All my life, I haven’t seen Zero Hour! I finally did. I couldn’t help laughing, due to its being remade as Airplane!
One of my high school English textbooks had the script of “Flight Into Danger” in it, for some reason.
(The teleplay “Flight Into Danger” was adapted into “Zero Hour!”)
On TCM tonight? Yep, watched it, for the very first time.
And howled with laughter at “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.”
And ‘It’s an entirely different kind of flying altogether.’
It’s an entirely different kind of flying.
here’s a side by side comparison of the two movies
A few years ago, TCM (I think) showed both movies back-to-back.
I do love how they had Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch in Zero Hour and Kareem Abdul Jabbar in Airplane. A particularly inspired bit of lunacy, that.
TCM did show the two movies back to back a few years ago. That was the first time I saw Zero Hour!. (Is that how you punctuated it?) They showed Airplane! first. I think it’s better to see Zero Hour! when Airplane is fresh on your mind.
“I’m sorry son, but you must have him confused with someone else. His name is Roger Murdock. He’s the co-pilot.”
And he wasn’t their first choice. ZAZ wanted Pete Rose but they ended up filming in the middle of baseball season and ISTR some other names had been tossed around.
The only problem with watching Zero Hour! is that you start yelling at the screen nitpicking the details they got wrong from Airplane! (Like, Joey couldn’t be Ted’s and Ellen Stryker’s kid; Ted and Elaine Stryker didn’t have any kids!)
Being set in Canada, I wish ZH had a scene with with a Francophone passenger and a sweet little old lady who had to translate for him.
I made my own DVD for Zero Hour, taken from TCM. I used quotes from Airplane! as chapter titles.
You notice the guy in Airplane! (Jonathan Banks) that checks the Radar range, how he’s wearing a leather jacket for no real reason? The same guy in Zero Hour is also wearing one for no real reason.
I did not know that about the Zero Hour radar range guy, thanks for that tidbit!
Just to throw in trivia: Zero Hour was originally taken from Arthur Hailey’s novel Runway Zero Eight.
Hailey originally wrote the screenplay Flight into Danger, which sold to the CBC and resulted in a 1956 Canadian live television play starring James Doohan (aka Scotty of ST:TOS). Later, Hailey and John Castle novelized it into “Zero Hour”, and that got made into that movie in 1957.
They had to buy the rights to remake Zero Hour, they used so much of it. They got them for a small sum.
Just want to point out the ! is critical. It’s Zero Hour!
I could have sworn that I saw a re-broadcast of “Flight Into Danger” on CBC in the '80s, but a little googling suggests that is unlikely. It was probably “Zero Hour!” instead.
I know the version of the script that was in our English textbook was labelled “Flight Into Danger”, though.