During the closing days of the Second World War, six members of his Royal Canadian Air Forcefighter squadron are killed because of a command decision made by pilot Ted Stryker. Years later, in civilian life in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a guilt-stricken Stryker goes through many jobs, and his marriage is in trouble. Stryker finds a note at home: his wife Ellen has taken their young son Joey and is leaving him, flying to Vancouver. He rushes to Winnipeg Airport to board the same flight, Cross-Canada Air Lines Flight 714. He asks his wife for one last chance, but Ellen says that she can no longer love a man she does not respect. The routine flight becomes deadly when stewardess Janet Turner begins the meal service. Meat or fish are the options. When a number of passengers begin feeling sick, a doctor aboard determines that there must have been something wrong with the fish. While attending to others, including Stryker's son, the stewardess and doctor discover that both the pilot and co-pilot have also become seriously ill. Although it stays in the air on autopilot, no one is left to fly the plane. After the stewardess checks with other passengers, she determines that Stryker is the only one with flying experience, but he has not flown in 10 years and has no familiarity with aircraft of this size. Owing to dense fog on the ground obscuring the runway, Flight 714 must bypass Calgary and all other intermediate airports, to continue on to Vancouver. Stryker's superior in the war, the tough-minded Captain Treleaven, is summoned to Vancouver Airport to give him instructions about how to land the aircraft. Ellen joins her husband in the cockpit to handle the radio. Ordered to remain airborne, Stryker makes a command decision to land the airliner because passengers will die if they do not get to a hospital soon. Stryker lands the plane, saving all of the passengers and earning the respect of Ellen and Captain Treleaven.
Zero Hour! was an adaptation of Hailey's original 1956 Canadian Broadcasting CorporationteleplayFlight into Danger, starring James Doohan as Ted Stryker. Hailey also co-wrote a novel with John Castle based on the same plot titled Flight Into Danger: Runway Zero-Eight.
Filming
Principal photography took place from May 8–28, 1957, with retakes on July 23–24, 1957. The primary filming location was Santa Ana, California. Nightclub and television performer Peggy King made her feature film debut in Zero Hour!, recording the song "Zero Hour" for Columbia Records to coincide with the film's release. John Ashley has a small role appearing on television as a pop star.
Reception
The New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther called Zero Hour! an "exciting contemplation of a frightening adventure in the skies" based on a "good terse script... Dana Andrews as the hero and Sterling Hayden as the captain are first-rate in these roles, keeping them hard and unrelenting." Time magazine, however, called the script a "bloopy inflation of a 1956 television show" and said its "moral struggle comes off fairly well, but the general situation is as patently contrived as one of Walter Mitty's daydreams." In 1971, the film was remade as a made-for-television movie, Terror in the Sky, a Movie of the Week special with Doug McClure in the Ted Stryker role. Zero Hour! was also used as the basis for the parody filmAirplane!. Because Zero Hour! was owned at the time by Paramount Pictures, the makers of Airplane!, also a Paramount feature, were able to use the screenplay almost verbatim, including the hero again being named Ted Striker. Screenplay writer Hailey went on to write the popular 1968 novel, Airport, which revisited the air disaster genre and led to a film franchise that was also spoofed by Airplane! and.
