Do you have a hankering for a flick starring an ex-Angel helmed by a director who gave us a 1977 Dracula adaptation starring Louis Jordan (Swamp Thing (1982) as the Count? Oh, and you may remember him for Shadey (1985), an ’80s rental favorite about a clairvoyant wanted by the Feds as result of his ability to impress his premonitions on photographic film.

Acclaimed British and BBC-TV director Philip Saville was hired by NBC-TV and given a cast headed by Jeffrey DeMunn (yes, who you currently know for his work on Billions and The Walking Dead) and Cheryl Ladd — and a plane load of you-don’t-know-their-name familiar TV series guest stars.

The hijack twist: Our disgruntled hijacker isn’t out for money. He wants to stop abortions and, to that end, he’ll save the children if he kills a U.S. Senator — with outspoken opinions on abortion — on the flight. The plan’s glitch: the Senator missed the flight. And when the bomb is discovered by Cheryl’s pilot husband, he decides to make an emergency landing — in a severe thunderstorm. As you can see from the TV ad below, the flight crashes and kills almost everyone on board. And Cheryl — who, despite ill feelings towards her husband for leaving her as result of her two miscarriages — fights to clear her husband’s name.

As with most airliner disasters of the TV Movie variety, the critics gave this telefilm a shrug as result of its overuse of mismatched, stock aerial footage. And don’t be duped by the DVD represses that proclaim the film is “based on true events.” It’s a complete work of fiction that later “became true” in 1996 when a Miami-based ValuJet DC-9 — like the one in the film — crashed in the Florida Everglades as result of an in-flight fire ignited by illegal, flammable cargo — similar to the plotting of the film.

You can watch the full movie on You Tube.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.

CBS-TV got its start in the airline disaster sweepstakes in September 1971 with this tale about transcontinental flight struck with food poisoning. To save the aircraft, the cabin crew locate a passenger with enough flying experience so that he can be coached by an experience pilot on the ground. Doug McClure, it goes without saying, is very good in his role as a Vietnam war ex-chopper pilot who’s called into action to safe the day.

While many write this off as a rip-off of ’70s airline disaster flicks — and, in a way, it is (which we will get to) — Terror in the Sky has it roots in an Alex Haley-written Canadian telefilm starring James “Scotty” Doohan, Flight Into Danger (1956). The CBC-TV screenplay was quickly rebooted as the Paramount Pictures features film Zero Hour! (1957) starring Dana Andrews — each deal with a “food poisoning” premise. Haley then took the premise and retooled n’ tweaked it again for the novel Runway Zero-Eight (1958), then again as novel Airport (1968), which, in turn, became the Burt Lancaster-starring Airport (1970). So, officially, Terror in the Sky is a bigger-budget TV remake of Zero Hour! and a loose cousin to Runway Zero-Eight. which aired on CBS-TV in September 1971.

As for Zero Hour!: Interest in the film was renewed in the ’80s when it was revealed that the Abrahams-Zucker Brothers’ (The Kentucky Fried Movie) Airplane!, which spoofed the Airport series of movies of the ’70s, was actually an almost verbatim comedy-remake of the film.

Yeah, you know why we love this, as it’s another airline disaster TV movie with bonkers casting: assisting Doug McClure are Roddy McDowall and Kennan Wynn, along with ’50s gents Kenneth Tobey (The Thing) and Leif Erickson (On the Waterfront).

Is the name of director Bernard Kowalski ringing any bells? It should. He gave us the Alien precursor Night of the Blood Beast, The Fast and the Furious precursor Hot Car Girl, and the giant monster mash classic Attack of the Giant Leeches, and the mad scientist romp Sssssss. Oh, and the western-horror about devil worshiping voodoo cowpokes, the most awesome TV movie ever, Black Noon (1971). And let’s not forget he closed out his career with TV’s Colombo, Airwolf, Knight Rider, and Jake and the Fatman.

You can watch this on You Tube.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

David Janessen is Captain Pete Douglas . . . and his life is in a talespin: his wife is in the hospital for a life-saving operation and he can’t get out of flight duty . . . and he ends up piloting an airline through a storm. Complicating matters is Marjoe Gortner (Star Crash), in his full-crazed mode that we love (aka, The Survivalist), as a prisoner-transfer who escapes his shackles and skyjacks the plane.

Yeah, if this sounds a lot like Charlton Heston’s Skyjacked (1972; reviewed this week) with its tale of a crazed Vietnam vet with a bomb hijacking a Boeing, then it probably is. Yeah, this is purely unabashed in its Airport series airline disaster rip-offery. But you know what? With this project’s director and the cast he brings to the table, this is a lot of fun. And since we’re mentioning Charlton Heston and his disaster movieness within the context of a David Janessen movie: they both starred in the “Dirty Harry”-inspired football disaster movie, Two-Minute Warning (1976).

Director Robert Butler’s career as a writer, director, and executive creative consultant in TV drama and movies is extensive. His 100-plus credits that began in the early ’60s culminated with Hogan’s Heroes, The Fugitive, and Batman; his moves into theatrical work gave us Kurt Russell in Disney’s The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Barefoot Executive. He began his TV Movie career with the admittedly odd (for television, that is) Death Takes a Holiday (1971), a fantasy-romance where death visits earth and falls in love with Yvette Mimieux; he also gave us Gene Roddenberry’s post-Star Trek effort Strange New World. Do we want to mention the summer camper rip-off with the Cheap Trick theme song, Up the Creek (1980)? Oops, we just did.

