The Doomsday Flight

Think Rod Serling wasn't a Thunderbirds fan? Then check out this 1966 telemovie about an airplane with an altitude-sensitive bomb on board, programmed to explode upon descent - the plot is a direct inspiration from Thunderbirds' pilot episode "Trapped In The Sky."

I can only imagine how ticked off every cast and crew member of The Doomsday Flight was when Airport came out on the big screen four years later. It's practically the same! There's a middle-aged desperate man (sorry fellas) who plants a bomb on a passenger aircraft, special agents working with the pilot of the plane to try and bring about a safe landing, and a little old lady who acts silly. Writer Rod Serling must have been very frustrated.

Yes, this is a tv movie and you can tell. The production values aren't that great, and the script is more than a little melodramatic; but wasn't Airport melodramatic too? I was pretty impressed with Edmund O'Brien's paranoid performance as the psychotic bomber. Normally I never thought he added anything to his character roles, but he was energetic, confident (in his acting abilities, not as his character), and ate up every scene he was given. Van Johnson was believable as a flyboy captain who didn't want to alarm the passengers, but he might have cringed off-camera at some of the corny lines he had to say.

Most modern audiences probably won't like this movie. It's too dated, and there have been so many far superior disaster movies made throughout the decades. But if you're that person who likes watching the original versions of things, you might want to pop this one in for a matinee.

This is an all time classic in the thriller genre and perhaps the best air flight thriller ever made, although films on this matter tend to always be superb. It's difficult not to make an air flight exciting, especially under a bomb threat. The bomb man here isn't just anyone but Edmond O'Brien in one of his most unforgettable characters, a man at the end of his tether, disqualified, calling himself both a chemist and engineer but reduced to a mechanic, and he sets about for a joy ride that will be his last, although staying on the ground, but he sure will have his kicks out of it.

The second gang leader of the plot here is Van Johnson in also one of his most remarkable characters, although he always makes an impression by highly sustained and sorely tried characters, and here he is in charge of a flight that can't get down. It is doomed to remain hanging in the air forever, reduced to atoms on the way.

But things are happening that neither the bomb man nor the flight captain have no idea of, no control of and totally beyond their wildest imagination. There are many memorable scenes here, but everything is perfectly credible and genuine, the reactions, the individuals, the veteran from Vietnam and the change he is going through although a nervous wreck, the struggle of the personnel, everything is perfectly realistic.

My favourtite scene must though be the long drama at the bar, which never ends and constantly goes from one lucid moment to another. In brief, it's a wonderful film, gilded all the way by a splendid dialogue, - and what fun Edmond O'Brien must have had in making this part!

51 years since it was made and very current. And well done. In fact, any film with Lalo Schifrin's music deserves a view. Schifrin is a living legend, has signed a lot of masterpieces such as "Mission: Impossible" (1966-1973), "Mannix" (1967-1975), "Dirty Harry" (1971), "Magnum Force"(1973), "Charley Varrick"(1973), "Joe Kid"(1972), "THX 1138"(1971), "Kelly's Heroes" (1968), "Once a Thief "(1965), "The Cincinnati Kid"(1965), "Cool Hand Luke"(1967), "Coogan's Bluff"(1968), etc. etc., 212 credits in 2018. William A. Graham was a very good and prolific director, an action and suspense films specialist. The cast includes many great actors: Edmond O'Brien, very good in the role of the bomb maker who place it where nobody not even think it can be, Van Johnson, as the captain of the plane, Edward Asner, John Saxon, Jack Lord, Michael Sarrazin, etc.

Doomsday Flight, written by the master dramatist Rod Serling, is one of the three best movies ever made involving an airplane flight (Fate is the Hunter and Airport are the others). Very well acted by a non-big name cast including lots of familiar faces.