Made at the apex of disaster movies' popularity, director Robert Wise's thriller fictionalizes the events leading up to the fiery 1937 zeppelin crash. When German intelligence officer Col. Franz Ritter (George C. Scott) boards the doomed blimp to foil a conspiracy to blow it up, he has a long list of suspects, including an entrepreneur (Gig Young), a singer (Roy Thinnes), a countess (Anne Bancroft) and a host of other shady characters.