He played with death to prove a theory
1964-11-08
N/A
106 min
A man refuses to believe that pilot error caused a fatal crash, and persists in looking for another reason. Airliner crashes near Los Angeles due to unusual string of coincidences. Stewardess, who is sole survivor, joins airline executives in discovering the causes of the crash.
When an airline tragedy kills fifty-seven people, it falls to investigator "McBane" (Glenn Ford) to get to the bottom of things. He has precious little to go on save for a report from the pilot claiming an engine fire before silence then the plane hit the ground. One of the survivors, the stewardess "Sally" (Nancy Kwan) has slightly conflicting information about the crash so "McBane" assembles the wreckage and he can't make either story work - something's not right! The absence of any clear technical fault suggests to all the it's his wartime friend "Savage" (Rod Taylor) who was at fault - but he's not buying that. In an effort to clear the man and get to the truth, he puts his own reputation on the line and makes quite a few unsavoury discoveries along the way before he concludes another flight might be the only solution. Ford is quite good here - there's a decent one-two at the inquiry with Bert Freed's opposing counsel "Dillon" but for a movie about planes, we have remarkably little action going on. A bit of simulation now and again, but otherwise this is a rather dry story that unfolds in a pretty pedestrian fashion, with loads of chat and not so much substance to the plot. The pretty wooden Taylor doesn't really feature very often and by the conclusion, we were on a flightpath of inevitability that really underwhelmed.
