Primal small screen… The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973)

Brenda Benet and Chuck Connors

Back in the seventies there were only three channels on UK TV and you pretty much had to watch what you were given. Was it a co-incidence that families watched TV more as one and that there were many successes in appealing to their common tastes? Content was targeted at this mass demographic and was designed to appeal and not challenge… With our modern array of styles and genres – yet still an amorphous mass of the similar and the same on the hundreds of available channels – it’s hard to be measured about the output of the time. A little tame, a bit tame… obvious and predictable… really? So, not as cutting edge as XFactor or Bake Off then? How we’ve changed…

Movies began being made just for TV, spearheaded by CBS and ABC in the US, who were committed to producing family fare much removed from an increasingly explicit mainstream cinema. Probably it was a more cost-effective way of exploiting the newer medium – a low-cost ad-revenue-based model.

Buddy Ebsen, Lynn Loring, France Nuyen and Paul Winfield are shocked!

So it was that films like The Horror at 37,000 Feet were unleashed on the Saturday night public with special effects strictly limited to a not too convincing model 747, moody gurgling carpets and the odd flash of light.

This may have been the first time I’ve seen this film in over forty years (yikes!) and it still projects a residual impact: Shatner’s acting, David Lowell Rich’s well-disciplined direction and what I can now see as more than just fresh-faced charm from the lovely and then ubiquitous Darleen Carr… This is a visit to my primal televisual state when that tiny curved screen in the living room opened up the World to my pre-teen eyes.

Darleen Carr

It’s impossible to view on its own terms anymore and yet you can catch admirable glimpses of fine acting – it is a strong cast - and appreciate the construction of genuine suspense aboard that generic platform for so much dramatic tension: the jet plane. Where once people of different backgrounds convened at country mansions for murder and self-realisation, then as now the venue is likely to be a Boeing jet: shakes on a plane. Shivers too.

The flight is captained by Captain Ernie Slade (chiselled Chuck Connors) a man of heroic bearing who you’d trust to ride any horse and fly any plane… he’s aided by second-in-command Jim Hawley (Russell Johnson) and navigator Frank Driscoll (H.M. Wynant).

Darleen and Buddy

Naturally, there are two pretty stewardesses, super Sally (Brenda Benet) and the lithe Margot (Miss Carr) whose short skirt and tight-fitting, leg-revealing stewardess uniform provokes that instant connection with youthful response: topped off with her regular open-featured prettiness and you have the epitome of the American TV girl of the period. It may be just me but… I remember you well Darleen.

Of course she’s also a fine actress and she’s going need to be if we’re to survive the next 73 minutes…

Jane Merrow and Roy Thinnes

Other good actors with sometimes difficult words to say include Roy Thinnes (remember The Invaders?) as devil-may-care architect, Alan O'Neill and playing his long-suffering wife, Sheila, English export Jane Merrow – she of the ace-face and doe-eyed delivery. Sheila is from old money and has allowed marital loyalty to override her inherited duty: mad Al has uprooted the remains of a druid grave and is transporting it, lock, stock and headstone to top off a new apartment he’s building – oh, how the godless rich spend their money…

Objecting to all this, in the weirdest-possible terms, is the earnest Mrs. Pinder (Tammy Grimes) a woman from Sheila’s parish who understands far more about the true significance of the remains… she makes one last plea for O’Neill to abandon his plan before promising that he will regret it… In practical terms her intervention is a little late as the relic is all packed up in the hold and they are about to take off but… you know. Mrs Pinder has brought her dog along which is odd especially given the British control on animal movement… she must be thinking of more than a short stay in America as these things take so long to sort out…

Mrs Pinder issues a grave warning...

Anyway… Mrs Pinder is in first class with a second class ticket and is encouraged back to her seat allowing Sheila and Alan to continue an ongoing spat – his infidelity, lack of empathy, regard for tradition and so on… He leaves to go find a drink in the upstairs lounge bar.

