Saturday morning surprise

So, it's Saturday morning and I'm trying to find something on television that isn't about the approaching Hurricane Irene (which is still over 500 miles away - it's just hitting the coast of North Carolina for goodness sake). I happen to find a movie in progress called Zero Hour! and as I watch it, it starts to look familiar. The more I watch it, the more sure I am that I've seen it before. I even start to anticipate what the characters are going to say before they actually deliver the lines. It's really creepy.

The synopsis of the story is that a long distance passenger airplane flight is struck by an outbreak of food poisoning. Both the pilot and co-pilot get sick along with many of the passengers. One of the passengers flew fighter planes during World War II (this film is from 1957 so he wasn't too old) but has no experience with large commercial planes. They get in radio contact with an airport control tower and an experienced pilot is brought in to talk the "pilot" down. It turns out they know each other from the war and don't like each other. Also, the "pilot" is on the flight with his wife who is wanting to end the relationship.

OK. Does this sound familiar to you, too? If you haven't guessed yet, here are a couple more clues. Here are quotes from Zero Hour! and I think you'll guess which movie I saw that made me think I'd seen Zero Hour! before. The first quote is from the doctor on board the plane, Dr. Baird, who diagnoses the illness of the crew as food poisoning and tells a stewardess their situation.

Our survival hinges on one thing - finding someone who not only can fly this plane, but didn't have fish for dinner.

Fish was the source of the food poisoning. The second clue is a conversation between the pilot and a small boy who was brought up to see the cockpit.

Capt. Bill Wilson, Pilot: Come on, move up here, you can see better. [takes out a toy DC-4] 

Capt. Bill Wilson, Pilot: Joey, here's something we give our special visitors. Would you like to have it? 

Joey: Thank you! Thanks a lot!

Capt. Bill Wilson, Pilot: You ever been in a cockpit before? 

Joey: No, sir! I've never been up in a plane before!

Now, you have to know that the movie that sounds suspiciously like the movie I saw is Airplane! and yes, it has an exclamation point in it's title, too. The producers of Airplane! actually bought the rights to Zero Hour! to produce a remake of that film but they made a parody instead. That's why they were able to use so much of the story and dialog and so many of the same characters. So, it's not an amazing coincidence that these two movies are so similar. Seeing the original movie makes me appreciate Airplane! even more (even though it has always been one of my favorite comedies). It is interesting how the exact quote from a drama can become hilarious when used in a slightly different situation. Here is a seven-minute clip showing the similarities.

Another funny aspect to this is that the screenwriter for Zero Hour! was Arthur Hailey - the writer of the novel Airport and the screenplay for the movie of the novel. He was a pilot in World War II (in Britain's Royal Air Force) and prefaced writing the screenplay of Zero Hour! by writing a teleplay with a similar story, Flight Into Danger, for Canadian TV in 1956. And one more funny aspect to all this is that the star in the 1956 TV movie was James Doohan who also played Chief Engineer Scott on the original Star Trek series. There, Scotty was famous to shouting that there wasn't enough time to do what he needed to do.

If I push these impulse engines too hard in the condition they're in they'll blow apart!

That is from The Doomsday Machine episode of Star Trek. I can just imagine his lines in Flight Into Danger. I'll have to see if we can see that one, too.