"These guys are either drunk or crazy!"

I just watched the original version of The Flight of the Phoenix.

I haven't even seen the new version and I already know it is a shameful piece of crap. Its trailer is filled with threatening nomads, explosions, and lots of sexy Hollywood people made inexplicably sexier by dehydration and exposure. The original movie involves a bunch of increasingly scruffy and sunburned men, facing certain death, who are just trying to survive by grasping any hope they can find. And it worked. The movie really worked.

It has one of the most hilarious/horrifying twists I have ever seen. It's one of those Twilight Zone moments in which they stare in dawning, disbelieving horror while a small voice in their mind begins to laugh hysterically. There are moments when you actually are not sure that they are going to make it. It was no honeyed up, glitzy Hollywood survivor picture. It was harsh. And it worked.

And now you know.