TV regularly questioned the ethics of building bigger and more deadly weapons during the 50s and 60s. The Twlight Zone seemed to tackle this subject best. This movie could have benefited greatly from a rewrite from Rod Serling.Though released in 1961, the film has more of a mid-50s feel to it. The acting is B level but adequate. The message has a "preacher" feel to it but makes it's point. At first the movie looked like the entire story was a dream of one passenger but events following the plane landing proved that it actually happened.Growing up in the 50s and 60s, we all lived with possibility of nuclear destruction. The US and USSR were in a contest to build and test larger and larger bombs. The year after the release of this film, the Cuban Missle Crisis brought us unbelievably close to nuclear war. Some forward writers tried to warn us of the dangers. The Flight That Disappeared isn't the best of this genre but it's far from the worst.

The tale has promise. All airplane-in-jeopardy movies do. There are some things man was never meant to do, and one of them is flying at 40,000 feet.This one follows a pattern familiar to anyone who has seen another film of its type, especially "The High and the Mighty", or who has seen the "Twilight Zone" episode called "The Odyssey of Flight 33," which aired in February, 1961. This movie was released in September, 1961, just enough time to grind out a message-laden, low-budget simulacrum without having to dream it up ab initio.That's not to say this is a total failure because the genre itself has so much appeal. Yet, the haste shows in the sets, the dialog, and the acting itself. The nerve center for traffic control is a small room with one instrument in it, apparently an oscilloscope. (It's an embarrassment.) Every single person we get to meet during the introductions that these movies require looks and speaks like a Hollywood actor. That includes the two stewardesses but I forgive them because one of them, Bernadette Hale, is such a meal.It takes almost twenty minutes before the airplane begins to get into trouble, gaining altitude no matter what the crew does. (They do nothing; that's a quick and unknowing script, for you.) Here's a quote from the dialog. The airplane now has four dead engines and is still climbing through 50,000 feet. Remarks the worried Air Traffic Control Director, "I don't know. This whole business has a strange, abnormal ring." Meanwhile you sit through a pretty young mathematician, a nuclear scientist who looks like a clone of Allen J. Hyneck, and a maniac who wants Dr. Hyneck to invent a new bomb and blow the Russians off the face of the earth before they can do it to us. If you have ever had any doubt about the details of the semantics behind the word "overacting," you must see Harvey Stephens' performance as the deranged paranoid, breathless, his eyes bulging out like goggles, not so much speaking his lines as launching them.Then everybody falls asleep, the airplane sits silently on a cloud, and the three scientific types undergo a "Christmas Future" experience. Then it was all a dream, unless it wasn't. It's very preachy and unrealistic in its climactic moments.On the whole, it would have made an acceptable "Twilight Zone" hour. As a full-length movie, it's clumsy and pretty cheap.

A cross-country airliner, whose passengers include a nuclear physicist, a rocket expert, and a mathematical genius, is drawn beyond radar range by an unknown, unbreakable force.Others have compared this film to "The Twilight Zone", and rightly so. I am almost surprised no one from the show was involved in this film, because the plot and political point of view is exactly the same. The only difference is that this is much longer (and maybe not necessarily so -- I can see this story being told in 25 minutes).If the film has any real flaw, it is that the morality is a bit over the top and extreme. The message is a good one, and one that hardly anyone could disagree with. But it comes off almost preachy and condescending because there is not one ounce of subtlety in it at all. (I am being vague here so as not to spoil anything, though the plot is about as obvious as possible.)

It seems as though all films have some kind of message. (Well, "The Horror of Party Beach" might not have one.) Some movies skim over their message, and some pound it right into your skull. "The Flight that Disappeared" is a film that pounds you with its message during almost the entire film.Tom (Craig Hill), Marcia (Paula Raymond), and Dr. Morris (Dayton Lummis) are three scientists aboard a commercial flight. They are heading to an important meeting at which they will unveil their plans for a massive new bomb, one that can easily wipe out all people on earth. The plane inexplicably climbs and climbs, eventually beyond its ceiling, and the three find themselves in a shadowy world of the future. There, they are put on trail by a judge (the imperious Gregory Morton) and a jury, who represent the future people who will be killed by the new bomb. The judge decrees that they shall remain in the future world and can never return. The prisoners make an improbable escape and find the plane, which makes a safe landing--several days late.The three leads are pretty ordinary (Lummis appears irritated most of the time) and the plot is very familiar. The film suffers from a small budget, although the future world is fairly well done. Gregory Morton is so severe that he probably would have scared me when I was a kid. John Bryant plays pilot Hank Norton and probably gives the best performance of the film as he is confounded by the plane's continued climb.You could do much better than "The Flight that Disappeared", but it's acceptable fantasy fare.