Michael Garrison Movies
- 1960
A navy jet piloted by Captain Dale Heath (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) and carrying a junior officer (Troy Donahue), making a quick hop across country on leave, has already taken off when Heath realizes that both his radio and his navigation equipment have malfunctioned. They might be on the right course, but he can't tell if they're at the right altitude -- 500 feet too high or too low would put him in the path of a plane headed in the opposite direction -- and he can't get through to ground control to get a fix or to request clearance to a new course, or to send out a mayday call. Heath is quietly terrified at the prospect of what may happen, not just for the obvious reason but also because he's experienced this situation once before and saved himself at the cost of the other plane and its pilot. Meanwhile, flying in the opposite direction on the same course is a commercial airliner piloted by Dana Andrews and carrying a full load of passengers, each with their own worries. Much of the first 85 minutes of this thriller is devoted to the passengers and crew of the airliner struggling with their personal problems, never knowing the danger they're in, while Heath (and the audience) grow increasingly tense trying to solve his problem and prevent a tragedy. In the end, his best efforts are to no avail, and he faces the choice of saving his plane and dooming the airliner, or sacrificing himself and his passengers. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, (more)
- 1960
Robert Preston plays the flip side of his eternally ebullient Professor Harold Hill in Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Preston portrays an early 20th-century harness salesman, fully aware that his product is rapidly becoming obsolete. He tries to compensate for his own lack of self-esteem by cheating on his patient wife Dorothy McGuire; Preston's "other woman" is played by Angela Lansbury. Meanwhile, daughter Shirley Knight falls in love with Jewish boy Lee Kinsolving, who kills himself in the face of relentless bigotry. And McGuire's sister Eve Arden is stuck in a loveless marriage with spineless Frank Overton. Robert Eyer plays the young alter-ego of William Inge, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning play on which this film is based. Eyer's fear of the "dark at the top of the stairs" is meant to be symbolic of the other characters' inner demons, a fact that Inge drives home every three minutes or so. In typical Inge fashion, an unlikely happy ending is reached just before "The End." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Preston, Dorothy McGuire, (more)
