Search - The Disappearance of Flight 412 on DVD

"What You Saw Couldn't Happen!"

Robert I. Hedges | 11/30/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

""The Disappearance of Flight 412" is a 1974 piece of garbage about UFOs and a big government conspiracy starring Glenn Ford (!), David Soul, and Bradford Dillman. As a current airline pilot and former Air Force officer and pilot, all I have to say on the technical merits of this film is that it's pure junk. The film starts with ponderous narration about the UFO threat and hokey airplane footage, and goes downhill into government conspiracy theory territory from there. Not that I will dwell on it, but the airplane related babble from pilot David Soul and crew, especially the bit about blindly following the instructions from an unknown entity called "Digger Control", is beyond painful.

Soul and crew land at an unknown military field and are interviewed by government agents, who interrogate them brutally by taking them to comfortable briefing rooms and giving them coffee and light refreshments. Immediately one of the crewmembers cracks under the pressure, despite the interrogation being laughable on a number of planes (you'll pardon the pun). Glenn Ford shows up to rescue his men (which is a good thing as David Soul came up with the stupidest escape plan ever) triggering an idiotic prisoner release plotpoint. (They were held for a whole 18 hours, although the film makes is seem like much less.)

The conclusion involves a wholly predicable plot twist (I loved the Top Secret documents kept in a dresser drawer, by the way) involving more narration and general wincing from the audience.

This movie is just horrendous: the transfer is bad, but the best transfer in history couldn't make up for the fact that you are watching a steaming heap of dung. Avoid this like the plague."

Big Disappointment

C. Valentino | San Francisco, CA USA | 07/08/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I was utterly disappointed about this movie and turned it off 23 minutes into it. As mentioned, the visual and audio quality is horrible, but on top of that the cover picture of a commercial airliner leads customers to believe this is a disaster movie about a commercial jet airliner going down with a couple of hundred passengers on board, and the rescue and investigation efforts after the event, instead, this is a military film with no suspense build-up whatsoever. So in addition of the misleading cover picture ("false advertisement?"), this movie is beyond boring - it's a waste of money and resources."

For UFO film fanatics only

Comedy Album Fanatic | Western New York | 03/02/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This movie is slow-going but is interesting if you're a serious fan of UFO films. This film is much less about a UFO that is sighted by a few pilots than it is about the government's process for shutting up the pilots. After the pilots report having seen radar blips moving strangely and the disappearance of one of their planes, they are locked in a secret facility for 18 hours where government agents mess with their heads and try to get them to say that nothing out-of-the-ordinary happened."