The Worst Aviation Movie of All Time

On Mar 28, 8:33 am, Dylan Smith wrote:

Pearl Harbor is one thing. But I think Jay should show one particular
aviation movie in his home cinema setup. It is the movie that is so bad
it is good. It is in fact, the movie that they parodied in "Airplane".

It's called "Zero Hour". The hero is even called Ted Striker. It's dead
serious - but seen through the lens of "Airplane" it's something else.
The closing sequence of the aircraft landing has to be the classic
sequence of this movie. Also, be sure to watch the instrument panel when
Ted Striker enters the flight deck for the first time ...


Awww you beat me to it! Airplane! is a scene for scene parody of
Zero Hour! Airplane! could not have been so good if Zero Hour! had
not been soooo bad. It's truly hilariously bad.

In a different vein, if you're looking for the worst, as in, "This
movie is so bad I can't watch it without gagging", I think I have a
candidate for you. It's a TV movie from 1996 called "Panic in the
Skies!". I just happened to catch a bit of this movie the other day
whilst channel surfing. It was obviously written by people that had
absolutely no clue about airplanes or flying. The situations in the
major plot twists are so ludicrous that even a beginning student pilot
would see right through them.

Initially, the entire crew of a 747 is killed when the plane is
struck by lightning (yeah, right). As the hapless passengers are
flying across the country on autopilot, the autopilot "picks up
signals" from small airports along the way and keeps trying to land
the 747 at GA airports. The main task of the passengers is to figure
out a way of avoiding overflying these airports, so that the autopilot
will quit acquiring the "signals" and trying to land them on
unsuitable runways. Oh yeah, and the government is considering
shooting down the 747, so it doesn't crash on helpless ground
dwellers.

It goes on and on like this for a couple of hours. Don't even get
me started on the VSI with the spinning needle that unwinds in a dive
like an altimeter.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122202/plotsummary

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)

On Mar 28, 8:33 pm, "John Galban" wrote:
In a different vein, if you're looking for the worst, as in, "This
movie is so bad I can't watch it without gagging", I think I have a
candidate for you. It's a TV movie from 1996 called "Panic in the
Skies!". [...]
Initially, the entire crew of a 747 is killed when the plane is
struck by lightning (yeah, right). As the hapless passengers are
flying across the country on autopilot, the autopilot "picks up
signals" from small airports along the way and keeps trying to land
the 747 at GA airports. [...]

Ouch, that _does_ sound bad. Okay, how about that recent one where
the airplane's trim (and throttle?) were stuck in an "up" position...
so they used a hose from an aerial tanker to fill the nose wheel well
with water (which froze into ice)... and when they got close to the
ground it melted and fell out when they dropped the nose gear. What
was that title? Awful !!!

Kev

John:

I tried to send off-list email about the F16 factory, but verizon considers
my ISP to be non-existent. So for the rest of you, sorry...

Sorry, John, but I predate you to the late 70s. I spent 4 months
there managing a re-training program for people being "surplused"
into software development for GenDyn. They figured I was the best
person since I did lots of aerospace software...

The most fun (not) was my hotel room at the departure end of
the runway. At the time, the plant co-existed with the AF base
and B-52s were based there. 5:30am - 40-50 of those suckers took off.
I never had to set my alarm clock. On the down side, every
evening at 5:30 pm they'd come back, right over the pool where we
were all hanging out with our favorite libation....

"Kev" wrote in message
oups.com...

Ouch, that _does_ sound bad. Okay, how about that recent one where
the airplane's trim (and throttle?) were stuck in an "up" position...
so they used a hose from an aerial tanker to fill the nose wheel well
with water (which froze into ice)... and when they got close to the
ground it melted and fell out when they dropped the nose gear. What
was that title? Awful !!!


There was a real piece of crap made for TV about twenty years ago. As I
recall an HST evades a meteor shower by climbing, flies too high and
inadvertently enters orbit. I think Lee Majors was the pilot.

Bush wrote:
"Ceiling Zero" 1935 with James Cagney and Pat O'brian. Newark airport
was still a grass field. Good stuff for that era.

Cagney and O'Brien also did "Devil Dogs of the Air".

Another Cagney aviation movie is "Captains of the Clouds" which I watched
in part when it was on cable a month or two ago. At first it was
interesting because Cagney and his partners begin the movie as Canadian
bush pilots. Eventually they join the military after Britain enters WWII.
But I didn't sit through it all because the plot was transparent as glass -
and the acting was bad, IMHO. Still, several people on Amazon gave the
movie positive reviews - yet "Devil Dogs" and "Ceiling Zero" got bad
reviews - which means they must have indeed been real reel dogs.

Jim Logajan wrote in
:

Bush wrote:
"Ceiling Zero" 1935 with James Cagney and Pat O'brian. Newark airport
was still a grass field. Good stuff for that era.

Cagney and O'Brien also did "Devil Dogs of the Air".

