“This is a UFO,” says a disembodied voice at the beginning of The Disappearance of Flight 412. “It was photographed at Santa Catalina Island in April 1966.” A blurry colour image appears on the screen and an arrow points at something in the middle. It could be a flying saucer (as no one seems to call them any more).
The Disappearance of Flight 412 then cuts to archive footage of various interviewees saying they saw something similar. As well as the talking heads there’s a montage of photographs, all blurry, none conclusive, of objects that might be a full-sized alien spacecraft or a dinner plate thrown frisbee-like into the sky. The blurriness adds an edge of authenticity but also bolsters the aura of doubt.
After all that preamble, you’d be right to expect a film about a flying saucer, alien spaceships, UFOs, or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (as no one back then called them). But it soon turns out that something else is playing out.
An air crew on test flight 412, operating out of 458 Radar Division, is sent on a routine flight to tweak a few experiments. While they’re up there three blips appear on their radar moving fast. Back at base the blips have been seen too and two combat jets are scrambled to take a look. It’s those jets that disappear, not Flight 412. And suddenly, just like that. No explosion, no debris. Then the three blips execute an impossible 90 degree turn and they’re gone too.
The film itself appears at this point. It’s not about the sighting of the unexplained aircraft, or the disappearance of the jets, but the debriefing of the men who might or might not have witnessed something up there, by a mysterious government intelligence unit headed by a guy in shades called Trottman. Whisking the crew away to an abandoned air base in the desert, Trottman and his team set about them, using a variety of gaslighting techniques to suggest they either saw nothing at all, or what they did see has a rational explanation.
Back at 458 Radar Division, meanwhile, commanding officer Colonel Pete Moore wants to know what happened to his men and sets off on an investigative jag of his own, trying to get to the bottom of their disappearance.
It’s 1974 and though this is a film made for TV – the 72 minutes would have been padded out to about 90 with adverts – we’re in prime conspiracy-thriller territory, in the heart of the 1970s conspiracy-thriller era.
Three key players give it some shape. David Soul as the aircrew leader, not yet famous back then as the star of Starsky and Hutch, but giving good charisma as flight captain Roy Bishop. A menacingly effective Guy Stockwell plays the faintly malevolent Lieutenant Colonel Trottman, leader of the investigators. Glenn Ford plays Colonel Moore, upstanding, principled, the straight arrow wanting answers.
It does not all stand up. Why are the air crew so against being debriefed? What don’t they understand about following orders? What don’t they get about some things being above their grade? “National security” is the answer Trottman trots out when the crew’s questions back at him get awkward. Keen to present the air crew as regular guys, the film goes too far in that direction – the men come across as ill-disciplined. They’re more like a team of volunteer firefighters than a military elite.
Ford also isn’t initially where he should be mentally. Ill at ease at being in a TV movie? Maybe, but eventually he relaxes into the role and starts to exert himself. Affable Captain Moore becomes authoritative, which is useful because eventually he’s going to have a showdown with Lt Col Trottman.
The irony here is that this perfectly competent conspiracy thriller about government cover-ups – the public must not know! – is made with full government buy-in. Two USAF bases were used. You can gripe about various details if you like – stock footage showing the wrong planes, for example – but it has brisk direction from Jud Taylor on its side, and its procedural logic gives it forward thrust. Morton Stevens’s weighty score and some switchback editing by Carroll Sax disguise just how cheap and studio-bound it all is. It’s better than you might expect.
The Disappearance of Flight 412 – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2025
