Delayed Flight
Directed byTony Young
Screenplay byDail Ambler
Produced byBill Luckwell
David Vigo
StarringHelen Cherry
Hugh McDermott
CinematographyWalter J. Harvey
(as Jimmy Harvey, B.S.C.)
Edited byNorman Cohen
Music byWilfred Burns
Production
company
Luckwell Productions Limited
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
Release date
1964
Running time
62 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom

Delayed Flight is a 1964 British low-budget thriller film directed by Tony Young, and starring Helen Cherry and Hugh McDermott.[1]

Plot

An airline flight lands at an airport in England, where the passengers are told they must be delayed and quarantined for 24 hours due to a smallpox scare. Two of them, Helen Strickland and American Army Lt. Col. Calvin Brampton, escape. A third passenger, a secret agent, also escapes but is fatally shot. Before dying, he entrusts important official documents to Brampton to be delivered to the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Strickland is also heading to London to intercept a private letter that must not be seen by her husband.

The two team up and are pursued by the police for breaking quarantine, and by the two sinister henchmen who shot the secret agent and who work for an organization that wants the documents in order to instigate an uprising in Africa. After various adventures, Calvin and Strickland achieve their ends and say their farewells. The smallpox scare turns out to have been nothing more than a case of chicken pox.

Cast

Production

Delayed Flight was filmed in March 1964 at Bray Studios as a supporting feature. Hammer Film Productions appears to have been financially involved with the film, which is one of the rarest and most elusive of their co-productions. The film was once listed on Hammer’s official website. It was shot back-to-back with crime thriller The Runaway.[2][3]

This was the last film produced by Bill Luckwell, and was the second of two thrillers (the other being The Runaway) which he made at Bray Studios, which at that time were owned by Hammer Films.[4]

Release

The film was intended to be distributed by Columbia Pictures, but was not released in the UK or US. In Australia, it was shown to accompany other Columbia films such as Fail Safe and The Long Ships.[4]

References

  1. "Delayed Flight". BFI Collections Search. British Film Institute. Retrieved 10 April 2023.
  2. Fellner, Chris (15 August 2019). The Encyclopedia of Hammer Films. London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing. p. 95. ISBN 978-1538126585.
  3. Maxford, Howard (15 February 2019). Hammer Complete: The Films, the Personnel, the Company. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 706. ISBN 978-1476670072.
  4. 1 2 Clinton, Franz Antony (30 October 2020). British Thrillers, 1950-1979: 845 Films of Suspense, Mystery, Murder and Espionage. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. pp. 282–283. ISBN 978-0786410323.
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