The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973, David Lowell Rich)

Spirits’ manifest.

Inevitably, there are spoilers here. This is also one of those where I’d prefer you saw the movie before reading. (As of this writing, you can do so here. Only 73 minutes long!). Not because of spoilers, simply that I’d prefer you to have your own thoughts before you read my hot take. Thanks!

What is it? The Horror at 37,000 Feet, directed by David Lowell Rich, written by Ronald Austin & James D. Buchanan, based on the story by V.X. Appleton, and starring William Shatner, Chuck Connors, Buddy Ebsen, Roy Thinnes, Paul Winfield, Jane Merrow, Lynn Loring, Will Hutchins, Russell Johnson, H.M.Wynant, Darleen Carr, Brenda Benet, Mia Bendixsen and Tammy Grimes as Mrs. Pinder.

First viewing? For all intents and purposes, yes; my first viewing was 31 Jan 2024, and then again 27 April 2024, as I thought I would be writing it up that year. Time makes fools of us all.

What’s it about? A transatlantic flight from London to New York is frozen in midair by spirits haunting the remains of an ancient abbey that is on board.

What are your thoughts about it? Last time, we did our first disaster movie, and today is our first made for TV horror movie. Hooray! I’m not sure what was in the water in the ’70s (lead, presumably), but it was a golden age for made for TV horror movies. You’ve got your quartet of acknowledged classics: The Night Stalker (1972, John Llewellyn Moxey), Gargoyles (1972, Bill L. Norton), Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973, John Newland), and Trilogy of Terror (1975, Dan Curtis). You’ve got your films helmed by famous or soon to be famous directors, like Steven Spielberg (Duel, Something Evil), John Carpenter (Someone’s Watching Me!), Wes Craven (Stranger in Our House a.k.a. Summer of Fear) and Tobe Hooper (Salem’s Lot). And that’s just scratching the surface¹. So, you may be asking, Kent, with all the possibilities stretching out before you, why did you choose to start with the fairly obscure The Horror at 37,000 Feet?

The first answer is I’m just perverse like that. A second, longer, better answer is that it dovetails nicely with this disaster theme I got going. It’s not hard to clock The Horror at 37,000 Feet (hereafter referred to as H37k) as a quickie cash-in not only on the disaster trend that started with Airport (1970, George Seaton), but on the big Satanic phase Hollywood was going through after the success of Rosemary’s Baby (1968, Roman Polanski). It’s interesting, if just on the level of mash-up.

But the third best answer is that I think it’s a fantastic script, with some agile direction underneath it. Now, some caveats. It isn’t much to look at; I hope you like beige and the inside of planes, because you’re getting a lot of both. It’s chock full of TV actors, many past their prime, and I imagine most of them are there to cash a check. The dialogue, aside from some choice one-liners, is pedestrian. The special effects are mostly an model airplane, some grey-green goop, and lots of mist. The big reveal at the end is, spoiler alert, a dude in a black cloak.² Nearly every ’70s made for TV horror film I mentioned earlier has something, some kind of hook or unique visual or memorable moment or auteur behind the camera, something to lodge itself into the viewer’s consciousness. This doesn’t have any of those, which no doubt contributes to its non-existent profile.

But there are a number of moments that reveal this thing as thematically tight, stuff that are easy to miss if you, like lots of people, see “TV movie” and “William Shatner” and solidify an opinion right then and there. Let’s go over what happens and I’ll count the ways I love this movie.

Alan O’Neill (Thinnes), a rich American architect, has loaded up a 747 with the remains of a centuries-old abbey, part of his English wife Sheila’s (Merrow) inheritance. They share the flight with rich businessman Farlee (Ebsen), fashion model Annalik (Nuyen), physician Dr. Enkalla (Winfield), cowboy actor Steve (Hutchins), little-girl-flying-solo-because-you-need-one-of-those-in-a-plane-disaster-movie Jodi (Bendixsen), ex-priest Paul (Shatner), his partner Manya (Loring)³, and finally, pagan enthusiast Mrs. Pinder (Grimes). Unfortunately, the flight happens on the summer solstice, which happens to be the one night the spirits that inhabit the abbey get their groove on and demand a sacrifice. Furthermore, the sacrifice is usually someone from Sheila’s family, and as Sheila is the only family member available, well you see where that’s going. The spirits freeze the 747 motionless in the air until they get their blood. So the dramatic question appears to be, Can Alan, our protagonist, defeat the spirits so he can save his wife and the plane can land safely?

