This is one of those trapped passengers films, but a very good one. The script is most ingenious. It was jointly written by the director Cy Endfield, who was not a hack but in fact a well-educated person of taste. The direction is excellent and many of the performances are superb. Many of the most famous British film actors of the period appear in the film, and do their stuff. The main character is a paranoid fellow played by Richard Attenborough. He eschews dramatic displays and opts instead for menacing silence and seething intensity. They are all flying from London to New York, a 12 hour flight back in those days. The captain of the plane is Stanley Baker, who was by the way Cy Endfield's business partner. The most hysterical character is played with full abandon by Hermione Baddeley, who spits out vicious comments with full conviction. Harry Secombe makes an unusual 'normal' character, who manages to talk and chuckle at the same time, and it works very well. He is sitting beside Sybil Thorndike, and looks like he was enjoying that very much. Supporting performances are deliverd very well by Diane Cilento, Mai Zetterling, and Virginia Maskell. Elizabeth Sellars plays a difficult woman. The story concerns the fact that Richard Attenborough intends to blow up the plane. His little girl had been killed by a hit-and-run driver, played here by George Rose. Attenborough has tracked him down and booked himself on the plane in order to kill him. Now, I must report a strange coincidence. I have myself been trapped with one member of this cast. I was several times trapped sitting either beside or opposite Elizabeth Sellars long ago at dinner parties. She was hard work and had an enormous chip on her shoulder about no longer being young and glamourous. As part of my earnest efforts at making conversation with her, I described how I had come to know Tallulah Bankhead. I asked her if she had ever met her. At this point she exploded and accused me of suggesting that she could possibly be old enough to have known Tallulah Bankhead. (She overlooked the fact that I was decades younger but had no hesitation in mentioning that I had known her.) So that is why I say I was trapped with her, as trying to be polite to Elizabeth Sellars was of no use at all. There are many twists and turns in the story of these people on the plane, and on the events which ensue. The film is well worthwhile.
Review of Jet Storm
