Zero Hour!

I was always told that Airplane! was a take off of the Airport movies of the 70s. It might have been, but the main source for the film was Zero Hour! This film is hilarious if you're a big Airplane! fan. As I watched ZH, I was reciting the same Airplane! dialogue in my head. I've never seen two movies that are so similar. It's quite a hoot!

It's like déjà vu all over again. Until last night, I had never seen Zero Hour!, but I feel as if I've seen it a dozen times. I knew that some of Airplane! (the sick girl and singing nun for example) came from Airport, but I had no idea just how much was taken from Zero Hour! Airplane! is like some weird comedic remake or re-imaging of Zero Hour! - and they nailed it right down to the exclamation mark. And it's not just ideas or concepts that were taken from Zero Hour!, entire sections of dialogue were lifted and used in Airplane! I'm shocked to discover that lines like "I guess I picked the wrong week to give up smoking" weren't written especially for Airplane! The dialogue is so similar that when little Joey visits the cockpit and the captain asks if he's ever been in cockpit before, I kept waiting for him to ask "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" as he does in Airplane! Even some of the performances in Airplane! are eerily reminiscent of Zero Hour! Take Robert Stack in the role originally done by Sterling Hayden. Amazing stuff! The funny thing to me about this example, however, is that Hayden is actually more intense in the role than Stack could have dreamed.

Giving a rating to Zero Hour! is difficult. Even if you've only seen Airplane! once (and I've probably seen it a couple of dozen times over the years), it's all but impossible to keep a straight face (Who am I kidding? It's impossible not to downright laugh out loud.) when Johnny goes to make coffee or when Stryker straights sweating buckets behind the controls of the plane. It's impossible to take the melodrama of Zero Hour! seriously. So I don't know how I would rate the movie had I never seen Airplane! I would like to think I would have still enjoyed the experience and would have formed a similar opinion. But I have seen Airplane!, so I have that built in bias. In the end, because the movie kept me entertained (for whatever reason) throughout it's brief 81 minute runtime, I'm rating Zero Hour! a 7/10.

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 ****

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!

And you thought the dialogue and acting went over the top in "Airplane," huh? Thank you TCM for running this the other day. I had never seen it before, but wait a minute, sure I had... dozens of times. That's what made the ZH viewing such a hoot. ZAZ did such a fine job colorizing "Zero Hour!" I had the whole script memorized. If you have grown slightly weary from repeated "Airplane" yukfests, find a copy of its propellorized progenitor and enjoy the comedy anew. So true is the original to its parody (note the deliberate juxtaposition) I half expected Geoffrey Toone's (Dr. Baird) nose to grow as he attempted to calm the passengers. All that was missing was June Cleaver's "Jive Talkin'!"