À l'heure zéro

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'!"

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.

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.

I haven't seen Zero Hour's irreverent offspring Airplane (1980), so I have to judge this movie on its own merits. In short, it's a white-knuckler all the way. The passenger plane's on a cross-Canada flight when the pilots and some passengers are incapacitated by bad food. Looks like doomsday unless someone among them has flight experience and can step forward. A former WWII pilot, Lieutenant Stryker (Andrews), is conscripted. Trouble is he's still traumatized by combat experience and doubts his piloting abilities, especially with a big jet. Still, there's no one else. Now all the passengers and crew depend upon him to bring the plane down safely in Vancouver amid blinding fog and rain. So, he'll need all the help he can get, especially from the Vancouver flight tower and the commanding Capt. Treleaven (Hayden). But will that be enough.

As some sage once pointed out, there's a close relation between comedy and tragedy. I can see why the producers of Airplane parodied the relentless heavy breathing of this movie in their comedy classic. What with all the interactions between passengers, crew, and tower, there's lots of material to comically exaggerate. Nonetheless, the performances here are effective if mostly unvarying. Andrews gets not a single smile, while Darnell, as Stryker's wife, scowls throughout. In fact, the movie's downside may be that same unrelenting grimness, which is apt for the material but a one-note for audiences.

On the upside is the way some hardier passengers respond to the emergency, showing the skill and heart of a random American public. Then too, if Stryker succeeds, he may overcome his crippling self-doubt stemming from a WWII deadly misjudgment that cost the lives of fellow pilots. Thus Stryker's very much a flawed hero, a good dramatic note. All in all, the movie's a genuine, if unrelieved, thriller that deserves more reshowing than it's gotten. But then Airplane has likely taken whatever thunder Zero had. Nonetheless, this 82-minute suspense can still stand on its own.