THE MOVIE

The Disappearance of Flight 412

Colonel Pete Moore (Glenn Ford) is commander of the Whitney Radar Test Group, which has been experiencing electrical difficulties aboard its aircraft. To ferret out the problem, he sends a four-man crew on Flight 412. Shortly into the test, the jet picks up three blips on radar, and subsequently, two fighters scramble and mysteriously disappear. At this point, Flight 412 is monitored and forced to land by Digger Control, a top-level, military intelligence group that debunks UFO information. The intrepid colonel, kept in the dark about his crew, decides to investigate the matter himself.

The Disappearance of Flight 412 was shot at Oxnard Air Force Base and Edwards Air Force Base. The film starts out with stock black-and-white clips of UFOs in flight and various individuals reporting sightings in newsreel style, with narrator voice-overs, to set the mood. However, the remainder of the film (in color) deals only briefly with the fictitious UFO encounter by the aircrew, focusing instead on their ordeal as they undergo an arduous debriefing and brainwashing (perhaps better described as 'gaslighting') at the hands of their somewhat mysterious captors. It uses on-screen time stamp titles to lend the feeling of a documentary, similar to the 1971 film The Andromeda Strain.

Glenn Ford as Colonel Pete Moore

Bradford Dillman as Major Mike Dunning

David Soul as Captain Roy Bishop

Robert F. Lyons as Captain Cliff Riggs

Guy Stockwell as Lieutenant Colonel Trottman

Greg Mullavey as Lieutenant Tony Podryski

Kent Smith as General Enright

Stanley Bennett Clay as 2nd Lieutenant Ferguson (credited as Stanley Clay)

Jonathan Goldsmith as Smith (credited as Jonathan Lippe)

Jack Ging as Green

Ken Kercheval as White

Edward Winter as Mr. Cheer