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We
open knee deep in World War II. Under the
command of Canadian pilot Ted Stryker (Dana
Andrews), the R.A.F.'s 72nd
fighter squadron is on their way to
Germany. Their mission: To bomb a
strategic supply depot. They
manage to slug through the German fighter
umbrella, but their target is obscured by
fog.
Opting
not to abort the mission, Stryker leads
his planes on a low attack run with
disastrous results. Lost in the fog, the
planes go in too low and six of them
crash. Stryker survives, but is badly
wounded. While recovering, Stryker is
haunted by flashbacks of the attack.
Taking full responsibility for the
disaster, no formal charges are brought
against him and he's honorably discharged.
But the
doctors warn him to face his emotional
trauma, and put it behind him, or he’ll
be running from it forever. For
Stryker, the war is over, but a "more
personal kind of war has just
started for him."
Ten
years later, Stryker is still running. He
is desperately trying to land a job at a
factory in Winnipeg but there's a
complication. Stryker feels his war record
is the obstacle, but the manager says
it’s his record after the war that
concerns him. Stryker’s gone through
twelve jobs in ten years, and has moved
just as often. Stryker pleads that he
desperately needs the job to save his
marriage. (He’s
at the breaking point with his wife.)
Stryker
does get the job, and heads home to
celebrate, but finds only a note and an
empty house. (The
ominous music tells us what it says.)
He rushes to the airport and spies his
wife, Helen (Linda Darnell),
and son, Joey (Geoffrey Toone),
boarding Flight-714.
He buys a ticket and barely makes it on
board before the flight departs.
The
plane takes off, and we find out that
Stryker is now a white-knuckle flyer. (He
hasn’t even been in a plane since
"the incident.") He
starts sweating profusely, and excuses
himself to the bathroom where he starts
having more violent flashbacks.
*
* * *
Does
the plot of Zero
Hour!
sound kind of familiar to you? Does is it
maybe trip off you déjà-vu alarm just a
little? It should.
That’s
because the comedy Airplane
basically spoofed Zero
Hour!
into obscurity. Most people make the wrong
assumption that the Airport
movies were the main inspiration for Airplane
(but
now you know better.) It was
this film that inspired Jim Abrahams and the
Zucker brothers, and to be honest, they didn't
have to change all that much.
Arthur
Hailey wrote the original teleplay, Flight
to Danger,
that Zero
Hour!
is based on. He also wrote Airport.
The man has made a living writing about
love triangles, matrimonial humps, and
airline disasters. Hall Bartlett
translated the action to the big screen,
serving as both producer and director.
Bartlett's other big contribution to the
world of B-Movies was adapting Richard D.
Bach's New Age "Free to be Me"
best-seller Jonathan
Livingston Seagull.
Along
with the Stryker's crumbling marriage,
there are several other subplots stuck on
this plane ride as well. Head stewardess
Janet Turner (Peggy King) is
fighting with her boyfriend, Tony (Jerry
Paris), because they can’t quite
get over the matrimonial threshold. There
are also several older gentlemen in first
class, passing a bottle around, on their
way to a football game in Vancouver.
Stryker
bumps into the pilot in the galley. (What
the pilot is doing in there I don’t know
-- and whose flying the plane is another
mystery.) Captain Smith
(Elroy "Crazylegs" Hisrch -- and
his unearthly chiseled chin) comments
on Stryker's haggard appearance, and asks
if he needs some Dramamine. He declines,
and leaves to talk to his wife. Ellen
isn’t really happy to see him, but Joey
sure is. In Dutch with the wife, Stryker asks Janet if his son can
see the cockpit. She takes them forward.
Smith asks Stryker if he's feeling any
better, then asks Joey if they’ve ever
been in a cockpit before. (And
no, he doesn’t ask if he likes gladiator
movies -- or seen a grown man naked.)
Joey says his dad used to fly planes, and
he wants to be a pilot, too, someday.
Janet
asks what they would all like for dinner:
fish or lamb. (Uh-oh.)
Smith, the co-pilot, and Joey all want fish
while Stryker opts for the lamb. Stryker
thinks they should go, but Smith says Joey
can stay for a while if he likes. As he
leaves, we overhear ominous weather reports
over the radio, and several airports are closing due to fog.
Stryker
returns to his wife and begs for another
chance. But Ellen confronts him with the
facts: They’ve been on the move since
the end of the war, never settling down.
She says it’s nothing he’s done, but
what he hasn’t done. He promises to do
better, but his promises are no good
anymore. She then drops the bomb on him;
she can’t live with a man she no longer
respects. (Ouch.)
Back
in the cockpit, Janet brings the pilots
their food and sends Joey back to his
seat. Joey finds his dad not sitting with
his mom and asks why. Dad
handles it delicately, but let’s give the
kid a little credit here for being wise
beyond his years.
All
the passengers are served their food and
time passes...
Eventually,
one of the passengers turns violently ill.
Janet gives her some Dramamine. (This
flight is brought to you by Dramamine.
Dramamine: the cure for everything.)
But the passenger only gets worse. She
asks Smith if they can land for a medical
emergency, but all the airports are closed
except for Vancouver, still five hours
away. He tells Janet to see if there is a
doctor on board. As she leaves, we notice
the co-pilot is getting sick.
Luckily,
a Dr. Baird (Geoffrey
Toone) is on the flight. He
examines the patient, but doesn’t like
what he sees. Meanwhile, more passengers
are getting sick, including Joey. Baird
examines the boy and asks Ellen what
he’s had to eat that day. She goes
through the list, up to the fish he ate an
hour ago. Baird
then asks to see the pilot. He meets Smith
outside the cockpit and demands that they
land immediately. Before Smith can tell
him about the weather, the plane goes into
a nosedive.