Another Cagney aviation movie is "Captains of the Clouds" which I
watched in part when it was on cable a month or two ago. At first it
was interesting because Cagney and his partners begin the movie as
Canadian bush pilots. Eventually they join the military after Britain
enters WWII. But I didn't sit through it all because the plot was
transparent as glass - and the acting was bad, IMHO. Still, several
people on Amazon gave the movie positive reviews - yet "Devil Dogs"
and "Ceiling Zero" got bad reviews - which means they must have indeed
been real reel dogs.


Wel, the aviation movies from that era have to be looked at in an
historical light really. Most of them aren't very interesting to us
plotwise, and the special effects, of course, are crap, but if you put
yourself in the place of someone living through the adventure that was
the golden age of aviation and watch them through their eyes, well..

The later propaganda ones I find a litle less easy to take..

BTW, my vote for all time best would either be helldivers, Gable and
Beery, or Test Pilot, Gable, Tracy and Myrna Loy..
And I still like The High and the Mighty.. In fact the clip of Wayne
smacking Robert Stack in the mouth was used in my last CRM class!






Bertie

"Ceiling Zero" 1935 with James Cagney and Pat O'brian. Newark airport
was still a grass field. Good stuff for that era.

Have a great one!

Bush

On 28 Mar 2007 06:37:31 -0700, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

We often talk about the BEST aviation movie here, but how 'bout the
worst?

Having spent nearly a year of my life showing aviation movies every
Tuesday night in our theater at the hotel, I am in a somewhat unique
position to comment on this. I've seen over 50 aviation movies in a
row, and can lend some perspective.

Many of the early aviation movies were saddled with the stilted acting
styles that followed the introduction of "talkies" in the 1920s/30s,
so you have to take some of them with a grain of salt.

An example is Howard Hughes' "Hells Angels", which is full of nice
flying scenes and some truly terrible acting. It's like they didn't
know how to write dialogue, yet -- which was okay, cuz the actors
didn't know how to deliver it.

John Wayne. Having seen all of his aviation flicks now, it's easy
to see where John Wayne got his reputation for being one-dimensional.
Every aviation movie he starred in (with the notable exception of the
"Island in the Sky" -- read about it he http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045919/
) has the same plot, and he played the same character. Many are quite
awful, although the WWII flying scenes are often quite good.

But after last night I can honestly say that the award for worst
aviation movie EVER made goes to "Iron Eagle" -- the 1986 movie that
was the Air Forces's quick answer to the success of "Top Gun".

By God, it's awful. The story line (Synopsis: A teenager and a
Colonol steal two F-16s, fly half-way around the world, destroy a
Saddam-look-alike's air force, and then LAND on the runway they just
destroyed to rescue the teenager's father from certain death), the
acting, the flying scenes, the combat scenes (astoundingly bad, with
missiles that fly at light-speed), even the credits are just
TERRIBLE.

This movie should have single-handedly ended Lou Gossetts' career, but
-- inexplicably -- they actually made a SEQUEL to this dog! I will
not see it.

We showed it last night at Movie Night, and the comments ranged from
"Thank God we didn't pay anything to *that*" to "I need another
beer." The scenes where targets on the ground -- like a water tower
on stilts -- blow up with near-nuclear force after just a few machine
gun hits were especially well derided...

Although Move Night is always just an excuse to get together and
hangar fly and fly the Kiwi flight simulator, this was so truly
terrible that it 'bout killed us.

Anyone got any other "nominations" for WORST ever?

On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 19:07:04 -0500, vincent p. norris wrote:

We often talk about the BEST aviation movie here, but how 'bout the
worst?

For the number of technical errors in a movie that PRETENDS TO BE
HISTORY, "Midway" is a strong contender!

The account of the battle, so far as I know, is accurate, but the
flying scenes are riddled with errors.

The errors are due, I believe, to the complete lack of any new flying scenes
shot for the movie. All the action scenes are from actual footage or other
movies. Hence, they don't match the real case very often, and you'll see a
character's plane magically change markings or even types.

Ron Wanttaja

Anyone got any other "nominations" for WORST ever?
--

How about "The Langoliers", not just for the aviation content but for
altogether low production value, plot, and acting. It's a terrible made
for TV movie adaptation of a Stephen King story.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112040/

"A blind girl, a teacher, a machine worker, a musician, a stoner, a
mystery writer, a businessman, a mysterious Englishman, and a raving
psychopath in a business suit on a flight to Boston find themselves
utterly alone when the rest of the passengers and all of the crew
vanish. Diverting the plane to Bangor, Maine, they discover that they
seem to be the only people left on the planet, and that time and the
Langoliers are catching up with them all too quickly..."

-Aviv

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 01:30:53 GMT, "Steven P. McNicoll"
wrote:


"Kev" wrote in message
roups.com...

Ouch, that _does_ sound bad. Okay, how about that recent one where
the airplane's trim (and throttle?) were stuck in an "up" position...
so they used a hose from an aerial tanker to fill the nose wheel well
with water (which froze into ice)... and when they got close to the
ground it melted and fell out when they dropped the nose gear. What
was that title? Awful !!!


There was a real piece of crap made for TV about twenty years ago. As I
recall an HST evades a meteor shower by climbing, flies too high and
inadvertently enters orbit. I think Lee Majors was the pilot.

"Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086357/

The sorry thing is, I actually *remembered* the title....

Ron Wanttaja