In this parody of disaster movies… What? It’s not a parody? This is serious? OK. In this deeply deeply serious disaster film, a plane-full of eccentrics (Jan Sterling, Sidney Blackmer, David Brian, Claire Trevor) make excessively long speeches, sometimes accompanied by flashbacks, detailing far more of their personal lives than other passengers or the audience want to hear. Thankfully, the plane loses an engine so they’re given something else to talk about. Captain John Sullivan (Robert Stack) is busy having a mental breakdown so disturbed co-pilot Dan Roman (John Wayne) has to be excessively manly. Only the stewardess (Doe Avedon) gets out without embarrassing herself.
It’s hard to imagine that the filmmakers, and even the initial 1954 audience, took this bombastic melodrama seriously. There were clever people in Hollywood at that time, at least I think so. They must have perceived The High and the Mighty as a joke and trusted that no one would see them laughing in the back row. It’s is pretty funny stuff, with sections dropped into 1980’s comedic Airplane! unchanged (Robert Hays copies Robert Stack’s “acting” as he wipes the sweat from his brow; just having Stack in an airplane disaster flick makes the connection more obvious ).
The High and the Mighty may be the earliest of the “Grand Hotel” disaster films, where multiple intertwined plot-threads focus on the soap opera problems of thinly disguised stereotypes played by actors on the down-slope of their careers. It may also have the worst dialog (I’ll have to re-watch Zero Hour! to be sure). In endless exposition, characters expound on the trials of their life. They don’t do anything, they just talk and talk and talk. The movie pauses so we can hear absurd soliloquies. When everything has been tied up, an airline exec watches John Wayne and says “So long, you ancient pelican.” What the hell? Someone wrote that line and didn’t crack up? I don’t think so.
The situations are good for a laugh. Which is the funniest? It’s hard to say. The contestants:
- A reasonably attractive woman takes off her makeup, looks in the mirror, and repeats that she’s ugly and bad.
- A jealous nutcase pulls a gun, but it is taken away by other passengers and one keeps it in his pocket. No member of the flight crew bother to do anything. Later, the crazy dude looks sad and says he’d really like his gun back…and he gets it.
- Robert Stack sits, listening to the voices in his head.
- Wayne slaps Stack for being yellow.
They are great moments for a MST3K-style viewing party. The hammy acting accentuates the rest of the silliness. Wrap your head around this: John Wayne puts in the most subtle and realistic porformance.
With little happening besides torturous speeches, it is mind boggling that the filmmakers couldn’t wrap this turkey up in 90 minutes. It goes on for 147 minutes, which is about 147 too long.