Sheila tries to distract herself with music but her headphones don’t work allowing garish ageing cowboy actor, Steve Holcomb (Will Hutchins – an ageing cowboy actor…) to try it on… he strikes out but those headphones… there’s an other-worldly noise coming through… it’s chilling, she can’t listen and pulls the phones off: it’s been a stressful few days but she ain’t seen nothing yet.

Jane Merrow

Meanwhile, Mrs P’s fellow passengers are revealed: there’s a short-haired red-head with a guitar, Manya (Lynn Loring – Mrs Thinnes as it happens) whose long-suffering alongside a smart-looking man constantly topping up his alcohol level – it’s Paul Kovalik (William Shatner in one of his greatest/worst post-Trek appearances depending on who you read… it’s way more complex than that!).

There’s kindly Doctor Enkalla (Paul Winfield) and a young girl Jodi (Mia Bendixsen) who is travelling alone – why is there always a young girl travelling alone? All part of the arcane conventions of the airplane movie…

Bill is always brilliant!

Meanwhile in the lounge… Alan meets grizzled industrialist Glenn Farlee (Buddy Ebsen – a long way from the Texas Tea) who interrupts his chatting up of model Annalik (France Nuyen) to berate his profession and question his business sense in shipping such a commercially-irrelevant object across the Atlantic.

All is now in place for the demonic dance to begin…the mysterious object in the hold gets cold and freezes Mrs Pinder’s dog in an instant, as the cold mist spreads it’s also clear that the plane simply isn’t moving… almost as if something didn’t want to be flown from England to America… The emanating evil spreads and soon the body count begins: as the passengers become more revolting is there any way out that avoids human sacrifice and their reversion to savages?!

Can anyone step forward and save the day in as dramatically efficient way as possible?

Dusty verdict:  In truth it’s hard not to enjoy this film. The story may be as thin as Gaelic mist but the cast certainly believe in it and give their all with some fine character work. Of course no harm is done by the frequent deployment of Darleen Carr’s legs in key shots but she also acts up a storm as do Jane Merrow, Chuck Connors and Tammy Grimes in particular. Bill Shatner? He does very well – yes there’s the occasional mad-eyed glint, like Kirk under alien influence, but he’s having a ball and hasn’t overlooked the fact that this stuff needs to be fun.

Jane M

For some this is the epitome of Saturday night TV movies for others it may be more dated and televisual than cinematic but that’s not for want of trying.

Well worth seeking out on DVD from Amazon and elsewhere…

This ain't Texas Tea...

Not a real plane

Darleen again

Let's take a look around the Boeing 747...

Here's the holding bay

More storage over here.

Wide aisles for passenger comfort

Exceptional all round.

A great future behind us… Journey to The Far Side of the Sun (1969)

The passing of Neal Armstrong was a timely reminder for those of us who grew up in the 60s that the future is not what it was.

When Gerry Anderson was in his pomp, we were in a state of perpetual improvement: life was just going to get better and better. Technology seemed to make everything possible and…we were going to the stars. The Moon first, then Mars and then beyond… science fiction was close to fact and the race for space was going to help mankind put earthly conflicts to one side as looking back on our single insignificant planet of origin we finally realised that there was a greater destiny beyond our petty disputes.

Anderson’s puppet shows tracked the technological obsessions of the decade and got more and more confident as he progressed from Stingray to Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. In all three a global entity addressed world-wide issues whether private sector or quasi-governmental… There were global threats too, but these were just confirmation of our need to act in unity.

By the end of the decade as the Moon landing approached, Anderson was successful enough to finally be trusted with a human cast to accompany the breath-taking vehicles of Derek Meddings and co… These were the men who were making our imagined future happen now.

Journey to The Far Side of the Sun (Doppelgänger in the USA) was an attempt at 2001-style inter-spatial-commentary…a look at the inner human condition from the outer-reaches of space. When I first watched the film in the 1970s it left me disappointed because there were no *real* aliens and, whilst the story arc contained the same let down this time – too literal and thin a plot – there is more than enough to enjoy the film as a whole.