They
rush into the cockpit and find the
co-pilot slumped over the controls. Baird
asks Janet what he had for dinner. He had
the fish, too. Baird feels that must be
the key, and tells her to find out who all
had fish on the flight. Smith dangerously
points out that he had the fish, too.
As
the passengers start to grow wary that
something's wrong, Smith radios Vancouver
to have them prepare for an emergency
landing, with medical help standing by. Baird
gives Smith a shot of morphine to help
fight off the sickness. (Giving
morphine to the pilot? Is that really
wise?) He gives everyone else who
had the fish and ipecac. (What are
they gonna do with all the air sickness
bags?)
But it comes too little too late as more passengers fall
to the malady.
Janet
receives a call from the cockpit over the
intercom, but no one responds to her
answer, which can only mean one thing.
She rushes to the front and finds Smith
passed out. At least he managed to turn
the autopilot on, so they're safe for the
moment. (At
least until they run out of gas or plow
into something.)
Since
she managed to find him among the
passengers, the doctor sends Janet to find
a pilot. To prevent a panic, they create a
ruse that the pilot just needs help with
the radio. Stryker is the only one with
any kind of flight experience and offers to help.
To
his horror, he enters the cockpit and
finds both pilot seats empty. Stryker
tries to back-pedal out of it until Baird
gives him the score: Unless he can get the
plane down, everyone, including his
family, will die.
Stryker
worries about a panic, but Baird says he
and Janet can handle it. He'll need help
in the cockpit with the radio, so Baird
promotes Ellen to co-pilot.
Stryker then contacts Vancouver and
tells them the situation.
On
the ground, Burdick (Charles
Quinlaven) makes emergency
preparations. He gets a hold of Treleaven (Sterling
Hayden), the best man to talk
Stryker down. But there's a problem: the
two have a troubled history, dating back in
the war. Treleaven believes that Stryker
will crack under the pressure. Burdick
stresses to him that Stryker is the only
chance they have. So
Treleaven puts on the kid gloves and
contacts the plane. Stryker recognizes him,
and they congenially decide to cut the
crap and get through it. Ellen takes over
the radio and Treleaven starts running him
through landing procedures.
Meanwhile,
despite Janet's efforts, the passengers are starting to panic. One
woman even tries to open the emergency
door. Tony helps to get her under control
and sees that Janet isn’t holding up very well, so he
promises to marry her as soon as they
land. (Not
much of a commitment once you consider all
the circumstances.)
Treleaven
wants to practice some more, but Stryker
says there isn’t enough time. They
approach the Rockies and run into a storm.
The lightning triggers more flashbacks, and
Stryker zones-out, causing the plane to
go into a nosedive. Ellen manages to snap
him out of it, but during the mayhem, the
radio was knocked off of the airport’s
frequency.
Vancouver
sits in an uneasy silence for several
agonizing minutes. They keep calling for
Flight-714, but get no answer.
On
the plane, Stryker sweats some more and
tinkers with the radio. Eventually, he
manages to tune Vancouver back in. The
plane approaches the field but it's swamped
in by fog. Treleaven tells them they have
enough fuel to last another two hours, and
to circle until the weather breaks. Stryker
radios back that the sick passengers are
out of time and he’s coming in -- fog or
no fog. Treleaven concedes and wishes him
luck. Stryker warns the passengers to
assume crash positions, and puts Ellen in
charge of the engine kill switches. As
they swing around for the final approach,
Ellen says that she’s very proud of him.
They
manage to make out the runway through the
fog and head in. Treleaven yells at him
the whole way down -- they come in too fast,
burn out the brakes, and destroy the
landing gear, but the plane comes to
screeching halt mostly intact. (As
the old saying goes, any landing you can
walk away from…)
Baird
informs them they’ve landed in time to
save the sick. Treleaven says it was the
ugliest landing he’s ever seen, but would
like to buy them all a drink.
The
end
See,
the
comedy of Airplane
is lifted almost verbatim from Zero
Hour!.
It’s all there: from the insipid
dialogue to the overblown melodrama, so much so, that
watching Zero
Hour!
will crack you up at the most inopportune
times. It’s hard to watch this film with
a straight face if you’ve seen and been
corrupted by Airplane.
From
the deadpan doctor, to the sweaty hero, the
characters are also virtually identical.
There’s the same plucky stewardess, and
very panicky passenger. (The
one everyone took turns slapping in the
spoof.)
It’s also the origin of the "Picked
the wrong day to quit smoking gag",
taken to the hilt by Lloyd Bridges in the
later film.
There
is one scene from this film that seems
strangely missing from Airplane:
a
bizarre vignette between Joey and Tony.
Tony has a sock puppet that talks in an
Irish accent and uses it to entertain
the boy. It comes off really creepy and
seems more than ripe for the Zucker and
Abrahams treatment and left me
scratching my head, pondering its
omission.
Dana
Andrews and Sterling Hayden turn in
solid performances. I enjoy both of
these actors immensely. Here, Andrews
sweats like a guy named Ira. In
Airplane,
Robert Hayes needed help from the f/x
department to produce the gallons and
gallons of sweat. Andrews didn’t need
any help. And is it me, or does Hayden
always seem to be having trouble
breathing? (Also
watch for John Ashley doing a bad Elvis
impersonation on the TV.)
It’s
not that hard to see this plane ride as a
metaphor for the Stryker’s failing
marriage. They have to work together to
get through this crisis and save Joey. And
with a little help from Treleaven -- the
marriage counselor from hell, they manage
to successfully land the plane, thus saving
the marriage.
To
be honest, Zero
Hour!
stands up fairly well on its own, but I
will warn that if you've already seen Airplane,
it makes Zero
Hour!
one of the funniest unintentional comedies
ever made.
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