Rich359 Just like another beautifully mounted, expensive, silly flop, The Hindenburg reminds me a lot of "Heavens Gate" made five years later. Just like Michael Ciminos film, Robert Wise was obsessed with recreating the era, props, models to exacting standards, unfortunately exacting standards were not used on the plots. Both films suffer with a poor script, which renders all their technical expertise and budget nearly worthless. Also, just like Heavens Gate, there are problems hearing important dialogue in the ships interior over the hum of the aircraft. In Heavens Gate is was the train station. Both films miniature plots can't hold up to the production, and seem silly, like watching a TV movie in IMAX. And really, would a sober minded character like George C Scott's neglect to factor in the possibility of a late landing?

TurboarrowIII I think this is a reasonable film.It goes down the sabotage route. I found it to be believable. George C Scott isn't too bad but I thought Roy Thinnes, best known for his role in The Invaders, here playing a typically nasty SS man was better.It mixes actual footage of the disaster with modern film and this doesn't look too great because some is black and white while the rest is in colour. It helps to convey the enormity of what happened though and it must have been terrifying for all those caught up in it. It seems like a bit of a miracle that there were any survivors.William Atherton plays the saboteur who planted the fatal bomb shown as the cause in the film. He was quite convincing although better later on in Ghostbusters I think.It does drag a bit in places but overall I found this film reasonably exciting although tension isn't that high because the eventual outcome is already known.

JoeB131 But they did that to slip in actual footage of the Hindenburg blowing up into the cheaply done special effects. Honestly, it would just have been better to simulate actually blowing up the ship in miniature. (They'd probably do it in CGI Today.) Okay, the "Melodrama" here is that a Luftwaffe officer played by George C. Scott is trying to uncover a plot to destroy the Hindenburg. Lots of really good actors make up the suspect list, some of whom were past their prime (Burgess Meredith, Anne Bancroft) others you hadn't heard of yet. (Roy Thinnes, Rene Auberjonis.) What probably got this greenlighted was it was the early 70's, and they had all sorts of disaster movies- Earthquake, Airport, Towering Inferno, Poseiden Adventure - so why not a dirigible? Get an ensemble cast of b-list actors and whether they survive or not is up to their q-score.I would be remiss if I didn't point out the other factor here. All the characters we are supposed to sympathize with hate the Nazis. The ones we don't think Hitler was the best thing since sliced bread. Again, this is kind of typical for a movie where the plot is someone sabotaging the ship, I guess, but it's not really credible. It's really a lot of backtracking.

Robert J. Maxwell There are some nice scenes of flight in the giant German zeppelin, The Hindenburg. The 1930s were a period of experimentation with zeppelins for various purposes. Smaller versions, called blimps, are still used to spot drug smugglers and illegal immigrants by TV cameras.They seem like a nice way to get from one place to another by air, don't they? The travel slowly, placidly even, and low enough so that you can savor all the features of the landscape you're flying over.The problem was that they kept falling apart in storms, collapsing for unexplained reasons, or blowing up, like the Hindenburg. In this case the problem was the gas used to provide buoyancy. Hydrogen gas is the lightest element there is, and the first to be created after the Big Bang. After 1937 it was replaced by helium, the second lightest element with an atomic number of 2, and inert. There's a Big Bang in this movie too but it's not caused by God but rather by a bomb hidden aboard the zeppelin by an anti-Nazi character (Atherton), assisted by George C. Scott. The point is to destroy spectacularly the pride of Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, there is a delay in landing and the bomb goes off prematurely, before the passengers and crew can dis-zeppelin. But, not to worry. The two monstrous little kids who must always be among the passengers of jeopardized flying machines survive. So does the stupid dog. (I think) George C. Scott doesn't make it and it's too bad because his intentions are of the best, he's polite and generous, and he plays the role of the disillusioned Nazi in a subdued fashion. Atherton doesn't make it either but I'm not sure he really wanted to. "The Countess" played by Anne Bancroft survives, her kickshaws intact, and that's good because she's an intelligent and striking actress, now that she's gotten past her early roles as a sexpot or gorilla bait. What a wide and welcoming smile she has, and sexy too.So it's May, 1937, and the bloated thing arrives at the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey, and bursts into flame just as it's being moored. The cinematic presentation must have given director Robert Wise a problem. Video footage of the explosion and collapse is widely available. Everybody has seen it. That makes it difficult to create in model form, and there are no CGIs in 1975. So Wise chops the newsreel footage up into sections, some magnified, of this magnificent disaster. Each section of newsreel lasts a few seconds and stops on a freeze frame. Then, for a minute or so, we cut to the passengers that we've come to know, scrambling desperately for their lives amid the flaming, falling wreckage. Then back to another few seconds of the original news footage. Then back to the passengers for a minute or so. What took only about a minute of real time is stretched out to about ten minutes on the screen.The Nazi vs. anti-Nazi plot is to be expected. The other back stories are routine, including the shell of a romance between Scott and Bancroft. More interesting are the scenes inside the airship -- the cat walks, the gas balloons, a dangerous extra-vehicle trip to repair a rip in the outer canvas. And then there are the picturesque ice bergs near Newfoundland, the smokestacks of New York City, and snotty remarks about New Jersey, where I was born, being a land of moonshiners. I'm here to tell you that there were no moonshiners in New Jersey in 1937, just truck farmers growing tomatoes and other vegetables to be sold to the corrupt and "sophisiticated" urbanites of New York City. I suspect the Hindenburg chose to blow up where it did because Manhattan was simply not GOOD enough for it to happen there. Better for it to provide an unforgettable spectacle for those God-fearing sons of the soil living in the Garden State.