The New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther called Zero Hour! an "exciting contemplation of a frightening adventure in the skies" based on a "good terse script ... Dana Andrews as the hero and Sterling Hayden as the captain are first-rate in these roles, keeping them hard and unrelenting."[7] Time magazine, however, called the script a "bloopy inflation of a 1956 television show" and said its "moral struggle comes off fairly well, but the general situation is as patently contrived as one of Walter Mitty's daydreams."[8]
In 1971, the film was remade as a made-for-television movie, Terror in the Sky, a Movie of the Week special with Doug McClure in the Ted Stryker role (renamed George Spencer, as in the original).[9] Zero Hour! was also used as the basis for the parody film Airplane! (1980). [10]
Screenplay writer Hailey went on to write the popular 1968 novel Airport, which revisited the air disaster genre and led to a film franchise that was also spoofed by Airplane! and its own sequel.
