Genre – Drama
Movie Total Runtime – 2 Hours 21 Minutes
Spoilers – Yes
I have heard about this film since I was little, and many of the twists were spoiled to me. But when watching movies older than I am, I can’t expect plot points to remain a secret. While formally an “I meant to watch it, I swear”, I also bought it mere months before starting this series, so, not as bad as some titles that have haunted my collection. This is the original version where George Bailey and John Hammond crash a Skytruck into a Haboob in Libya. Not to be confused with the remake where Gregory House gets stranded in Mongolia.
The Skytruck in question belongs to Arabco, an oil company. Most of the passengers work for said company except for two British Army men, and Ze German. It is unclear why Captain Harris and Sergeant Watson were on the flight, but Ze German was visiting his brother who works for Arabco at the site everyone else is leaving.
Arabco’s slogan is “Cutting Corners for Fun and Profit”, and they have neglected to maintain the aircraft, and has only one flight-certified officer on board. John Hammond is just a navigator who can’t actually fly the plane. The control linkages are squeaky, many of the tie-downs are frayed, and the radio is dead before they start having trouble. While they call it a sandstorm, haboob is just a more fun word to use. It surrounds the plane like the plot device it is, clogs up the engine intakes and causes the right-hand engine to catch fire. Then the electricals short and also start burning. When they hit the sands, the frayed tie-downs break dumping drilling equipment on the back row of passengers, killing two outright and mortally wounding a third. The survivors bury the dead in the loose sand where I am sure the wind will not quickly strip away that covering.
On the ground, the survivors find that they have a severely limited supply of water, and prudently start rationing, waiting for a search party to spot them from the air. However, being severely off-course, they are not found in the first five days, and “We must do something”-ism sets in. Captain Harris plans to march out in search of one of the known oases “nearby”. Nearby in this case being more than a hundred miles. A number of other people try to talk him out of this plan for several salient points. A: They do not know exactly where they crashed, so he has no valid starting point. B: Oases are tiny specks in the desert relative to the amount of terrain around them. C: The nearby mountains are of a composition known to screw with compasses. D: It’s a hundred miles in the trackless part of the Sahara with limited water on foot. E: Odds are he will end up walking in circles.
Sergeant Watson fakes spraining his ankle to not get dragged along on what is clearly a doomed foot expedition. A spanish-speaking side character elects to go with Captain Harris. Ernest Borgnine attempts to join as well, but is refused because he’s loopy. I’m not sure if his character is supposed to be mentally handicapped or mentally ill, but he’s clearly not all there. Even after the foot expedition set out, he decides to follow with no water… and dies.
The plot point the movie is most famous for is only being suggested an hour into the film. Ze German insists that they have enough parts from the Sky Truck to build a working airplane. The idea is initially rejected as folly. Ze German insists that he designs airplanes and it will work. The Pilot and Hammond go along to give the rest of the survivors something in the way of hope.
From a character standpoint, Ze German is a bit of an exaggeration, but I have dealt with German Engineers who very much had similar personalities. Though as per stereotypes of the decade he is very cold when it comes to the ethical and moral element of his plan. For example, he openly states that they do not need to factor in the weight of the mortally wounded man, as he will most likely not survive long enough to be evacuated. In logic, Ze German is difficult to argue with in any of the debates, though his approach and delivery makes you want to not agree with him, no matter how right he may be. That is something that very much angers the pilot.
The foot expedition is very much a failure as Captain Harris is found almost dead at the edge of the camp. There is no sign of the man who went with him, so he is assumed dead.
The makeup effects imitating sun damage to skin varies from phony to disturbingly convincing. Everyone gets worse and worse as the film drags on. And it does drag a bit. The film is an extremely slow burn. This both works for and against it. Against in that it feels almost painfully slow at times. For it in that there are a lot of little details that are conveyed by expression, inference and minute actions rather than exposition or even dialog. My impatience is not a virtue in absorbing the work. The slow burn does make the eventual conflict between characters exacerbated by circumstances and personality conflict more realistic and visceral. We’ve seen these people trying to hold it together for the sake of survival, and the inevitable fractures carry more weight because we know they didn’t just go to pieces at the first sign of hardship.
