Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

And this is my favorite one, because, to me, Stephen King has come up with the most logical view of time travel: of course the past would be empty and silent and "over". Dean Stockwell overplayed his role, but was still the most likeable character in the group. Bronson Pinchot totally redeemed himself after that eighties-sitcom disaster, and Christopher Collet and Kimber Riddle did a realistic job of playing teens. (The only one who annoyed me was Patricia Wettig.) The filming was another issue; there were some glaring bloopers such as shadows of people moving beyond the Bangor airport's glass doors and a few cars driving in the streets of 'deserted' L.A.! The computer-generated Langoliers and sliced-and-diced airfield? Terrible. But the plot and dialogue were for the most part very loyal to the novella, which I have reread so many times it is falling apart. The most important thing here is to think of The Langoliers as science fiction and not horror, and Stephen King is capable of producing great stories in both genres!

Flight 29 from LA to Boston is cruising above Colorado when most of the passengers and all of the crew suddenly disappear! The only folks remaining are 10 people who happen to be sleeping at the moment the aeroplane passed through a time-warp. Fortunately, one of these is a qualified pilot who's "dead-handing" to Boston for his estranged wife's funeral. Naturally, he takes charge of the remainder of the flight.

No contact can be established with any ATC tower and the radar shows no other aircraft in the vicinity. So the pilot tries the military frequencies but still finds nothing! Given that there are no lights on the ground, he diverts from Boston-Logan to a less busy airport in rural Maine. Bangor seems totally deserted and there's something strange about the atmosphere; it's lifeless, there's no echo, beer tastes flat and matches won't light! Each character is developed well; one of the passengers happens to be a mystery writer (like Stephen King, who wrote the novel on which the film is based). He essentially narrates the plot making it quite easy to follow. Another is a 12-year-old blind girl with supernatural powers of perception. There's an impatient, mentally unstable banker with an important business meeting in Boston and a British secret agent who tries to take charge in this seemingly impossible situation. How can they return to the time-warp with hardly any fuel on board? Will doing so return them to the correct dimension anyway? And how can they fly the aeroplane back through the time-warp while all 10 of them are asleep?

I haven't read the novel but it's a gripping storyline. Running to 3 hours, always split into two 90-minute viewings. The background music is well suited to the content and some of the camera shots are impressive for 1995.