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Mayday at 40,000 Feet!

Mayday at 40,000 Feet! – 1976

Director
Robert Butler

Writers
Andrew J. Fenady
Austin Ferguson also novel Jet Stream
Dick Nelson

Producer
Andrew J. Fenady producer

Cast
David Janssen – Captain Pete Douglas
Don Meredith – Mike Fuller
Norland Benson – Jerry
Margaret Blye – Susan Mackenzie (as Maggie Blye)
Kathleen Bracken – Julia
William Bryant – Kent
Bill Catching – Dowling
James Chandler – Doctor
Broderick Crawford – Marshal Riese
Lynda Day George – Cathy Armello
Tom Drake – Harry Jenson
Alan Foster – Third Reporter
Christopher George – Stan Burkhart
Marjoe Gortner – Greco
Philip Baker Hall – Reporter
William Harlow – Second Reporter
Philip Mansour – Surgeon
Steven Marlo – Controller
Gary McLarty – Carmichael
Ray Milland – Dr. Joseph Mannheim
Al Molinaro – Forenzo
Christopher Norris – Cindy Jensen
John Pickard – Wynberg
Jane Powell – Kitty Douglas
Hari Rhodes – Belson
Warren Vanders – Glen Meyer
Shani Wallis – Terry Dunlap (as Shani Wallace)
Bert Williams – Lars
Buck Young – Guard

Review by Theo Robertson

Mayday at 40,000 Feet! (1976) (TV)
Seen It All Before,
I can imagine the pitch at the TV execs office went something like this

” You know what everyone watches at the cinema these days? Disaster movies, so let’s get everyone out of the cinema back into the home with a disaster movie for TV ”
” Great idea. We’ll get a well-known TV actor and some Oscar winning actor everyone has forgotten about. How we gonna come up with a new slant on the genre? ”
” That’s easy we set it on a plane just like in AIRPORT except, except there’s a mad psycho killer aboard the plane. We could even get that crazy guy from EARTHQUAKE to play the psycho ”
” With an idea and casting like that that there’s no way we can fail with this TV movie ”

I beg to differ because as someone who’s seen MAYDAY AT 40,000 FEET it is a failure because someone forgot to write an interesting script

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