A raiding band of desert tribesmen the film insists on calling Arabs sets up camp past the next dune. Captain Harris insists on the plan of attempting to elicit their aid, as it would make the seemingly futile plan of building a new airplane moot. He attempts to order Sergeant Watson to accompany him, and the Sergeant mutinies on the basis that it’s suicide. The French Doctor, their only Arabic speaker anyway, goes instead. Captain Harris and the Doctor are killed off-screen, their throats slit, and left by a lame camel. The tribesmen leave, and the remaining survivors are forced to resume their only plan of building Ze German’s plane.
Somewhere around here there is a quote from Jimmy Stewart’s pilot musing to himself about the work going on. “The little men with the slide rules and the computers are going to inherit the earth.” It’s fairly prescient, except we did away with the slide rules. Mostly. I still own a slide rule. Can’t use it, but since when does that stop a hoarder collector.
As work completes, Pilot Jimmy and Hammond find out that Ze German is an aircraft designer for model aircraft. The air crew might be distressed to find that he designs Model Airplanes rather than full-sized ones, his work is fully powered radio-controlled model airplanes, which means he’s within the horseshoes and hand grenades reach of what they need. It just doesn’t inspire confidence when he hasn’t built anything designed to carry people. Ze German didn’t try to conceal this fact and is quite proud of his work, but Jimmy and Hammond tell him it might not be such a good idea to say anything just now.
After some more … disputes over who is in charge, they finish the Phoenix and time comes to start the engine. I still don’t understand this engine starter that looks like it’s powered by shotgun shells. Then again my understanding of propeller engines is somewhat lacking. I’m not sure if it’s real, or something made up for the movie to add tension. I opted to look it up, and it turns out to be a real thing. I suppose it’s an improvement over hand-starting an engine.
We’ve run out of runtime, so Jimmy gets it started with one shell to spare, and they fly to the oasis the foot expedition was unable to find.
There are a lot of subtle elements to the characters that a snark-prone reviewer like me cannot do justice to. If you do have two and a half hours, and the patience to pay attention, you could do worse.
Watching some of these older works just highlights how bad modern actors have gotten at their craft. I don’t think too many could convey anything with a look and expression, since they can’t manage to emote with their tone of voice.
Their looks and expressions clearly convey their wokeness now. That is far more important than white supremacist ideas like refraining from launching into lengthy monologues about every transient emotion, and forcing people to enact the emotional labor of understanding what facial expressions and body language communicate.
Agreed, Mr. Servant.
I used to say that there are a few modern movies that aren’t trash. Not anymore.
In fact, the only movie this year that has even remotely piqued my interest is Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein
I’ll watch if it streams on Amazon.
I recently watched Weapons, and thought that it hit the same issues as Barbarian. Both had some solid scenes, some great imagery, but no story or explanation to pull the scenes together. Both of those were well regarded and critically acclaimed movies.
That says more about the current state of criticism than the movies. Which is another sad story for the current era.
Criticism kind of depends on the critic having values, and those values mapping onto reality, or at least culture, on a deeper level than ideology allows.
Related – this popped up on my playlist this AM.
Behind the Scenes: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone, 1966) with Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach
Clint did so much with so little dialogue in the role.
One of my faves. Eli Wallach steals the show. (Music steals the movie.) Tuco’s also the only character who has substance written into the film. On the way to oldest nephew’s performance, Dad brought up a book he wrote that I didn’t know about. Just an interview project, he wrote hundreds of letters to famous folk to tell stories about their days playing Little League.
Eli Wallach responded with several pages of handwritten details about his experiences. Dad said Robert Goulet was a fun phone interview, much focused on how much he *hated* everything about his Naked Gun flick. (2 1/2.) He got a written response from Charles Schutlz and a few others I don’t remember off hand, but big names.
I don’t know… Lee Van Clef is pure awesome as El Malo. Steely eyed, good with a gun, until some… poncho wearer… steals his bullets.
Cartridge starters are a thing. There are even bigger ones for jet engines.
I learned they existed when I did the research regarding the use in this movie.
I saw this when it came out and, as an aircraft geek, I loved it. As I recall, this version was much closer to the book.
