Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Artie Breyfogle A bit slow and preachy, but an interesting tale well worth watching...Actually a more than decent script considering it was shot back in 1961...Second act drags but when they get into the third you sit up and take notice...Don't want to tell all the tale...You'll enjoy watching this yourself...So much junk was produced in this era, it is nice to see something of this quality was shot and produced by Hollywood...The only strange thing is the lost of several international flights lately and how some actually refer to this movie about that situation...All I know is that if I owned the rights to this flick I would mount a minor ad campaign to tie-in with those recent events and sell more copies of "The Flight That Disappeared"...Buckle up and enjoy the ride!

Robert J. Maxwell The tale has promise. All airplane-in-jeopardy movies do. There are some things man was never meant to do, and one of them is flying at 40,000 feet.This one follows a pattern familiar to anyone who has seen another film of its type, especially "The High and the Mighty", or who has seen the "Twilight Zone" episode called "The Odyssey of Flight 33," which aired in February, 1961. This movie was released in September, 1961, just enough time to grind out a message-laden, low-budget simulacrum without having to dream it up ab initio.That's not to say this is a total failure because the genre itself has so much appeal. Yet, the haste shows in the sets, the dialog, and the acting itself. The nerve center for traffic control is a small room with one instrument in it, apparently an oscilloscope. (It's an embarrassment.) Every single person we get to meet during the introductions that these movies require looks and speaks like a Hollywood actor. That includes the two stewardesses but I forgive them because one of them, Bernadette Hale, is such a meal.It takes almost twenty minutes before the airplane begins to get into trouble, gaining altitude no matter what the crew does. (They do nothing; that's a quick and unknowing script, for you.) Here's a quote from the dialog. The airplane now has four dead engines and is still climbing through 50,000 feet. Remarks the worried Air Traffic Control Director, "I don't know. This whole business has a strange, abnormal ring." Meanwhile you sit through a pretty young mathematician, a nuclear scientist who looks like a clone of Allen J. Hyneck, and a maniac who wants Dr. Hyneck to invent a new bomb and blow the Russians off the face of the earth before they can do it to us. If you have ever had any doubt about the details of the semantics behind the word "overacting," you must see Harvey Stephens' performance as the deranged paranoid, breathless, his eyes bulging out like goggles, not so much speaking his lines as launching them.Then everybody falls asleep, the airplane sits silently on a cloud, and the three scientific types undergo a "Christmas Future" experience. Then it was all a dream, unless it wasn't. It's very preachy and unrealistic in its climactic moments.On the whole, it would have made an acceptable "Twilight Zone" hour. As a full-length movie, it's clumsy and pretty cheap.

Michael_Elliott The Flight That Disappeared (1961) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Low-budget but very interesting fantasy/drama about a plane that keeps going higher and higher into the sky but no one on the ground or on-board understands why. I could tell a little more about the plot but that would take away from one's entertainment. This certainly isn't a perfect movie or even a good one but it's got an interesting idea that makes for an entertaining movie. There's no doubt that this isn't going to win any awards but I think fans of the bizarre should have a good time. This thing really plays out like an episode of The Twilight Zone but instead of going into a different galaxy, the plane here just keeps going further up in the sky. I'm not going to spoil why all of this happening but I will say that the final twenty-minutes are the weakest of the film. Considering the small budget, the majority of the running time deals with the variety of passengers and we spend most of the time listening to them talk. We hear about their personal lives, the business their in and of course issues dealing with the atomic bomb, which was a hot subject during this period. The movie's screenplay really does a pretty good job at building up the fantasy elements because you're never fully understanding what's going on or how the plane is going higher. Sure, if you start to think about logics then you can rip the film apart so it's really best that you turn your brain off, sit back and just enjoy. None of the actor's are going to be familiar faces but I thought each of them did fine with their roles. There's certainly nothing too demanding here but the actors fit their parts nicely and manages to make you believe what's going on with their characters. THE FLIGHT THAT DISAPPEARED probably could have benefited from another rewrite and again I think the final twenty-minutes are rather weak. Still, considering what they had to deal with you can't help but feel that the filmmakers did a pretty good job and delivered an entertaining film.

MartinHafer This is a very, very low-budget film about the nuclear age. However, despite having no actors you'll recognize and a cheesy set near the end of the movie, I really liked it and think it's a nice relic about the Cold War and the move to build bigger and badder nuclear bombs. And, regardless of your politics, this was a scary time and a film that questioned all this sure was timely."The Flight That Disappeared" plays somewhat like a "Twilight Zone" episode--and there was, around that same time, a show that did seem a bit like the movie. However, instead of an airplane full of folks being stuck in a plane that keeps passing back and forth in time (something that NEVER was explained and was a shortcoming of the episode), this one involves a plane that keeps gaining altitude--and there's nothing the crew can do to stop it! Eventually, the plane is assumed lost--and after all the crew and passengers fall asleep due, seemingly to a lack of oxygen, there is a meeting with three of the passengers and an odd galactic tribunal. Later, however, it seems that they can't prove this really happened...and then, at the end, the twist. I could say more about all this, but I don't want to spoil it.Despite the budget, the acting was nice, as was the direction. It's really a nice example of a film that does the most with its limited resources. The only negative at all it the female mathematician. She seems to have been included mostly for her sex appeal--especially since her connection to the two scientists was never really established. Still, an interesting film---and one that seems a heck of a lot better than its 4.0 score currently on IMDb.