The Langoliers (1995) (TV)

Director:

Tom Holland

Writers (WGA):

Stephen King (novel)
Tom Holland (teleplay)

Release Date:

14 May 1995 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy | Horror | Mystery | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline:

Prepare yourself for the flight of your life!

Plot:

Most of the passengers on an airplane disappear, and the remainder land the plane in a mysteriously barren airport.

Plot Keywords:

Airplane | Businessman | Airport | Time Warp | Aviation

Awards:

Nominated for Primetime Emmy. Another 2 nominations

Cast

Patricia Wettig	...	Laurel Stevenson
Dean Stockwell	...	Bob Jenkins
David Morse	...	Captain Brian Engle
Mark Lindsay Chapman	...	Nick Hopewell
Frankie Faison	...	Don Gaffney
Baxter Harris	...	Rudy Warwick
Kimber Riddle	...	Bethany Simms
Christopher Collet	...	Albert Kaussner
Kate Maberly	...	Dinah Catherine Bellman
Bronson Pinchot	...	Craig Toomey
Tom Holland	...	Harker
Julie Arnold Lisnet	...	Aunt Vicki
Michael Louden	...	Richard Logan
Kymberly Dakin	...	Doris Heartman
David Forrester	...	Danny Keene

Also Known As:

Stephen King's The Langoliers (USA) (complete title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for violence and some sci-fi terror.

Runtime:

180 min | 60 min (3 episodes)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Ultra Stereo

Certification:

Netherlands:16 | Finland:K-16 | Australia:M | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | USA:PG-13 | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Bangor International Airport - 287 Godfrey Boulevard, Bangor, Maine, USA

Company:

Laurel Entertainment Inc.

Trivia:

In the scene were Craig Toomey hallucinates that he is in a board meeting on the runway, the man at the head of the table asking him how much money he has made for the company is Stephen King.

Goofs:

Continuity: The distance from the plane to the terminal decreases for one shot.

Quotes:

Bob Jenkins: Let's say that every now and then a hole appears in the stream of time. Not a time-warm. A rip. A time rip. A rip in the central fabric.
Don Gaffney: That's the craziest thing I ever heard of!
Craig Toomy: Amen!
Bob Jenkins: Mr. Gaffney, the situation we're in right now, this is crazy. So let's say that such rips do occur every now and then. It would be similar to rare weather phenomenons that are reported. Upside-down tornadoes, circular rainbows, daytime starlight.
Captain Brian Engle: The aurora borealis.
Bob Jenkins: [Bob looks to Brian in surprise] What?
Captain Brian Engle: There was an aurora borealis over the Mojavi Desert when we left LAX. We were supposed to fly right into it.
[...]

Movie Connections:

References Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Bizarre King story falters from poor execution

It's hard to rate this movie. The movie has moments of creative genius, others with banal stupidity. Some passengers on an overnight red eye flight awaken to discover most of their fellow passengers inexplicably missing, as if whisked away in some sort of biblical rapture.

This is a delightfully creepy mystery, as is the abandoned airport where the plane lands, but the film bogs down in its irrationally slow reveal of the facts. The director compacts a 90-minute script into hours and hours of excessive subplots. Some of these are necessary for character development, (since the movie focuses on how these different personalities react to the situation), but the script burdens itself with a lot of clutter. Some of the actors overact, others underact. I blame the weak direction, as even David Morse seems awkward at times.

Worst is the inconsistency of the menacing attackers. It takes them a zillion years to cut through some fields--you see objects collapse in the distance, but you see this same "approaching unseen monster" shot again and again. Then, when the things do emerge, they race around at a hundred miles an hour. The nature of how they go about annihilating their targets follows no logical pattern. The things are so bizarre looking they are both funny and scary, so you don't know whether you're supposed to laugh or not. The "corruptions of the time stream" are not consistent, either. It's as if the script made up rules how this would work, and then changed those rules whenever it felt like it.

Even though some of the effects are confusing, others are downright cool. I love the portal; it was ethereal yet sinister at the same time. It evokes the intended curiosity: what lies beyond it? Overall, the movie is so weird that it holds your interest, but don't expect any sane continuity. If you look for sound thought in this one, you'll wind up as nuts as the movie is.