The High and the Mighty (1954), directed by William A. Wellman. Streaming at home, Tuesday, April 4.

I’ve established that Janice and I actually enjoy John Wayne, having had some great luck lately with both North To Alaska and El Dorado, two really entertaining films. Which, of course, on lazy evenings when we’re sick of TV and want some sort of blockbuster that’s not superheroes or sci-fi, can come back to bite us: case in point, John Wayne in The High and the Mighty. This doesn’t deserve a lot of words except to note that it’s the prototype of the disaster film that became so popular in the 70s and then was spoofed to great effect in Airplane! Wayne is a pilot on a plane going from Hawaii to San Francisco, and he’s got backstory (dead wife and kid, plane crash), and, of course, so does everyone else. Jesus, do they: as they do in disaster movies, we have a whole long prologue of backstory: everyone gets their tickets, the ticket taker (played by Douglas Fowley, whom I’ll always see as the director blowing his top in Singin’ in the Rain–“Roll ’em!”) explains every passenger’s place in life and current crises to the stewardess next to him. And if he forgot someone, like the “unlucky” couple who are in Hawaii for the first time, well, we’ll just have some flashbacks. It’s not like anything’s going on in the sky, like the engine being on fire. Problem is, this movie is not over-the-top, and disaster flicks, which are awful (seriously, stop watching these movies people, it’s like celebrating processed American cheese food), have to be utterly ludicrous from start to finish to be even remotely interesting. Nothing in this film works. The humor is DOA, the acting atrocious, the score risible, but I guess aviation buffs enjoy seeing a vintage DC-4 and its cockpit. Unless that fascinates you, run away from this one.

I see in the poster above it states the film has “every kind of love there is…” Would that were so.

As if there’s scores of people reading this who are hungry for John Wayne movies…