The High and the Mighty

This movie is billed as "the granddaddy of airplane catastrophe movies" and I think moniker totally fits.  John Wayne stars as a co-pilot on a commercial jet flight from Honolulu to San Francisco (which apparently took 12+ hours in 1954).  Catastrophe ensues, and the bulk of the movie is watching how the flight personnel and passengers handle the stress of knowing they may or may not make it.

Sound familiar?  It did to me, too.  It's like an un-comic version of Airplane!.

• Why is John Wayne only the co-pilot?  Because, in the war, he had a crash landing and keeps having flashbacks about it.  Over Macho Grande?  I don't think he'll ever get over Macho Grande.
• When the actual pilot has a momentary freak-out about their chances for a safe landing, watch for the double face-slap so popular in Airplane!.
• One character comes on the plane with a gun, reminiscent of Sonny Bono's bomb briefcase in Airplane 2.
• One Marilyn Monroe-esque woman reveals that she is headed to SF to meet the boyfriend she met in a personal ad; she sent him pictures of herself that were 8 years younger than her current self, so she is all freaked out that he'll think she's old...and in her freaking out she cold-creams off her makeup (and most of her drawn-on eyebrows, which was, for me, the scariest part of the movie).
• One couple scrimped and saved for their trip to Hawaii, during which every possible thing went wrong, and now they're on their way back, facing certain death.

I watched this movie with my friend, Nicole, who dozed through it off and on.  I think we both ended up enjoying it and are glad we saw it.  It won an Oscar for its score!  Which is a bit dramatic, but nice nonetheless.

Availability: DVD
Released: 1954
Added to my queue: 6/8/2007
Reason added to my queue: No idea