Love, England-to-America style

Except that’s not the dramatic question. And Alan isn’t the protagonist. As mentioned last time, if the protagonist is the character that is actively pursuing a goal, then the protagonist are the spirits.⁴ And if they’re the protagonist, the dramatic question is, Can the spirits convince the passengers to sacrifice Sheila?⁵

Now, despite that huge cast list, I’ve left out some important characters — the flight crew. That’s Captain Slade (Connors), co-pilot Driscoll (Wynant), flight engineer Hawley (Johnson), and flight attendants Margot (Carr) and Sally (Benet). These are the most technically skilled people on the plane, and if the plane is threatened, they should be the ones in the best position to respond. And in fact, they are the first to respond. Here’s point #1. If, by virtue of being supernatural, the spirits of the abbey represent irrationality, then the flight crew, the scientific masters of the gravity-defying airship, represent pure rationality. Slade announces this in the first minutes: “There’s no mystery about it. It’s a selsyn motor, not a human female⁶… it’s an instrument. It won’t lie to you.” And in ghost stories, and H37k in particular, rationality is not only no defense against the supernatural, it’s a vulnerability. The flight crew cannot accept the spirits as real, and so every incursion is explained away. The freezing temperatures in the cargo hold are the result of a blowout. The plane isn’t being held in place by supernatural willpower, but a headwind of impossible, unheard-of speed. Until late in the film, the only people attacked by the spirits are the unbelieving flight crew — Sally and Captain Slade nearly bite it in the elevator, Hawley is turned into a popsicle, and Slade is wounded. Yet, even after witnessing all this, including the Lovecraftian true face of the spirits, Slade is still making excuses. Those that cannot apprehend the irrational are useless.

To keep from fainting, just keep repeating, “It’s only a blowout in the cargo hold, it’s only a blowout in the cargo hold, it’s only a blowout in the cargo hold.”

The passengers are the only hope. They aren’t blinded by the rationality that cripples the flight crew; most of them probably have no understanding of how a plane even works. But this is a double-edged sword. The spirits, protagonistically-speaking, are in charge, and they want Sheila. But either due to their incoporeal nature, or the meaning of the sacrifice (or screenwriter fiat), they can’t physically take Sheila. The passengers have to make the choice to sacrifice her, and if they’re open to the irrational, they’re open to human sacrifice. Who will succumb and who will resist?

Team Resistance begins with Alan and Sheila, and neither are up to the task. Sheila is constantly getting psychically whammied by the spirits into complying, and Alan, as an architect who deals in math, straight lines, and material reality, is nearly in the same predicament as the flight crew. But here’s point #2, another great, subtle aspect of the script. When the film begins, Alan and Sheila are having a typical, nondescript made for TV marital problems; Alan even briefly flirts with Annalik, and Steve, smelling an opportunity, takes his shot with Sheila. But when she’s threatened, Alan does whatever it takes to protect her. His rekindled love for her and his stepping into the shadowy realm of the irrational are functionally the same thing. Love isn’t logical.

Also on Team Resistance is Dr. Enkalla. Although his status as a physician suggests a rational worldview, he also states, “Perhaps you are too eager for answers. Sometimes there are none.”⁷ He can help, and does, but he is not the one the moment requires.

On the opposite side of the aisle is Mrs. Pinder. Mrs. Pinder is introduced as someone who objects to Alan taking the abbey ruins to America. She’s well-versed in the occult history of the abbey, but whether she’s a scholar or just a busybody is unclear. What is clear is that she’s Captain Slade’s mirror image, someone whose métier is irrationality. (This is adequately covered by her catching a flight to New York just to harass the person who defeated her in court.) Logically, this means she would be the best person to confront the spirits. In practice, it just opens her up to what appears to be possession. (That it’s ambiguous is point #3; there are a number of ambiguities that a lesser film would spell out.) Going all-in on irrationality means becoming a puppet for greater forces.

I didn’t get to go into it, but Tammy Grimes is the equal of Shatner here, understanding exactly the performance called for, and giving it. They have a small face-off at the end, but it should’ve been bigger.

So the only person who can handle the situation is someone with a foot in both camps, but subscribes to neither. It’s not Farlee or Steve; these two are self-centered, impressed with themselves, and expect people to be impressed with them. (This probably describes Annalik, but one of the film’s demerits is that Annalik, and by extension, Nuyen, gets very little to say or do.) Jodi’s just a little girl. Manya is a possibility; she’s a devout Christian and by definition, anti-spirit. But it turns out her devotion is just a backdoor the spirits can use against Sheila. Point #4: Manya’s Christianity is just another flavor of Pinder’s paganism.