Much superior to the lame semi-woke remake.
Somewhere around here I have a book by Sommerset Maugham that was explicitly written as propaganda for WWII. It sucks, and is little remembered, because propaganda always sucks. When you put ulterior motives above the story you are telling, everything true about it takes a back seat: plot, characters, morals, everything.
During the period between the Molotov-von Ribbentrop pact and the German invasion of the USSR, Hollywood communist Dalton Trumbo wrote an isolation book with the ghost of Andrew Jackson as an important character.
Budd Schulberg, who won an Oscar for writing On the Waterfront, famously said that the communists were all for free speech — as long as you said things they agreed with.
I would probably get a sunburn just watching this film. đ„”
đ±
Right there with you, Sister Ginger.
Sister ginger oh the time has come,
Time to burn up in the sun
Oh myyyy
This is an often-used plot device and it annoys me because it is true only in limited cases when you have no external references (dense tree cover, for example.) When you can see the sun or landmarks you may not be going entirely straight but you are certainly not walking in circles.
Somehow the Inuit and others figured out how to navigate without maps, compasses, or landmarks. Same thing with the Aborigines.
Some languages don’t have words for left and right. They use compass directions instead. Polynesian languages have words for seaward and landward.
I own this movie solely because it was the cheapest way to get Big Trouble in Little China (it was in a bundle with it for $5).
I used to have a copy of that movie.
But it was damaged.
đ
Maybe if you sacrifice a girl with green eyes it will be restored.
I sacrificed a few greenbacks to Bezos instead.
Since I didn’t see you on any of the earlier posts today, I thought you might find this tweet of interest.
Reagan-Appointed Judge Steps Down to Slam Trumpâs âAssault on Rule of Lawâ.
Trump actually has been pushing the boundaries in his second term in a lot of ways, but his opponents never really had even a sliver of moral highground givven their own conduct. Every criticism stinks of uniparty pieces of shit who are simply unhappy seeing the envelop pushed by Bad Orange Man. These people have no principles. They were perfectly fine when the levers of power were being grossly abused in ways that Nixon (it’s comical seeing him cited as the height of corruption these days) could never even have imagined. And even in the ’70’s, the attacks on Nixon were highly hypocritical and empty.
“I have a pen, and I have a phone” was virtuous, but Trump doing it is the most wicked thing.
1. Yes on Trump’s boundary pushing
2. Also agree that there’s nothing particularly different here. The argument from prog friends, of course, is that the judicial attacks on Trump were purely seeking justice and his are revenge.
3. “has resigned so he can speak freely.” *Bullshit antenna go up* Checks Wikipedia: Wolf took “Senior Status in 2013” (after 28 years on the Massachusetts district court). Hmm, “Senior status is a form of semi-retirement for United States federal judges…(he was then 67 yo)…As long as senior judges carry at least a 25 percent caseload or meet other criteria for activity, they remain entitled to maintain a staffed office and chambers, including a secretary and their normal complement of law clerks, and they continue to receive annual cost-of-living increases.[1] The president may appoint new full-time judges to fill the vacancies in full-time judgeships caused by senior status.”
So, I can’t be bothered looking up the current make up of that particular court but…this guy semi-retired at 67, kept pulling salary for another 12 years (which may have required the appointment of a full-time replacement) and at 79 he [courageously] retires. I see.
I was just going to say that he’s a shitbag. Your post is better.
Yeah, if we’re gonna invoke corruption it’s a little telling to leave out Obama and Biden.
But Nixon is the bĂȘte noir of all seriousâąïž observers. đ
“Heads I win, tails you lose.”
I think both the acting and writing is better today in TV shows than it was decades ago. Watch, say, a Perry Mason episode in comparison to a Law and Order episode.
There was a nice stretch of time where “prestige TV” was much better that most movies.
Streaming has pretty much fucked the business case for all video-based entertainment. Well-written anything is becoming harder and harder to find.
The new Toxic Avenger wasnât bad.
Not that the origional toxic avenger was good.
Law and Order peaked a couple decades ago.
I watched one of the new ones last year – it was unwatchable woke slop.
