Seeking film/show about crashed plane & ghosts, but in black and white
September 13, 2022 9:05 AM Subscribe
Someone has asked for help identifying a film or TV show. Most details of the description seem to match the 1970 made-for-TV movie "Sole Survivor"--but, they insist that this movie or TV show was in black and white! Can you help brainstorm more possibilities?
I know memory is very fallible, but I'm operating on the assumption that there was actually a version of the story told before Sole Survivor--possibly Sole Survivor was a US adaptation (or theft!) of an early, black and white, maybe British, plot.
The basic description: "Looking for an old black-and-white film about a possible military bomber / plane crash in the (Sahara?) desert where the crew are ghosts but don't know it and they disappear one by one as their bodies are found except the last one who was buried under the plane itself until they found him."
Apparently it is NOT:
Sole Survivor (1970)
King Nine Will Not Return (the Twilight Zone)
It sounds like it's inspired by the famous real-life loss of the "Lady Be Good" bomber, but sadly, the Wikipedia article's list of TV/film portrayals of that event only mentions Soul Survivor, King Nine, and Flight of the Phoenix, none of which meet the criteria.
Here's a long discussion thread elsewhere about people's memories of this film or show--there's argument about "Soul Survivor", but enough people insist that they remember it earlier, in black and white (even while having color TVs), and with a couple of slightly different details, that I'd like to run with that assumption for now.
The people in that thread are British, and their memories make me wonder if it might have been a British made for TV movie or a British movie aired on TV.
(Someone in that thread posits an episode of "Armstrong Circle Theatre" called "Ghost Bomber: the Lady Be Good", but that's on YouTube and is clearly a documentary/re-enactment retelling of the actual event.)
Anyway, if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!
I know memory is very fallible, but I'm operating on the assumption that there was actually a version of the story told before Sole Survivor--possibly Sole Survivor was a US adaptation (or theft!) of an early, black and white, maybe British, plot.
The basic description: "Looking for an old black-and-white film about a possible military bomber / plane crash in the (Sahara?) desert where the crew are ghosts but don't know it and they disappear one by one as their bodies are found except the last one who was buried under the plane itself until they found him."
Apparently it is NOT:
Sole Survivor (1970)
King Nine Will Not Return (the Twilight Zone)
It sounds like it's inspired by the famous real-life loss of the "Lady Be Good" bomber, but sadly, the Wikipedia article's list of TV/film portrayals of that event only mentions Soul Survivor, King Nine, and Flight of the Phoenix, none of which meet the criteria.
Here's a long discussion thread elsewhere about people's memories of this film or show--there's argument about "Soul Survivor", but enough people insist that they remember it earlier, in black and white (even while having color TVs), and with a couple of slightly different details, that I'd like to run with that assumption for now.
The people in that thread are British, and their memories make me wonder if it might have been a British made for TV movie or a British movie aired on TV.
(Someone in that thread posits an episode of "Armstrong Circle Theatre" called "Ghost Bomber: the Lady Be Good", but that's on YouTube and is clearly a documentary/re-enactment retelling of the actual event.)
Anyway, if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!
Response by poster: Yes, could be. But some people in that discussion thread are insisting that they already had a color TV by that time--and, in any case, just for the sake of expanding the search, I'm operating on the black-and-white assumption for now.
posted by theatro at 9:31 AM on September 13, 2022
posted by theatro at 9:31 AM on September 13, 2022
in black and white (even while having color TVs)
In the UK between 1967 and 1985, it was entirely possible to have a programme that was only available in black and white even though you had a colour TV. BBC TV and ITV originally used the pre-war 405-line TV standard on VHF, which never supported colour. 625-line transmission on UHF started in 1964, adding colour in 1967, but the 405-line service continued until around 1985 to support existing TVs. When colour TV started, many households would have had a dual-standard TV that could receive both 405-line transmissions in black and white, and 625-line transmissions in colour. So it depended on what channel you were watching - you could watch the 405-line version of a channel when you couldn't receive the 625-line version (e.g. a different ITV region - since the programming was often different, and VHF carried much further than UHF does).
So it might be a colour film that you're looking for, even though viewers remember watching it in black and white on a colour TV.
posted by offog at 10:45 AM on September 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
In the UK between 1967 and 1985, it was entirely possible to have a programme that was only available in black and white even though you had a colour TV. BBC TV and ITV originally used the pre-war 405-line TV standard on VHF, which never supported colour. 625-line transmission on UHF started in 1964, adding colour in 1967, but the 405-line service continued until around 1985 to support existing TVs. When colour TV started, many households would have had a dual-standard TV that could receive both 405-line transmissions in black and white, and 625-line transmissions in colour. So it depended on what channel you were watching - you could watch the 405-line version of a channel when you couldn't receive the 625-line version (e.g. a different ITV region - since the programming was often different, and VHF carried much further than UHF does).
So it might be a colour film that you're looking for, even though viewers remember watching it in black and white on a colour TV.
posted by offog at 10:45 AM on September 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: offog, that's very good to know, and I'll make a note of the details. If there don't end up being any likely leads, I'll make sure to mention the real possibility to them!
posted by theatro at 10:55 AM on September 13, 2022
posted by theatro at 10:55 AM on September 13, 2022
It’s also possible that a print of a movie shown on TV back in the 1970s might have been so washed out that it appeared black and white even though it was in color.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:07 PM on September 13, 2022
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:07 PM on September 13, 2022
People in that thread and elsewhere suggested that it might be called Catch 22 (hence promptly overwritten in the public consciousness by the obvious), Flight of the [something] (but not Phoenix) or Phantom [something], or that it might be a different cut of the 1970 Sole Survivor made for the European market. I've looked in my copy of Halliwell's Film Guide, and none of those avenues seems to go anywhere helpful - although as it doesn't have an entry for Sole Survivor at all(!), that's not as definitive an answer as I hoped it would be.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 6:17 AM on September 14, 2022
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 6:17 AM on September 14, 2022
Response by poster: Unfortunately the commenter in that thread who champions the idea of an unrelated 'Catch 22' production doesn't give any evidence or explanation--it would need plenty of both, because yow.
(And thanks for checking Halliwell!)
posted by theatro at 11:19 AM on September 14, 2022
(And thanks for checking Halliwell!)
posted by theatro at 11:19 AM on September 14, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by theora55 at 9:08 AM on September 13, 2022 [4 favorites]