Malini Iyer

Starts and finishes with some astonishing original footage of the engineering marvel that was the Zeppelin "Hindenburg". The middle is all historical circumspection that tries to arrive at precisely what did cause this airship to come to such a conflagrant end. George C. Scott ("Col. Ritter") and Anne Bancroft ("The Countess") lead a cast; some based on real persons, some not, as we leave Frankfurt to head for New York. Once airborne, "Ritter" becomes aware that there may be an attempt to sabotage this symbol of Nazi power by fifth columnists and so we are now in a race against time to save the passengers and crew from this fiery fate... It is a pretty run-of-the-mill thriller; with Bancroft injecting more than a little class to keep the otherwise rather pedestrian plot from crashing far earlier than the ship did. The SFX are actually not too bad, but the dialogue and pace of the whole thing just leave you a little bit cold....