A lot of material dating from ~2000 and later is similar.
I saw Flight of the Phoenix when I was very young (this would be in the 1960s). Being a child and it being so long ago don’t remember all the plot twists, but I do remember the body postures and facial expressions as Stewart plugs one cartridge in after another trying to start the monstrosity and knowing they’re all thinking; will it start? Or did we waste all that time and probably our lives for nothing?
A haboob is not your everyday dust storm. It’s a lethally suffocatingly dense cloud of dust, sand and grit propelled by mucho high winds that can sandblast painted surfaces down to bare metal. Thankfully I’ve never been in one, but I’ve heard some graphic descriptions by people who have to want to pass on the experience.
The real question is: can you use a motor boat to survive a haboob?
Do you prefer haboob or side boob?
I prefer Side Show Boob.
Paging Q
Side Show Boob
You really should consider the Rule 34 implications of that.
STEVE SMITH LIKE REAR BOOB. YOU KNOW WHAT HIM MEAN.
Iâve been is a schmall, the haboob sounds awful.
Speaking of postures & expressions, I’ve always loved this little six-second sequence: https://youtu.be/BO3qmSeGOpg?si=4qIKpXhuKyfm5bCE&t=167
Did the Stargate get yoinked by the Space Force?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSiLZoPk9Hc
Fun fact: the water in some oases is undrinkable and home to swarms of flies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPWEKUQLb9Y
It may be a fact but it doesn’t sound fun.
Fuck the BBC. Snoop does it better.
Snoop Dogg narrates Animal Planet Documentary
Makes me feel sad for the rest.
Fully expect MSM to run non-stop articles on how the Dems didnt need to cave. Get ready for the complete rebranding of the Dems to DSA
It already started when that dude in NY won. The Bernie/AOC wing is ascendant, the Moobs wing is done. He will retire at the end of the term, following Nancy two shoes out.
Buy more guns – check
Gear up for four more years of Thursday movies to blow off steam about the commies – check.
I hate commies.
I hate commies too.
We can be frens.
Sam and Rodney hating commies (obligatory):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9DO26O6dIg
AOC took the bullet on the vote…interesting
I’ve got bourbon.
Oops, not AOC…the ond from Nevada voted for it. Which is telling on demos for next couple of years
What did I miss? Was a continuing resolution passed?
There is a deal. At this time the Senate is voting to end the filibuster on the deal so that the deal can go to a vote.
đ
Thanks DEG
Surprised that the Rs gave little in way of concessions and its basically the deal from 30 days ago
Dems lost popular support on it, even when the DSA was making ground. Whole thing was more of an intra party pissing match than anything else.
Yay
First snow of the year, supposed to get down to 25 tonight. I depart for work in seven hours, so, um. Hrm. I hope that won’t be an interesting drive. Coat was recalled from slumber. It’s already dark before 6pm and with the weather today, it was mostly dark by 5. And that’s got six more weeks to get worse? Yay. Fuck DST and all that confusion, fuck seasons and time itself. (Seasons are lovely. No seasons in Singapore got psychologically fucky real fast. )
Yeah. All my pepper plants are gonna finally die tonight. đąđȘŠ
I’m so sorry.
First snow of season….not year.
I don’t think it snowed where I am (the 607) this year. Maybe last December?
I miss snow.
Drove up here from the (937) in a mess of dark, cold, rain, snow, slush, and traffic.
Yeah, Im ready for spring.
CWAA
https://nypost.com/2025/11/08/us-news/jimmy-kimmels-wife-admits-she-sent-many-emails-urging-trump-voting-family-not-to-back-him-during-election/
lol This explains so much.
(I have a BFF whose wife drives his politics too.)
Some say the “pen is mightier than the sword”. I’m here to tell you that pussy beats both.
She tried to hard to save those savages.
Many African countries look to China as an example to follow. Tanzania had another fraudulent election where the ruling socialist party won again after banning, jailing, and killing opposition leaders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Tanzanian_general_election#Unrest_and_protests
So it goes. As bad as our de facto 2-party system is, it’s better than many others.
I remember once seeing a “vote here” sign over there that was posted upside down. One of the few ways to fight a corrupt system is to show contempt for it.
