How else can I begin this review of The Flight that Disappeared (1961) than by saying that it is one strange movie.  A younger audience would probably watch it and think it boring.  Suffice to say, it is not the most action-packed pieces of cinema.  Still, being bizarre and slow-moving are not mutually exclusive descriptors.  As I have stated a number of times, I come into watching anything first as a Catholic, and secondly as a trained historian.  Recently, a few of my choices have put the second of those lenses to use, mainly because they have been set during the Cold War.  During this period in American History, fear of the Soviet Union led Hollywood to give us as a Red proxy some kind of menace from outer space.  Another fear that prevailed in American Culture at this time was of nuclear war.  For a fuller treatment of these attitudes, view the seminal documentary The Atomic Café (1982).  Actually, doing so might not be a bad lead in to reading what I have to say about The Flight that Disappeared.  You will have to continue on to get the Faith part.

We are taken to Los Angeles, California, as we see an assortment of people boarding The Flight that Disappeared, or will do so, though we shall see that is somewhat of a misnomer.  Among the first get on is the famous nuclear physicist, Dr. Carl Morris (Dayton Lummis).  It might seem odd to note his notoriety, and I would agree if it not for the fact that nearly all the other passengers recognize him from his pictures in the newspaper.  He is soon joined by rocket scientist Tom Endicott (Craig Hill), whose seat is occupied by mathematician Marcia Paxton (Paula Raymond).  Tom is not worried about this since Marcia is beautiful, and they settle it in the kind of vaguely misogynist conversation you would expect of the era.  Once the pilot, Captain Hank Norton (John Bryant) confers with his crew, it is time to depart.  He is a little grumpy to still be flying propeller planes, and is eager to move up in his company to be operating jets.  Without any further ado, they take off and begin making their way westward.  Also along for the ride is Walter Cooper (Harvey Stephens).  As they travel, he gets increasingly agitated, raving to his wife, Helen Cooper (Meg Wyllie), about something that is about to happen and no one will listen to him.  Meanwhile, in the cockpit, the crew are dealing with a different kind of problem.  Despite their best efforts, against Captain Norton’s power, the aircraft continues to climb.  This is also noticed by air traffic control, but nobody seems able to correct it.  Finally, they lose contact with the ground, which raises an alarm that spreads throughout the world, particularly when the plane vanishes from the radar.  At first, they try to keep the situation concealed from the passengers.  Doing so only increases Walter’s addled state.  Eventually, he goes to Dr. Morris, and they go to the lounge in the back (I guess this was a thing on planes at that time) to have a private conversation.  The word is that Dr. Morris has come up with a formula for a nuclear weapon of such devastating destructive force that it can wipe out an entire country with one strike.  Once they are alone, Walter pleads with Dr. Morris that his bomb must be used, that it is the only solution to the world’s problems, essentially.  Dr. Morris tries to talk some sense into Walter, saying that such a thing is madness, but it does little good.  Not long after returning to their seats, the increasing loss of oxygen begins to have an effect on everyone, crew and passengers alike.  Tom is among the last one to go under as a result of the thinning air.  So, too, is Walter, but he is nowhere to be found.  Tom tries to alert someone to the fact that Walter is missing, but does not receive an answer.  Instead, he locates the crazed man in the lounge, trying to open the emergency exit.  Walter overpowers Tom and jumps from the hole in the side.  Tom makes it back to his seat, but falls asleep soon thereafter.  He awakens seemingly in the next instant, and finds Marcia and Dr. Morris are the only other two who have regained consciousness.  They confer and realize that they share some similarities.  It is not just the fact that their hearts (literally) and watches have stopped, though they are apparently not dead, but that they all have some connection to the development of nuclear weapons.  As they ponder the meaning of these odd occurrences, a man who we come to know as The Examiner (Gregory Morton) appears at the open hatch.  He bids the three passengers to come with him, explaining that they are in a dimension outside of time.  The examiner brings them, and I am not making this up, before a jury of people from the future.  What they are set to invent, it is claimed, means the eventual end of the world, and they represent the lives of those who will never be born.  Thus, they deem the three guilty, and they are to be frozen between the past and present for all eternity.  Before this sentence is carried out, The Examiner is stopped by The Sage (Addison Richards), who I guess outranks The Examiner.  The Sage explains that it is not fair for these three to be held liable for something they had yet to do.  With some grumbles, The Examiner allows them to return to the plane.  Once more, it is Tom who we see wake up, this time to smelling salts.  He is told they had hit some turbulence, and that he hit his head and was unconscious.  He is not willing to accept, though, that what he had experienced was a dream, and is partially vindicated by Marcia and Dr. Morris having the same recollection.  Dr. Morris tries to explain it as some kind of mass hallucination.  Yet, when they finally land, much to the relief of air traffic control, they overhear Captain Norton being told that they are twenty-four hours overdue.  With this, Dr. Morris tears up his formulas before the three of them walk away.

If you decide to watch The Flight that Disappeared, for some reason, you might get to the end of it and think you have just seen an episode of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964).  This makes sense given that The Flight that Disappeared is from the same era, and is not too much longer than your average show from that series.  Still, that is enough history.  As a Catholic, I had quite the reaction when The Examiner appeared.  My first thought was to wonder whether he was supposed to be God.  Yet, this cannot be since God judges on the actions we have done.  He cannot use what we will do, despite the fact that He knows what our future actions will be anyway, because they have not happened.  Besides, there is a logic gap with this line of thinking.  We will not be judged until after we have departed from this Earth.  At that point, everything we will have done will be in the past.  There is literally no future besides that which He decides.  And I am sorry, my protestant friends, but our works will count in that moment.  At the same time, it is somewhat of a useful Spiritual exercise to imagine God in this cinematic scenario.  God does not need to essentially hijack a commercial airplane in order to get a couple of scientists to rethink their development of a devastating weapon.  He gives such people, and us, enough signs throughout our lives if we are willing to see them, as to the path He would like us to follow.  Nonetheless, it is The Sage who more properly underscores how God could react in such a situation.  To be sure, there is an accuser, the devil, out there who, like The Examiner, is there to condemn ourselves.  It is God who gives us the opportunity to mend our ways.  This is why the ending, while it is a bewildering route to get to it, is satisfactory.

As with some of the films I have watched of late, it took some digging to get to The Flight that Disappeared.  If somehow you decide to see it for yourself, you now at least have a title to search instead of the near endless scrolling I did. Otherwise, I would totally understand if you skipped this relatively harmless turkey.