forgotten WWII movie

December 1, 2006 10:41 AM

Recognize this movie? Somebody asked the Onion's AV Club about it and they (I think) got it wrong -- and it's a movie that's been bugging me for some time also. Can AskMe get it right? Details inside include a crashed WWII bomber in the desert and spooky ghost crew members.

Quoting the AV Club question: "I remember seeing a late-night movie on TV when I was a kid in the mid- to late 1960s. The movie was about a group of Air Force members, around the time of WWII, who have crash-landed in a remote, desertlike area. One by one, the cast members disappear, until one of the brighter ones figures out that they all actually died in the crash and are all ghosts. Can you find the details of this movie: title, year of release, current availability, et cetera?

-- Michael Miller"

AV Club thought the questioner had a muddled memory of two Twilight Zone episodes about astronauts. But it was definitely WWII in the desert, not astronauts. Anybody?

posted by stupidsexyFlanders to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

It does sound a lot like a Twilight Zone episode, but not one with astronauts. Perhaps we're thinking about King Nine Will Not Return.
posted by icontemplate at 10:55 AM on December 1, 2006

Another possibility is Sole Survivor, a 1970 made for TV movie. I found the movie via wikipedia.
posted by Maastrictian at 11:08 AM on December 1, 2006

I think it's twilight zone... would it be a mix between that and sole survivor?
posted by twistedonion at 11:14 AM on December 1, 2006

damn, beat to it (and I'm usually so crap at these things)
posted by twistedonion at 11:16 AM on December 1, 2006

For certain not this one, but as a point of reference this concept was riffed on in Heavy Metal - bomber full of zombies.
posted by Meatbomb at 11:18 AM on December 1, 2006

It sounds a little like Flight of the Phoenix too.
posted by iconomy at 11:25 AM on December 1, 2006

I was thinking Flight of the Phoenix as well.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:50 AM on December 1, 2006

Hold on I remember a film that wasn't like any of this - did it involve baseball and WWII crewman? Ended as the recovery crew managed to dig up / take away all the corpses but one?

Don't recall the name, but the plot definitely was spooky.
posted by Mutant at 11:55 AM on December 1, 2006

Sounds more like John Ford's The Lost Patrol (1934). Desert tale, no ghosts, no crashed plane...but the film did show Boris Karloff losing his mind and dragging a large cross through the sand.
posted by Smart Dalek at 12:16 PM on December 1, 2006

Sole Survivor involved the crew members who were ghosts waiting for their bodies to be found. There was a scene of them playing baseball.

Flight of the Phoenix is about living survivors of a plane crash building a new plane from the wreckage.
posted by beowulf573 at 12:17 PM on December 1, 2006

*snaps fingers*

I vaugely remember this one. beowulf573 has it. It was a TV movie, with Wil Shatner in it, no less.
posted by Smart Dalek at 12:28 PM on December 1, 2006

Response by poster: The one I was thinking of sounds like Sole Survivor, including the baseball part. The timeframe is right, too. Thanks to all.

AskMeFi > AV Club
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 12:29 PM on December 1, 2006