The Worst Film Ever

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

You don't really expect too much in the way of sensitivity or poetry from a television movie. You expect flat lighting, lurid color, and a message that a rhesus monkey could understand.You get all that here. And, as a kind of lagniappe, you get clumsy editing, a confused screenplay, stiff and amateurish acting, and direction that plumbs the abyssal depths of skill. It's really too bad, because the subject is such an important one.And Air Force crew is testing a radar site, flying from their base to a Marine Corps Air Station, when both the on-board radar officer and the Marine Corps base notice three unaccounted-for blips on their screens. Neither Norad nor anyone else has any traffic in the area, so two Marine jets are scrambled and ordered to intercept. The Air Force crew, including pilot David Soul, watch the Phantoms climb into a cloud and disappear. At the time time, the radar anomalies disappear.Glenn Ford is the Air Force colonel in charge of the test but, back at headquarters, he learns that the incident and his airplane have been taken in hand by the Security Intelligence Division or some other secret ops organization.Browned off at his airplane having been confiscated and at being put out of the loop, Ford pushes his investigation and finds that the aircraft is now at a deserted old field and his men are being held prisoner during a "debriefing" by the SID. Ford gets his men released but his career is at an end. The case gets buried.It's really frustrating. The film does not show us events clearly as they happen. It's not until the movie is half over that we learn the Air Force crew had visual contact with the Marine Phantoms. And it's not until still LATER that we discover the strange blips made a right-angle turn and accelerated at once from 500 miles per hour to 5,000 miles per hour. That's bad writing.The pace set by the story is glacial. The SID men all look sinister. There's no question about it. They scowl and smirk and wear Ray-Ban shades. And when one of them shouts at the imprisoned aircraft crew, there is a long pause, with no cut, before a crew member shouts a reply. And that pause is long. Eons come and go. Dynasties rise and fall, while the two men stare at each other and everyone waits for the next shout. That's direction at an amateur level, prompting acting that one would expect from a community college stage somewhere in rural New Jersey. The dialog is repetitious and sometimes without point. Glenn Ford is the most convincing character.I wish I could recommend it because I'm compelled to believe that there really is an attempt by the US government to keep this entire UFO business under wraps. I can only guess at the motives. (1) Preventing a public panic. (2) What military officer wants to admit that there are "things" flying around that we know nothing about and can't defend ourselves against, should they turn out to be hostile. (3) There's nothing to investigate because there is no physical evidence -- none of them ever dropped a faulty landing gear or a toilet Popsicle, so that the disbelievers hold the witnesses in the same contempt, and for the same reason, that engineers feel superior to physicists. (4) Denial, or, in technical terms, "whistling in the dark." Too bad.

This movie is an interesting premise of what might happen if military pilots were to come upon the sighting of a UFO. But other than that it is all speculation.If you want to see probably the most remarkable movie and UFO encounter of all time watch the movie titled, The UFO Incident starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons. It is based on facts and the real events that happened to Betty and Barney Hill in the 60's.What is truly amazing about this film is that a planetary map that Betty Hill remembered seeing she was able to draw from memory under hypnosis. Many years later in the 1980's I believe, scientists discovered the very existence and exact configuration of those planets, which were virtually unknown until then. Don't take my word for it, look it up and see for yourself.My advice is always wear clean shorts as you never know when you might be picked up by aliens too! LOL

I think you can look at THE DISAPPEARANCE OF FLIGHT 412 as a precursor to THE X FILES certainly in the themes explored regarding a covert operation to systematically dismantle the truth because of our country's government's fear of creating a public panic, removing true evidence of UFO activity as a serious threat to our people.While this is indeed a relic of the 70's Television Movie of The Week, it explores a phenomena which would later gain notoriety, the idea that we are not alone and that our government would do whatever it took to keep an informative lid on the prospect of UFOs or possible alien life patrolling the skies. I found this little movie a rather affective parable on the treatment towards those whom our government believes pose a threat to National Security, a crew who noticed two Marine bombers vanish without a trace, blips on the screen which are there one moment, gone the next. Also spotted were three dots representing UFOs, and once they disappear, so does the Marine bombers. A shady military organization called SID interrogate and question the flight crew of what they witnessed while in the sky, hour by hour attempting to weaken these men into silence, slowly penetrating their resolve in order to hush their voices regarding the Marine bombers and how they supposedly vanished.Colonel Pete Moore(Glenn Ford)and his lieutenant Major Mike Dunning(Bradford Dillman)are pursuing the whereabouts of their men, and soon uncover the SID base located in the middle of a desert, an abandoned area just proper for a quiet investigation without disruption. Moore's persistence to find them and his vocal outrage at the treatment of the men in order to distort the truth of what they saw will cost him. I think Ford brings a forceful presence and his intensity well registers with the audience regarding the integrity to tell the truth regardless of the consequences for such actions. This film, like THE X FILES later explored, shows that if you speak out and do not bend, a price will be paid, and that corruption, no matter what it means in regards to the brave men who fly in the skies for their country, will prevail despite the valiant efforts of a small few who resist the urge to remain silent.Good cast, maybe why I liked this TV movie as much as I did, includes an excellent David Soul(..as Captain Roy Bishop, the pilot of Flight 412 who realizes something isn't right in regards to those who are interrogating his crew), Robert F Lyons (..as co-pilot Cliff Riggs, who loses his patience with the interrogator, ready to punch his lights out), Kent Smith(..as General Enright, military head who is an important figurehead in the cover-up), Guy Stockwell(..as Colonel Trottman, the leader of the SID team interrogating the crew, perfectly embodying the sneaky government bureaucrat), among others.The film utilizes narration to add importance to the issue of possible UFO activity and the crooked methods behind silencing those who could lend credence to it. Director Jud Taylor doesn't use any fancy techniques, from a photographic standpoint, opting instead to focus on the story and characters without focus on style. I'm sure many might find the material(..and it's presentation)a bit static and heavy-handed, but I rather enjoyed it..maybe because I love these "government conspiracy" kind of movies(..also explaining why I like the THE X FILES so much). Those sci-fi fans looking for a movie with UFOs and aliens will find this movie extremely disappointing.

"A flight wing of the Air Force has been experiencing difficulties with some of its aircraft so as a test they send aloft a jet with a four man crew. Once airborne, the jet picks up three mysterious objects on radar and when two interceptors are sent to investigate, they mysteriously disappear," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.While Air Force Col. Glenn Ford (as Pete Moore) and his men try to investigate events surrounding the UFO sighting, US government officials move to cover-up the incident. Mustached David Soul (as Roy Bishop) heads a cast of familiar and likable TV actors, in a TV movie. One is not as familiar as the rest: "Dark Shadows" star James Storm is partially obscured by a dark cap; he is manning the "Digger Control" that diverts Mr. Soul's plane.