Like so many plots from the time, the film starts off with space administrators arguing over how to follow up the discovery of a planet beyond the Sun. The planet is in completely synchronised orbit with the Earth, same distance from the Sun, same vector and thrust… The director of EUROSEC, Jason Webb ( played with panache by Patrick Wymark) makes a passionate case to send a manned expedition but he struggles to convince the other World powers to fund it.

Ian Hendry and Patrick Wymark

A familiar story perhaps but it just feels a little mannered, as does the character of Dr John Kane (played by the excellent Ian Hendry … a year or two from being sorted out by Michael Caine in Get Carter) who is a scientist with doubts and dubious fitness to undertake this arduous exercise.

The breakthrough is achieved and with NASA’s help, a mission is prepared to be led by experienced astronaut Colonel Glenn Ross (Roy Thinnes, who gives a good performance as a man faced with his own destiny…literally).

Roy Thinnes

We go through the routines of training and preparation which gives Anderson the opportunity to show the futuristic craft that were his stock in trade. The scenes involving all of the craft are universally excellent as you’d expect, given a bigger budget than usual and his army of un-matched effects experts.

Lynn Loring

This is the best part of the film as the enterprise builds up momentum and we look forward to the surprise of just what is on our planetary double. It also provides Anderson with the chance to develop his human assets as well with details of space cowboy’s struggling marriage – partly undermined by his enforced infertility: the chance of irradiated sperm mutating was too high.
Lynn Loring – Thinnes actual wife – plays Sharon Ross and adds some uncharacteristic adult themes to Anderson’s film. Loring was featured in several nude scenes which were eventually cut, but she displays a very human sexuality in a series of contemporary almost there fashions…

Lynn Loring

He has a more sympathetic support from his colleague Lise Hartman, a EUROSEC official (Austrian actress Loni von Friedl) at the space centre… but it’s a sub-plot that’s never really taken anywhere.
The two men are pushed by Webb and it’s hard to see this as anything other than a per functionary attempt to create some tension. The story is pretty basic and might have made a decent hour-long episode of Thunderbirds but it feels a little stretched…

Eventually we have take off and the effects are genuinely special here, not quite a match for 2001 but still pretty good, founded in science-reality and not fantasy. The long trip in suspended animation ends as the space craft approaches the mysterious planet.

For some reason I didn’t catch, they crash land (all the more mysterious given the outcome…) and are rescued by a strange being in a metallic suite.

If you haven’t seen the film look away now…

The men are surprised to find their rescuer speaking perfect English and gradually it is revealed that they have landed on a world almost exactly like our own. Everyone they left behind has a counterpart here and all presume that they had turned the craft round and not completed their mission.

Roy Thinnes...  Mirror-World

It takes some time for the realisation to dawn that this is indeed another world and the exact reverse of Earth… a mirror in every respect with hearts on the right, clocks running counter and cars on the wrong side of the road.

Kane dies and Ross is left alone trying to convince the reverse Earth Jason Webb that he needs to be returned to his Earth and this will hopefully help his double to come home…

But, it is not to be and, for some spurious vaguely-scientific reason, the landing craft of this world won’t dock with the other Earth’s space ship and Ross crashes back down to another Earth.

Roy Thinnes

The film is grasping for some profound meaning here but it is a bit thin (sorry Roy…). Whilst getting tremendously excited about the need for and experience of space travel…it’s conclusion that there’s – actually – no place like home is disappointing. It doesn’t know what to do with itself…

That aside, the acting is sincere with Thinnes, Hendry and Wymark being especially impressive. It’s also great to see future UFO stalwarts Ed Bishop and George Sewell and, indeed, some of the kit from this film were reused in that series – a far more satisfying effort form Anderson and perhaps his best.

The great Ed Bishop

UFO was all about build up and action and never really resolved itself as a story… perhaps that was what Anderson did best. He certainly did it brilliantly!

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun is now available on DVD and is well worth seeking out… but I think I’ll stick to my VHS copy... back to the future.