In this ultra-low budget exploitation movie, a motley group of busy city folks charter a small plane to take them to their pressing engagements. Little do they know that a detour into backwoods craziness awaits.
Nick Baskin (Dan Pinto) works for the tiny Beaver Aviation company and needs cash to pay his alimony, so he agrees to take a cross-section of impatient passengers on an unscheduled flight: Obnoxious lawyer Phil Dougan (John Mouganis); Lauren Taylor (Dawn Lambing), who's about to marry a rich man; an orphaned teenager on his way to boarding school (Michael McGurk); Dr. Sandy Cooper (Harold Surratt); and Cooley (A.E. Vea), whom no-one realizes is an escaped. But something goes wrong with the plane somewhere around the Tennessee/North Carolina border, and Baskin is forced to make a crash landing. Once on the ground, they're kidnapped by a backwoods clan lead by religious fanatic Amos Grum (Danny Nelson), who's in cahoots with a crooked politician who's taking kickbacks from corporate creeps in return for letting them rape the environment. After a week, Baskin's cheapskate boss, Linder (Michael R. Aubele), calls off the search, but loyal mechanic Sam (Pat Morita) and a pair of intrepid pilots from the Civil Air Patrol (Sabrina Cowan, Rebecca Deluca) won't give up. Can Baskin and his passengers hold out long enough to let the outside world know they're still alive?
A Pittsburgh-area regional production, this low-budget survival tale alternates between tedious scenes of Sam arguing with Linder and Baskin's group trying to escape Grum's sub-HILLS HAVE EYES backwoods family. Neither story thread is the slightest bit interesting. The cinematographer project's was Bill Hinzman, who shambled to immortality as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD's (1968) cemetery zombie. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh