Let’s be honest. When the words “supernatural,” “1970s,” “made-for-TV,” and “William Shatner” appear in the same sentence, you already know the oxygen masks are going to drop — not because of cabin pressure, but because the script is suffocating everyone on board. The Horror at 37,000 Feet isn’t a movie. It’s an FAA violation in cinematic form.
Plot? We’re Gonna Need a Map
The story begins, as all great stories do, with a haunted altar being loaded onto a Boeing 747. Wait — what? Yes. A druidic sacrificial altar, because some architect with questionable taste in carry-on baggage thought British Air was the right place to uproot ancient evil and store it next to golf clubs.
From the moment that slab hits the cargo hold, the movie throws logic out the emergency exit. Aboard the plane: a former priest (Shatner, sporting his best tormented-Method face), a sassy millionaire (Buddy Ebsen, slumming it like a champ), and a group of doomed passengers who all seem equally confused by the script. Soon, ghostly gale-force winds push the plane back toward London, temperatures plummet, people get possessed, and the only thing more chilling than the supernatural threat is the acting.
William Shatner: Airborne Meltdown
William Shatner plays Paul Kovalik, a defrocked priest with a taste for brandy and a stare like he just saw the catering truck drive away. Shatner spends most of the runtime gazing intensely at things — the altar, the flight attendant, the exit row — and delivering his lines with all the subtlety of a man fighting off a middle seat cramp. At one point, he dramatically sacrifices himself by allowing the ghosts to yeet him out of the back of the plane, fulfilling their need for a human sacrifice. Frankly, it’s the first selfless thing the movie does: it spares us from more Shatner monologues.
Ghosts in the Cargo Hold: Airline Safety Breach or Plot Device?
Let’s break this down: ghost druids are mad because someone moved their sacred rock. So they freeze the plane, toss around a few passengers with some light telekinesis, and give everyone the shivers. This is what passes for horror. No blood, no gore, just wind machines and some actors looking like they’re being blasted by an aggressive leaf blower.
At one point, someone tries to trick the ghosts with a doll. A doll. Even the ghosts were insulted.
Supporting Cast or Just Baggage?
Chuck Connors plays the pilot with the same bored stoicism you’d expect from a man who once wrangled wild buffaloes on The Rifleman. Buddy Ebsen somehow landed in this script between coffee commercials, phoning it in so hard the phone line disconnected. Paul Winfield, as the resident scientist, valiantly attempts to inject reason into the plot, which is like performing CPR on a corpse that’s already been embalmed.
France Nuyen, Jane Merrow, and the rest of the supporting cast mostly scream, sweat, and blink confusedly at effects that were clearly added weeks later.
Special Effects by Sears Fan Department
The horror in The Horror at 37,000 Feet is brought to life with the thrilling might of dry ice, blue lightbulbs, and an off-screen wind machine set to “gale-force laughable.” The ghosts — unseen for the most part — are represented by ominous humming, flickering cabin lights, and freezing temperatures, which conveniently allow the actors to wrap themselves in blankets and avoid showing their faces for large chunks of the film.
The pièce de résistance? A scene where the plane’s galley starts oozing green goo, which might’ve been terrifying if it didn’t look like someone spilled guacamole on the craft services table.
A Message from the Twilight Zone, Delivered by FedEx
This movie wants to be The Twilight Zone. It wants to be The Exorcist at 35,000 Feet. Instead, it’s Gilligan’s Island of the Damned. It tries desperately to be spooky, relevant, and philosophical. It ends up looking like a bad community theater production trapped in a hollowed-out fuselage, praying for the sweet release of an FAA grounding.
Direction by Checklist, Plot by Panic
Director David Lowell Rich helms this thing like a man trying to land a plane with a fogged-up windshield and a hangover. There’s no tension, no real pacing, just scene after scene of increasingly exasperated passengers realizing the movie is going nowhere fast. And when it finally does go somewhere — namely, back to London with one Shatner less — you’re not so much satisfied as relieved. Like surviving a turbulence-filled red-eye with no legroom and an in-flight movie about tax reform.
Final Thoughts: Please Fasten Your Seatbelts and Lower Your Expectations
The Horror at 37,000 Feet is an accidental comedy about people too dumb to know they’re in a haunted aircraft and too poorly written to escape it. It’s a disaster movie where the real disaster is the screenplay. It’s a supernatural thriller where the only thrill is watching William Shatner get sucked out of a plane.
Avoid this flight unless you enjoy jet lag, ghost druids, and watching talented actors contemplate the career choices that led them to this mile-high nightmare.
