Der Flug des Schreckens

Rod Serling was not afraid to mix it up with Alfred Hitchcock when it came to creating suspense. Both were masters of the genre. However, in this film, Serling shows that he can rise to the occasion for the big screen with The Doomsday Flight. The story of a man holding an airline ransom for a bomb he has planted is compelling. The quality here is in the writing; the script and storyline are impeccable. Edmond O'Brien gives a performance highly reminiscent of Burgess Meredith (looks and sounds just like him) and does a great job as psycho man. The supporting cast is fine as well. Recommended.

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.

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."

Stumbled on this movie having no idea what it was or who made it. I was to say the least very pleasantly surprised. The acting was of excellent quality, the characters believable even if the bomber himself was portrayed as an absolute loon. The whole thing was genuinely tense and kept you guessing.

I can wholeheartedly recommend watching this I thought it was a really good film.

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.