengers are stricken from bacteria-laced fish. Dana Andrews plays a war-scarred ex-fighter pilot haunted by his record in WWII who is the only person aboard adequately prepared to land the plane; he gets his radio instructions via land from Sterling Hayden, who just happened to be Andrews' wartime adversary! Mediocre in all aspects, but still thoroughly engrossing and enjoyable. The plot and characters should be recognizable to fans of the 1980 satire "Airplane!"...however this one is already spoofy as all get-out (though it doesn't mean to be), starting with that grave narration. Linda Darnell's role as Andrews' estranged wife and reluctant co-pilot is a scream (she has no faith in her nervous husband, yet near the finish glows with wifely pride). Andrews and Hayden act it to the hilt, while the dialogue becomes entrenched in a kind of quotable inanity ("He can't land that plane in this soup!"). Nothing to take seriously, but fun nevertheless. *** from ****

Yes the others are spot on when Airplane! is invoked...but I think a truly great film maker also watched and lifted the character of Zero Hour! Stanley Kubrick. The cockpit scenes are so Dr Strangelove looking and feeling that one has to consider if this is where Kubrick looked for production design inspiration for the classic Slim Pickens scenes. Certainly looks and feels that way to this viewer. A Kubrick documentary has some bits about how the Dept of Defense was very curious about how accurate Stanley was in the instruments and layout of the Strangelove plane. Watch ZH and I think its pretty odvious. And a big Thank You TCM for putting Airplane! and ZH back-to-back for what is undoubtedly great film viewing.

This is an exciting film which is well acted and directed with all the tension needed to keep you sitting bolt upright throughout the climactic finale. Perhaps the rushed narrated intro is just a little too over-dramatic but it does not detract from the quality of the rest of the film.

I am well aware of the film's relation to "Airplane!" (which is hilarious) and some moments are impossible to watch without one being reminded of their parody versions (the reference to quitting smoking especially). Nevertheless, it still works as an exciting piece of cinema.

Dana Andrews's Zero Hour comes when former the pilot with the Canadian Air Force who lost several crews because of a decision about a mission toward the end of World War II is called upon to fly again because he's the only one on board a commercial aircraft who can.

Zero Hour is a tense thriller of a film without a second of wasted film frame in it. Andrews since World War II had come to an end has been at loose ends himself, drifting from job to job and now loosing his wife Linda Darnell and son Raymond Ferrell. On impulse after getting his wife's 'I'm leaving you' note Andrews boards a Canadian airliner in Winnipeg that is bound for Vancouver that's carrying Darnell and Ferrell. Then the passengers and both the pilot and co-pilot come down with food poisoning, courtesy of some badly prepared fish. Young Mr. Ferrell also becomes ill.

If the plot situations sound familiar that's because the film was written by Arthur Hailey who later cornered the market on these kinds of films with the successful Airport series. Story and screenplay were done by Hailey and while the film doesn't have the Ross Hunter type gloss that the Airport series had, it actually benefits because you're not stargazing among the glittering cast that all the Airport films had.

Although he's only in the last third of the film, Sterling Hayden plays one of Andrews's former Canadian Air Force pilots who knows what happened to him back in the war and who now flies for the airliner. It's Hayden's job to talk him down and give Dana on the job pilot training.

Usually the female role in these kinds of films is to patiently sit and wait while the man does his thing. That's not so in Zero Hour, Linda Darnell pitches right in and operates the plane radio right along side her estranged husband.

Andrews, Darnell, and Hayden all register well in their roles. Unusual in that time that the film has a Canadian setting though the players are mostly American. Probably helped that Arthur Hailey was British and in fact served in the RAF during World War II. I'm betting his source material for the story grew out of his experiences there.

Zero Hour is a suspenseful drama and ought not to be missed, especially if you're a fan of Hailey's Airport films.