MURDER ON FLIGHT 502
US, 1975, 100 minutes, Colour.
Ralph Bellamy, Polly Bergen, Theodor Bikel, Sonny Bono, Dane Clark, Laraine Day, Fernando Lamas, George Maharis, Farrah Fawcett, Hugh O’Brian?, Molly Picon, Walter Pidgeon, Robert Stack, Brook Adams.
Directed by George Mc Cowan.
This is a comparatively early telemovie – but it seems very familiar in retrospect, with all the disaster films, especially in the Airport tradition. It has many stars from the golden years of Hollywood including Ralph Bellamy, Dane Clark and Laraine Day as well as a number of character actors who spent a lot of time in television films. It looks like a predecessor for Flying High/Airplane, the very funny send-up of this kind of film. Even Robert Stack is the captain in this plane with Farrah Fawcett and Brook Adams as the flight attendants.
It was directed by George Mc Cowan, regular director of many television films during the 1970s. It is really a story of a vendetta rather than what is now considered terrorism.
1. The quality of this telemovie, entertainment value?
2. The various techniques under the plane itself, the passengers and the revelation of character, the build-up to crises in the confined space, the revelation of the murderer and the final conflict? Audience excitement, identification with the passengers and the danger? How was this achieved, how well?
3. The trend of disasters and murder mysteries in the mid-seventies and this film combining both commercially? How successfully? How seriously? Conventional material which is basically forgettable? Or not?
4. The presentation of the pilots and their ability to cope, their action in the predicament?
6. How well delineated were the minor characters, Charlie and the Jewish lady and their companions, Nywroon and his background, Dorothy, Walker, the sophisticated woman and her confrontation with the murderer?
7. The revelation of the murderer? The build-up to his apprehension and his confrontation of people? How convincing, melodramatic?
8. How much human value was there in this film, commercial and surface exploration of values which is satisfactory at a television level?
