Tale of terror and tension

Press, 27 June 1983, Page 16

Tale of terror and tension

The fifteenth reunion of Sierra University’s class of 1965 brings together classmates who were together in the happy days of college life, in “Hanging By A Thread,” a new two-part story beginning on One tomorrow night. The gala is the work of Alan Durant, who has arranged the fete to be held atop a mountain he owns, and which is reached by the cable car company he also owns. But the party does not begin. Several of the celebrants are trapped in the cable car when lightning strikes it, leaving them dangling thousands of feet above jagged mountain outcroppings. In the cable car are Durant; Ellen Craig, who has agreed to marry him; Paul Craig, her ex-husband; their son Tommy; the Graingers, Sue and Jim; and Anita and Billy Minton. Desperate, harrowing hours follow. Facing death, each of the group relives a floodtide of times past — some sad, some happy. Most carry a common secret, which, when revealed, causes each person to be never the same again. Bert Convy stars as Alan Durant with Donna Mills as Ellen Craig; Sam Groom as

Paul Craig; Michael Sharrett as Tommy; Patty Duke Astin as Sue Grainger; Burr Deßenning as Jim Grainger, Joyce Bulifant as Anita Minton and Oliver Clark as Billy Minton. Realism has always been the key to the success of an Irwin Allen film, says TVNZ. It was believable when he tipped over an ocean liner in his “Poseidon Adventure," audiences the world over found the credibility breathtaking when he put the torch to a 133-storey skyscraper in his “Towering Inferno.” In “Hanging By A Thread,” Allen takes his cameras to the towering peak of Mt San Jacinto, near Palm Springs in California, to tell the tale of terror and tension experienced by a group of passengers on a disabled mountain tram. Here, amidst the grandeur of the 10,801 ft peak in Wilderness State Park, is the largest double-revers-ible passenger-carrying tramway in the world. Cable cars transport passenEfrom Valley Station in o Canyon, 2643 ft above sea level, to Mountain Station on the eastern escarpment of Long Valley, at an elevation of 8516 ft. Cameras were mounted on top of and within the cable car to film the story

of terrified people in dire crisis. Because Allen believed audiences should feel the stark terror of people helplessly dangling thousands of feet above jagged rocks in the valley below, he added cameras to the rooftop of an adjacent tram car on the return cable to photograph the action tak-

ing place in the car in the film. As a result, says TVNZ, Allen has managed to capture some of the most breathtaking sequences ever filmed.