It soon becomes apparent that the only person who can help is Paul, the ex-priest. Its obviousness has just as much to do with the character’s meta-qualities — 1973 viewers would’ve clued into Paul’s parallels with The Poseidon Adventure’s Reverend Scott — as it does with clumsy exposition. (Manya: “Oh man, why don’t you just put me on your back and walk us across the water?” Paul: “There was a time. Now I’d sink.”) But as clumsy as it is, it’s delightfully vague on the whys. We know he was defrocked, we know he no longer believes in his religion (“You don’t want a priest, you want a parachute”), no longer believes in people (“…they’ll do anything, no matter how stupid or bestial. Homo sapien in all his glory”). He may even feel culpable for whatever happened. (Paul, sarcastically, and note the quotation marks: “‘Where did you lose your faith? I didn’t, it lost me.’” Shatner tucks into this role like a hungry man into a country ham.)

Another thing I didn’t get into is David Lowell Rich’s fluid direction. He’ll often put other characters in the background, reminding us there’s more going on than any individual drama, and also often ends a scene by tracking over to another set of characters.

He’s like Reverend Scott on the worst day of his life, and as such, is incredibly slow to take action. He’s content to let the fear sweep through the passengers, letting them try things like making a Sheila effigy out of Jodi’s doll or start a mini-bonfire in the middle of the cabin. (He doesn’t come out and say, “Dying would be a stone groove,” but he may as well.) His alienation, though, allows him to key in on something that eludes everyone else: as noted earlier, the spirits, for all their power, can’t actually do anything for themselves. They need the humans to do their dirty work for them.⁸ Point #5: who is it, among the passengers, that decide giving Sheila over to the spirits, that human fucking sacrifice is a perfectly okay solution to saving themselves? It’s Manya the Christian, Farlee the capitalist, Annalik, capitalism’s figurehead, and Steve, the propagandist for the myth of American exceptionalism. (He’s not even a real cowboy, just playacts as one.) Of course these four are going to collude against their fellow human. They’re still colluding against us today.

Paul is content with this endgame; he’s made his peace with death long ago. It isn’t until there’s only seven minutes left in the film that Paul makes the tough choice: taking Sheila’s place as the sacrifice.Point #6: Paul is spurred into this action by Jodi, the character that seemed superfluous, who looked to be there only because “airplane in trouble” movies have a little kid in them, the character the film itself sidelines more often than not. This character turns out to be the most important of them all. Paul witnesses her tear out pages from her book, a symbol of knowledge and education, and feed it to the bonfire out of fear; then Jodi pleads to him directly: “Help me.” Paul couldn’t give less than a shit about these adults and their inanity, but when he sees their fear and stupidity infect someone so vulnerable, it’s too much. He makes a torch, rolls up his collar, and heads to the back of the freezing plane where the spirits hold sway. He only has to walk about thirty feet, but in that time, his whole life changes. He regains his faith. We know this because (and this is point #7), for one shot and one shot only, Paul is wearing his priest’s collar.⁹ Does regaining his faith mean a renewed belief in God, man, evil spirits, himself? It does not. Faith means doing the right thing, whatever the outcome.

That one shot.

The spirits depart, the plane lands, everyone is safe. But the film refuses to make it absolutely clear why. Was it Paul’s sacrifice? Was it the fortuitous appearance of the sun? Paul’s returned faith? Something else entirely? Or perhaps just plain coincidence?

Perhaps I’m too eager for answers. Sometimes there are none.

How many stars out of five? Four selsyn motors out of five, but I may have talked myself into four and a half.

Where can I stream it? As of this writing, the only place to watch it for free is here on YouTube . But as with anything on YouTube, clock’s ticking. The dvd can be purchased from Amazon and other retailers.

What can we take from it? Again, none of my usual game material today. But thinking about how this film is kind of a haunted house story, only the house is a plane, got me pondering the nature of physical space in horror media, particularly in film and ttrpgs. This is less a mini-essay and more of me spitballing some ideas. Enjoy!

