I'm a film professor, and this is one that had me in knots because I appreciate it as an artifact but also cringe at its awkward elements. I'll say this much: after good old Ben Mankiewicz on TCM told us at the start that the two planes in the film are flying on a collision course toward each other, I could not turn it off without seeing where all its hokey characters ended up.
Yes, the film uses that recurring interior dialogue device (move in to close up, then voice-over, along the lines of, "That's funny, Jim usually likes my coffee..."), but there are more gems of discomfort throughout, like characters way too self-conscious about their looks and some smarmy sexual jokes. And you'll be tickled to see that coach accommodations in 1960 were far better than first class today.
Just stick around for the collision, which pays off not only for its cheap special effects (which appear to have been shot with a little boy's toys in his basement), but far more so for its astonishing portrait of passengers laughing as they plummet to almost certain death. Warner Bros. apparently knew the audience would not only accept the fake effects and delusional behavior, but that the crowd would not care at all that the two military pilots-- one of whom is choosing between marriage and the Naval Academy-- perish in a fireball, which is summarily ignored for the rest of the film! With all the advances in aviation since 1960, there's still no way an airliner could take a hit from a fighter jet and land with only a few casualties. But like most any disaster, you are just too morbidly curious to look away from this one...
Yes, the film uses that recurring interior dialogue device (move in to close up, then voice-over, along the lines of, "That's funny, Jim usually likes my coffee..."), but there are more gems of discomfort throughout, like characters way too self-conscious about their looks and some smarmy sexual jokes. And you'll be tickled to see that coach accommodations in 1960 were far better than first class today.
Just stick around for the collision, which pays off not only for its cheap special effects (which appear to have been shot with a little boy's toys in his basement), but far more so for its astonishing portrait of passengers laughing as they plummet to almost certain death. Warner Bros. apparently knew the audience would not only accept the fake effects and delusional behavior, but that the crowd would not care at all that the two military pilots-- one of whom is choosing between marriage and the Naval Academy-- perish in a fireball, which is summarily ignored for the rest of the film! With all the advances in aviation since 1960, there's still no way an airliner could take a hit from a fighter jet and land with only a few casualties. But like most any disaster, you are just too morbidly curious to look away from this one...