At least Nyerere stepped down peacefully when his socialist schemes didn’t pan out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ujamaa#Ujamaa_villages_and_Tanzanian_villagization
Oof when you’ve lost Freedom House….
Fuck, all those countries looked to the USSR in the sixties, and look where that got them.
I can’t wait until the blowhards start shrieking “Color Revolution!” about the protesters.
Because the original article was posted and discussed here, see the left’s brilliant rebuttle! Hint – it can’t be true becasue…MAGA!
The country is rapidly becoming the manosphere, but, sure, letâs go after the âfeminizationâ of culture.
Advertise on Reddit
By Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic.
Helen Andrewsâs essay âThe Great Feminizationâ reached my feed on the same day that photos spread of the East Wing of the White Houseâthe space traditionally reserved for the first lady and her staffâreduced to rubble. The spectacle was almost too on the nose: Here was the nexus of womenâs (limited) history within the executive branch, once home to Jacqueline Kennedyâs Rose Garden and Laura Bushâs restored movie theater, now totally demolished. Donald Trump has made clear his wishes to put a new ballroom in the East Wingâs place. But his planned additions to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue also include the installation of an Ultimate Fighting Championship octagon for Americaâs 250th birthday celebration. (The former UFC star Conor McGregor, an Irishman whose Wikipedia subsection for âRape and Sexual Assault Casesâ is 982 words long, was personally hosted by the president in the Oval Office in March.)
So ⊠about that great feminization. Andrewsâs thesis, published by the online magazine Compact, is that everything wrong with institutions in America comes down to the growing influence of women. Women, she argues, have implemented âwokenessâ across the land, and her evidence for this is the outrage over Larry Summersâs comments about whether women might have less natural aptitude for math and science, which led to his resignation as president of Harvard University in 2006. Her 3,400-word essay seems to assert that wokeness is inherently feminine, prizing âempathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition,â and that womenâwith all our feelings and conflict avoidanceâare ruining the nationâs most fundamental institutions. If women continue to make inroads, she argues, adding to the ranks of doctors and lawyers and judges and businesspeople, then the âeruption of insanity in 2020ââby which she means the mass protests and efforts to address racial inequality following the death of George Floydââwas just a small taste of what the future holds.â
âThe Great Feminizationâ catastrophizes wildly about the future, presumably because whatâs happening in the present utterly undermines its central thesis. Eighty-five percent of Republicans in Congress are men. From January to August, an estimated 212,000 women left the American workforce while 44,000 men gained jobs; Black women are being disproportionatelyâperhaps even intentionallyâexcised from the federal workforce. According to a new assessment from The Ankler, only four of the top 100 American films in 2025 so far have been directed or co-directed by women. Democrats are currently so desperate for strong male role models to promote as candidates that theyâre all tangled up over whether a burly Maine oystermanâs Nazi-symbol tattoo is defensible. As for emotions run wild, Cabinet members brawl in public like rhesus monkeys on HGH: In September, the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, reportedly told the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, Bill Pulte, âIâm gonna punch you in your fucking face,â because Bessent heard Pulte had been talking to Trump about him behind his back. (The anecdote slightly refutes Andrewsâs argument that men âwage conflict openly while women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies.â) Also in September, the âsecretary of War,â Pete Hegseth, summoned all of the nationâs generals to Washington and gave an erratic lecture about facial hair and implementing âmale standardâ for combat roles. In April, a Fox News chyron called Trumpâs tariffs âmanlyâ as a roundtable discussed whether they might even be able to reverse the crisis of masculinity, presumably by making soybean farmers so poor that they have to join ICE for the signing bonus.
Poor woman seems to be suffering from hysteria.
I’m not sure if the above is the full article as it’s paywalled at The Atlantic and I can’t get it, but she completely avoids grappling with any of the core arguments presented in the feminization article. Which isn’t a surprise because the left has become completely intellectually bankrupt and unable to engage in anything resembling an honest debate.
Republicans today aren’t intellectual giants by any means, but being conservative means you can’t really escape from the progressie hegemony that dominates culture. You are forced to be familiar with the other side’s thoughts. The left acts like a vampire being exposed to holy water or sunlight the second they run into a conflicting thought. They hiss and recoil.