And look at the rest of that cast! No need to even mention their movies, for you know ’em well: Don Meredith, Christopher George’s wife Linda Day George, Ray Milland, Hari Rhodes, and Broderick Crawford . . . just wow, it’s all the actors we know and love ’round ‘ere and have written about many, many times in our reviews.

You can watch this on You Tube.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

This is another fact-based TV drama about an aircrash, this one concerning the January 1982 disaster of Air Florida Flight 90 from Washingon D.C. to Fort Lauderdale. The Boeing 737-222 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., resulting in 78 fatalities.

Jeannetta Arnette (yep, of The Redeemer), Barry Corbin (WarGames), Stephen Macht (most recently of the USA Network’s Suits, but since this is B&S About Movies, we’ll mention Nightwing, Galaxina, The Monster Squad), Dinah Manoff (Grease and Child’s Play; the daughter of Lee Grant of Airport ’77), Richard Masur (the sled dog guy in John Carpenter’s The Thing), and Donnelly Rhodes (of the SyFy Channel’s Battlestar Galactica reboot and The Neptune Factor). The rest of the familiar TV actors and film-character actor cast includes Ken Olin, Jane Kaczmarek, Chad Low, Kate Vernon, K Callan, and Kathleen Wilhoite (the sassy waitress Carrie Ann from Road House). Donnelly Rhodes and Dinah Manoff also appeared together in the TV-sitcom Soap.

Director Robert Michael Lewis gave us the successful TV Movie one-two punch of The Astronaut (1972; produced by Herve Bennett of Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232; reviewed this week), and Pray for the Wildcats (1974); at that point, Lewis continued almost exclusively in the TV Movie realms, venturing into the theatrical world only once: with one of Sam’s favorite films S*H*E: Security Hazards Expert. Screenwriter John McGreevy 120-plus resume also started in ’50s TV series, but he also gave us the Fast and Furious precursor, drive-in classic, Hot Rod Girl. By the late ’60s he worked on TV’s Family Affair and Mayberry R.F.D. Among his 30-plus TV movie credits, he gave us one of the best juvenile delinquent TV drama of the ’70s, The Death of Richie (1977).

Needless to say, with the team of Lewis and McGreevy — and regardless of the up-against-it TV budget — this is a well-research docudrama that sticks to the facts and doesn’t go off into composite characters or “fact-based” situations. True, because of the budget, you may see a few “flaws” in the realism of the crash scene, but with this familiar pro-cast selling the material, it’s easily forgiven.

You can watch this movie on You Tube HERE and HERE.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Well, the VCR and the accompanying VHS tape was still hanging on and not all movies were yet released to DVD. There was no Amazon Prime or Netflix. No streaming and the onslaught of 80-minute direct-to-DVD movies were not yet the norm. Cable Superstations like USA and TNT were not yet in the TV Movie business, but the TV movie death knell was ringing in the “Big Three” networks’ village square: “Reality TV” was on the horizon.

It’s hard to believe a U.S TV movie — known it in initial broadcast as A Thousand Heroes — would star Charlton Heston (who’s been in the cockpit before with Airport 1975 and Skyjacked) and James Coburn. However, while this aired as a TV movie in the states — and as most, if not all U.S. TV Movies did — it was broadcast overseas with the Crash Landing alternate title, which also carried over into its home video store shelf life (it also ran on HBO throughout the ’90s).

Instead of a big studio, like Paramount or Universal (see The Crash of Flight 401 and The Ghost of Flight 401), Bob Banner Associates — known for CBS-TV’s long-running The Carol Burnett Show and the daytime Dinah Shore talk show, along with the talent show precursor Star Search (1983 to 2004) and the premiere disco show Solid Gold (1980 to 1988) — bankrolled this Harve Bennett production for broadcast on ABC-TV. Now, if that pairing of Harve Bennett and ABC seems familiar, that’s because the network broadcast Bennett’s TV Movie-to-series adventures of a junkman’s moon rocket, Salvage I. Bennett also provided the network with the sci-fi TV movie classic (before there was a Capricorn One), The Astronaut (1972). But his greatest success with ABC-TV was The Six Million Dollar Man, which aired as a 1973 TV movie, then as a 1973 to 1978 series on ABC — then yes, with episodes packaged into overseas theatricals.

As with Crash of Flight 401, broadcast on ABC-TV in 1978, this Lamont Johnson-directed (1970’s The McKenzie Break, 1972’s The Groundstar Conspiracy, 1983’s Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone) is a fact-based drama regarding the crash of United Airlines Flight 232 from Denver to Chicago that crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, in July 1989. The fifth deadliest crash involving a DC-10, of the 296 passengers and crew, 112 died and 184 survived. Despite the mass causalities, the accident and rescue continues to serve as a text book example in crew resource management and emergency response.

The support cast on this — as with all TV movies up until the mid-90s — is expertly cast with Carmen Argenziano (Jacob Carter on Stargate SG-1, but since this is B&S About Movies: we’ll mention Sharks’ Treasure, Graduation Day, and Clint Eastwood’s Sudden Impact), Bruce McGill (yep, D-Day from Animal House and Timecop), character actor Tom Everett (Air Force One and too many TV series to mention, and Richard Thomas (The Waltons and Battle Beyond the Stars). Needless to say, with Herve Bennett in the producer’s chair and this cast, this film is a well-done, gripping action flick about the human fight-or-flight response.

The events from the Sioux City crash also served in the plotting of the fictitious, Jeff Bridges-starring Fearless. You can steam the film on You Tube.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.