From the B-Movie Hive: The Flight that Disappeared

The Flight That Disappeared is an efficient little pollinator from the B-movie hive that somehow managed to survive the tough Maine winter and pollinate a flower that grew into a novella and a TV-movie. What I mean by that is that when you start watching The Flight That Disappeared you cannot help but come down with a serious case of the deja vus if you happen to have read some Stephen King or watched Stephen King miniseries at some point in your life. For the first thirty minutes or so of The Flight That Disappeared, you will be reminded strongly of King's The Langoliers if you have read it or seen the miniseries. Once the plot kicks in, however, any similarity between the two is purely coincidental and the plot turns of this B-movie prove infinitely more satisfying than the path taken by Mr. King.

The Flight That Disappeared is a fantastic choice for the title of a B-movie. I mean doesn't that title just scream low-budget but entertaining fare? As with many overlooked B-movies, The Flight That Disappeared was allowed to bring up some very troubling issues and ask some questions that A-movies dared not ask in 1961. The hysteria of the communist witch hunt was only beginning to fade (the exceptionally brave decision by Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kubrick to openly hire blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo to pen the script for Spartacus occurred only two years earlier) and the memories of Joseph McCarthy accusing everyone and his brother of being a Red still lingered heavily when this movie was filmed. As a result, it is nothing less than miraculous that the core essence of the movie is one that promotes peace through disarmament rather than the oxymoronic (not to mention utterly moronic) peace through strength ideological brainwashing so popular at the time. It is nothing less than unimaginable to think that The Flight That Disappeared could have been produced just five years earlier. The self-imposed blacklisting of ideas was still hovering in the air around Hollywood.

The opening of The Flight That Disappeared will have you thinking fondly of another airliner disaster movie: the uber-parody Airplane! You get to know the three cockpit members, one of whom is about to marry one of the two stewardesses. You are introduced to the passengers around whom the plot will revolve. Everything seems geared toward a thriller that may have slightly horrific overtones. Except that there is one element of the opening that is different from the other airline disaster movies of the period and it provides a nifty peek into the future of where this strange movie takes an unexpected turn.

This is the last flight on a prop plane for the pilot. He is moving over to jet-powered planes following this flight. There you have the core essence of what this little B-movie that dares to think big is all about. It's about a world in flux; a world that is changing through technological developments that are a double-edged sword. And the changes that are taking place are going to effect the lives of every single living soul eventually.

I don't want to give away the plot development that takes The Flight That Disappeared on a different itinerary than Stephen King's The Langoliers, nor do I wish to give the impression that this B-movie is anything but a B-movie in terms in of acting, sets, etc. What The Flight That Disappeared is once it becomes clear what is going on is an example of how filmmakers working beneath the radar in lower budgeted fare were freer to explore more difficult and even potentially subversive themes than the bigger budgeted A-list movies made under the microscope of political scrutiny. By camouflaging its quite subversive message under the guise of a science-fictiony-fantasy story that is literally beyond the possibility of all known physics, The Flight That Disappeared could get away with suggesting ideas that in the hands of an A-list director of the times like Hitchcock, Minnelli or even George Stevens would have promptly diluted by the frightened ultra-conservative studio moguls still in charge of the movie business during this period of time in which Hollywood itself was still in a state of flux and where recent technological advances were presenting themselves as a double-edge sword.

The Flight That Disappeared is available for Netflix instant viewing as of the publication date of this article.