On the Threshold of Space (1956)
They Soar to Glory!... The Flying Scientists of the U.S. Air Force!
Genre : Drama
Runtime : 1H 38M
Director : Robert D. Webb
Synopsis
In the early stages of the space program, Capt. Jim Hollenbeck undergoes any experiment needed to ensure success in the new Air Force branch -- even though he's not required to be a subject in the tests. Always remaining a constant source of support, his wife, Pat, accepts his unwavering commitment to scientific progress. When Maj. Ward Thomas becomes the new head of the program, Hollenbeck must convince him of the necessity of taking the extra steps.
A top US Air Force fighter pilot decides that his call sign of Black Angel means that he's a messenger of God. Freely committing murders as he goes, he steals a nuclear weapon and his plane. Taking a family hostage to help him, he works on bypassing the bomb's security lockouts so he can use it on the most sinful of American cities.
During the Korean War, Italian nurse Virna Lisi falls in love with two American fliers, Tony Curtis and George C. Scott. Lisi marries Curtis after he convinces her that Scott has been killed in a plane crash. She soon discovers Scott is alive, but remains happily married to Curtis until Scott re-enters their lives 14 years later.
Featuring an all-star cast and on-location shooting in Japan, where the story is set, three US Air Force rescue pilots must overcome their personal problems and differences to embark upon a dangerous mission to save raft-bound Japanese survivors from a murderous storm-tossed sea. As they head for their location, the film flashes back to chronicle the pasts of each pilot to make clear their mixed feelings about their upcoming assignment.
A disk jockey goes to Vietnam to work for the Armed Forces Radio Service. While he becomes popular among the troops, his superiors disapprove of his humour.
A chronicle of the original Mercury astronauts in the formation of America's space program: Alan Shepherd, the first American in space; Gus Grissom, the benighted astronaut for whom nothing works out as planned; John Glenn, the straight-arrow 'boy scout' of the bunch who was the first American to orbit the earth; and the remaining pilots: Deke Slayton, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, and Gordon Cooper.
The men of Bravo Company are facing a battle that's all uphill… up Hamburger Hill. Fourteen war-weary soldiers are battling for a mud-covered mound of earth so named because it chews up soldiers like chopped meat. They are fighting for their country, their fellow soldiers and their lives. War is hell, but this is worse. Hamburger Hill tells it the way it was, the way it really was. It's a raw, gritty and totally unrelenting dramatic depiction of one of the fiercest battles of America's bloodiest war. This happened. Hamburger Hill - war at its worst, men at their best.
When Doug's father, an Air Force Pilot, is shot down by MiGs belonging to a radical Middle Eastern state, no one seems able to get him out. Doug finds Chappy, an Air Force Colonel who is intrigued by the idea of sending in two fighters piloted by himself and Doug to rescue Doug's father after bombing the MiG base.
A 1939 test pilot asks his best friend to use him as a guinea pig for a cryogenics experiment. Daniel McCormick wants to be frozen for a year so that he doesn't have to watch his love lying in a coma. The next thing Daniel knows is that he's been awoken in 1992.
Chappy discovers a drug-smuggling scheme at his own air base. It turns out that the lives of some village people in Peru are at stake, and he decides to fly there with ancient airplanes and friends to free them.
The lifelong friendship between Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker is put to the ultimate test when the two ace fighter pilots become entangled in a love triangle with beautiful Naval nurse Evelyn Johnson. But the rivalry between the friends-turned-foes is immediately put on hold when they find themselves at the center of Japan's devastating attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
In October 1991, a confluence of weather conditions combined to form a killer storm in the North Atlantic. Caught in the storm was the sword-fishing boat Andrea Gail.
Chappy Sinclair is called to gather together a mixed Soviet/U.S. strike force that will perform a surgical strike on a massively defended nuclear missile site in the Middle East. Chappy finds that getting the Soviet and U.S. Pilots to cooperate is only the most minor of his problems as he discovers someone in the Pentagon is actively sabotaging his mission.
The "Memphis Belle" is a World War II bomber, piloted by a young crew on dangerous bombing raids into Europe. The crew only have to make one more bombing raid before they have finished their duty and can go home. In the briefing before their last flight, the crew discover that the target for the day is Dresden, a heavily-defended city that invariably causes many Allied casualties
A passenger train has been hijacked by an electronics expert and turned into an untraceable command center for a weapons satellite. He has planned to blow up Washington DC and only one man can stop him, former Navy SEAL Casey Ryback.
A U.S. Army colonel alerts the president of a planned military coup against him.
An American airbase in Canada provokes resentment from the nearby residents after fallout from nuclear experiments at the base are blamed for a recent spate of disappearances. A captain from the airbase is assigned to investigate, and begins to suspect that an elderly British scientist who lives near the base and conducts research in the field of mind over matter knows more than he is letting on..
While Chappy Sinclair is saddled with a bunch of misfits and delinquents for his flight school, he turns to his protégé Doug Masters to assist him in rounding them into shape for an important competition. During their training, they stumble upon a group of subversive air force officers who are dealing in toxic waste as a sideline.
In the early days of daylight bombing raids over Germany, General Frank Savage must take command of a 'hard luck' bomber group. Much of the story deals with his struggle to whip his group into a disciplined fighting unit in spite of heavy losses, and withering attacks by German fighters over their targets.
The crew of an Air Force bomber arrives in Pearl Harbor in the aftermath of the Japanese attack and is sent on to Manila to help with the defense of the Philippines.
During World War II, a shot-down American pilot and a marooned Japanese navy captain find themselves stranded on the same small uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean.