Customer Reviews

Cult Camp Classics 3: Terrorized Travelers (Hot Rods to Hell / Skyjacked / Zero Hour!)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've always wanted to get all of these movies for years, and now there are coming out in one box set and at a great price. I've always loved Linda Darnell and she's in Zero Hour which the comedy Airplane is party based on. Hot Rods To Hell has Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain who started in the 1945 State Fair. This movie has never been on DVD before. If you bought these movies on their own each is about $14.00 on Amazon.com. I don't see how you can go wrong with paying $[...] for this boxset. Thanks Warners for releasing these movies for us to enjoy in a great boxset. Thanks to Amazon.com for offering great prices.

Finally, the producers of AIRPLANE! are finally cutting loose Zero Hour!, the film and many others that provided funny fodder for the parody movie AIRPLANE!

Update: Just finished watching Zero Hour! It really is a very good movie in its own right but several times I couldn't stop chuckling as so many of the lines are replicated verbatim in AIRPLANE! Excellent!

As far as 'Hot Rods To Hell', which BTW stars one of my favorite actresses, the beautiful Jeanne Crain, I rate it a -5 STARS and then a +10 STARS for being so bad that it is just super great! Result? 5 STARS! Ya gotta see it to appreciate! (Or believe it for that matter)!

Skyjacked? Well, kind of like 'Airport' as it stars, well, just about everybody. What the heck; 5 STARS!

Update: This movie is a direct time warp back to 1972. The movie moves a bit slow but still glad it was included. Maybe 3.5 stars instead:)

The product was provided as advertized, and is unlike some other DVD versions of older films in that the quality is excellent, especially that for Zero Hour (which by the way, is hard to take seriously, given it is the source, almost verbatim, for the hilarious Airplane). Recommended.

Whether it's for a vacation or a business trip, typically the worst part of any excursion is the traveling. It can often be tedious and frustrating, and that's if only minor things go wrong. Sometimes, however, other things can intervene and make things even worse. Such is the premise of the three movies in the third volume of the Warner Brothers Cult Camp Classics, Terrorized Travelers.

The first movie in this set (chronologically) is Zero Hour! with Dana Andrews as an ex-fighter pilot who, even ten years after the end of the war, is still plagued by flashbacks of a mission gone wrong. This trauma has led to an erratic employment record and his wife decides to leave him. Andrews pursues her onto her airplane and tries to win her back during the flight. Then both pilots (and many of the passengers) come down with food poisoning, forcing Andrews to come to terms with his inner demons as he attempts to land the plane.

If this sounds familiar, it's because Airplane! is essentially a comic remake of this movie. The plot is almost the same, the titles both end in exclamation points and the main characters have the same names. There are little differences, such as Andrews is trying to reconnect with his wife and child while in Airplane!, Robert Hays's is seeking reconciliation with his girlfriend who's also a stewardess. Unfortunately, like me, most Zero Hour! viewers will be much more familiar with Airplane! than its predecessor, making it hard to look at the earlier film on its own merits. I found, however, that this is a generally decent movie, with Andrews as his usual solid and stolid character. Linda Darnell, however, is better at bad girl roles (like Fallen Angel, No Way Out and My Darling Clementine) than as Andrews's wife.

Dana Andrews is also in Hot Rods to Hell, the campiest of the movies in the set. This time, he is a father taking his family from Boston to California to run a motel After being nearly killed in an auto accident, Andrews is reluctant to get behind the wheel of a car, a feeling that isn't helped when he has some encounters with hot-rodding teens, one of whom is lusting after Andrews's teenage daughter. The basic message of the movie seems to be that all teenagers are bad (or at least stupid), but Andrews (and his June Cleaver-esque wife played by Jeanne Craine) are so square, it is hard to really root for them either. Everyone overacts in their one-dimensional roles (only the character of the former motel owner seems to have any real personality). This fits more in the "so-bad-it's-good" category than in either the "good" or "bad" slots.

Just as Andrews seems to connect the first two movies, Jeanne Crain links Hot Rods to Hell to Skyjacked, albeit in the rather minor role as a passenger. The lead here is Charlton Heston as the pilot of an airplane that is forced to be rerouted to Anchorage when a bomb threat appears on a restroom mirror. This is one of those all-star airplane disaster movies with, among others, Yvette Mimeux, James Brolin, Roosevelt Grier, Walter Pidgeon, Susan Dey and Mariette Hartley. This soap opera/thriller on a plane is passable entertainment but not really camp; I suppose it would've been campier if when Heston confronted the bomber, he proclaimed Moses-like, "Let my people go!"

This is all three-star fare with little in the way of extras. Zero Hour! has a certain extra value for Airplane! fans and Hot Rods to Hell has the camp factor, but this is just an okay set (of the first three, I rate this one in the middle, ahead of Volume 2 (Women in Peril) but behind the really fun Volume 1 (Sci-Fi Thrillers).

I could not review this item because according to the seller it was shipped and lost in route to me and I was not informed about it until I inquired about it three weeks after I ordered it!