Jet Storm

A British prototype for the Airport disaster movies of the '60s and '70s, with Shepperton's version of an all-star cast among the 40 passengers and crew of a first class transatlantic flight. Attenborough is the disaster in question, a specialist in unstable compounds who is more than a little unstable himself after his daughter's death in a hit-and-run incident. It transpires that the guilty party (Rose) is also on the flight, and twitchy Dickie has a bomb stowed away. 'You think you have a plane-load of people? It's a travelling zoo!' he explains to Captain Stanley Baker - with some justification. Like its later supersonic counterparts, Endfield's film is naive and contrived, but not without interest as the alarmed passengers soon divide into groups: reactionary (advocating torture) and liberal (patience and persuasion).