Has any other civilization gone through a radical shift like Western Civ has in the past sixty years? Have they survived, or gone under? My guess, and it’s just a guess, is no. What will be the outcome, don’t know. Possibly clear division between feminists, their simps, and traditional minded folks.
Sophie Gilbert is low IQ. Bottom ten percent.
The problem is that the first group will still be a large majority of the government class.
Wow.
Too much choice derp to pick just one representative sample but JFC.
But yeah, this is the laziest “rebuttal” I have ever seen. And a perfect example of her target’s argument.
Off to work through the snowy streets. It *is* the first snow of the year… well. Last year’s winter counts as last year. Dec ’24- March ’25 is all *last* year. After a five month break, ’tis new! Boss boss isn’t really in, or doesn’t care much, after weekend crowds. The weather’ll keep most regular shoppers away. Now time to get their smoothly.
Enjoy the beginning of your workweek. Post 2pm, I gotta see for my weekend options, largely job hunting. Believe I made amends with MN Munchkin last eve, after we had a nasty talk and I was worried she’d re-ghosted me. Onward, we match.
Wakey, wakey Glibs! Eat more bacon.
đ„đđ€ïž
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U10LnbIf72k
What a banging cover! đ¶đ¶
mmm, bacon
Good morning, Sean, Roat, EfE, Ted’S., homey, and U!
::remembers smoked bacon cheese curds in the refrigeratior::
How goes it today?
As I mentioned below, there’s snow all over my car this morning, but I have to go in to do Board meeting prep. Maybe I’ll be able to leave early so I won’t get shorted on Vacation accrual because I’m close to being maxed out. How are you?
I have to remind myself that I have made progress. This place will be put in order………
đđ
suh’ fam
whats goody
Morning, Glibs.
So, I took the day off.
Shame I’ve dedicated this weekend to cleaning the house.
I wish I could have taken today off, but it’s time to start getting ready for the monthly Board meeting, and Wednesday would be a little late for some of the tasks involved. I DO have to take at least a half day off sometime this week because I’m about to max out on Vacation hours, and I’ll be shorted if I don’t get my balance down.
There’s snow all over my car this morning. âââđđâââ
It’s an unusual split week with tomorrow an enforced holiday.
You don’t have tomorrow off?
@Ted – Who are you asking?
Ted’S., I DO have tomorrow off, but that will be Holiday pay and won’t reduce my Vacation hours balance. After 25 years with the credit union, I accrue 9+ hours of Vacation time per 80 hour pay period, so it becomes a bit of a trick to use it before I max out at a balance of 240 hours. (I tend to hoard it “in case of emergencies.”) A nice problem to have, I’ll admit.
Roat, it does feel a bit weird to have a Tuesday holiday. At least it will probably prevent the usual post-Monday-holiday mail mountain I usually confront after a three-day weekend.
I was asking you, UCS, since I figured you as GovSec would have the day off and could do your house cleaning then.
Needless to say, I don’t get the day off.
I’ve been doing my fall cleaning since Friday. I will continue until interrupted by work.
sup’ cuh
Your vote doesn’t matter.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20251110_06/index.html
A coin flip at the beginning of the election season would save a lot of time and money and the results would be the same. Elections are a game of pretend to fool the populace into believing that they are the important part of the constituency.
Morning everyone!
What are these holidays y’all speak of? Why don’t I get any?
Mrs F is taking a plane ride to Phoenix on Thursday, I encouraged her to rethink her plan and maybe postpone it ’til the dust settles but as always my advice fell like rain on a mallard’s back.
You see, back in 1918, the armastice which ended the war was on November 11, so we decided to memorialize the moment by closing all the banks whenever the date rolls around to 11/11.
Didn’t some president declare a banker’s holiday, about a 100 years ago? Gave the bankers a week off before the country went bonkers?
Why do non-veterans get Veterans Day off?
It’s cheaper than auditing eligibility.
For the same reason marry guys get Independence Day off.
The same reason non-presidents get Presidents Day off?
Because Veterans Day paid the $20 same as in town?