EVERY ROOM A DUNGEON

If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know that genre emulation in ttrpgs is my special interest. One aspect of that I don’t think I’ve ever seen discussed is how characters navigate space in horror media, and how or even if that is emulated in horrror ttrpgs and scenarios¹⁰. Characters in these kinds of stories tend to move through spaces, even ones they know, very slowly. One some level, it’s silly — a person could run through the average house and hit every room in less than a minute. Yet, it seems like an atmosphere of terror — the one element that really separates horror from other genres — is heavily dependent on characters acting like they’re encumbered by leg irons. The atmosphere inflicts terror on the character and encourages their slowness; or the terror the character feels results in their slowness which creates an atmosphere of terror; or some other permutation.

If we are to take this common horror media trope and apply it to ttrpgs, then this means slowing the characters down when they move through such a space. This happens automatically, I suspect, if the space in question is unmistakably dread-inducing, like a dark, dank sewer system or a (hopefully unoccupied) abandoned insane asylum¹¹. The implied atmosphere of the space does the work of putting the brakes on the characters — no one knows what’s around any one corner, so slow your roll, Chachi.

But what about situations where the space isn’t inherently scary? Or places that are familiar, perhaps even inviting, like suburban houses, airplanes, or fast food restaurants? Horror should not be relegated to the most obvious sites. But a potential issue arises — if the space feels “known,” then the player may feel as if their character can move about the cabin freely. Again, it’s not clear to me if slowing down increases the feeling of horror, or if the feelling of horror enforces slowness, or what, but regardless, characters moving around at a normal pace threatens to dispel the atmosphere.

Character movement is usually the purview of the player, and naturally so, but this is a case where the GM can place limitations on that movement. Now, this is a little weird. Sure, no one blinks when the GM says, “Movement here is difficult because the terrain is rough,” but telling them “movement here is difficult because the house is haunted” might raise eyebrows. Nevertheless, a party of characters exploring a haunted house or the like should be the equivalent of a going on a long expedition, where each foot traversed is a hard-earned prize.

Here are some ideas for ways a GM can create an atmosphere of horror through spatial movement:

• Get a marching order. Tell the table to get their characters lined up, and watch the experienced D&D players in the group be like, Oh, shit just got real. That’s because a marching order, inside of a dungeon-crawling game, is about lining up targets for the GM’s threats. That’s one thing when the characters are effectively magical superheroes who can take punishment; inside of a horror game, where characters are usually just normal squishy people, it’s cause for concern, especially when they’re just going inside a house. The players will feel the tension, as they jockey to avoid being in the front (where the monsters can get you) or in the back (where the monsters can get you) and try to stay in the safe middle (where, as the GM, you’ll have the monsters attack). You might say, dismissively, that having the characters line up to explore a place is very Scooby-Doo; I say Scooby-Doo is closer to horror than not.

• Move one area at a time. Now that they’re grouped together, only let them move from one distinct area at a time. The characters are in the dining room, and they want to check out the master bedroom? Fine, but they have to go through the living room, up the stairs, and down the corridor first. This is the first method for slowing the pace of the game to increase the atmosphere: treat each of these areas as an encounter. That doesn’t necessarily mean that something has to happen every time they move to a new area, just that it could. Each area should feel like its own separate, coherent space.

• Passive antagonism. The second method for slowing the pace occurs after the characters enter an area. Take a moment to describe their surroundings, then add some kind of passive antagonism from the area itself. Perhaps there are broken pieces of glass on the ground from a shattered lamp that the characters need to carefully step around. Maybe a door down the hall suddenly swings open of its own accord — was it a draft, or something else? The purpose of this is twofold: to slow the game down, but also give an in-game reason for this slowness. If the players want their character to react to these moments, let them, but don’t allow them to leave the area. Please note that this is not about having any threats like ghosts or monsters doing something; this is about the space itself providing resistance to the characters in a non-anthropomorphic way.

• Fleeing. If the player decides their character nopes out and flees the scene, heading outside or equivalent safe space (assuming there is one), then they can skip all of this. That said, if they’re fleeing, they’re panicking, and they should potentially face consequences — perhaps some kind of saving throw or luck check or whatever the system in question provides. A failure could mean they’re still inside, hiding inside a closet or something equally foolish. A more measured retreat means going through the above steps as usual.

• Hitting the fan. Of course, once the threat, if there is one, rears its ugly head, throw out the above guidelines and crank up the pace. Before, the players have had too much time to think; now give them hardly any time at all.

NEXT TIME, ON AGAINST THE ’70S: Earthquake (1974, Mark Robson)