The Last Flight

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(Disambiguation: The Last Flight is also a 1931 film starring Richard Barthelmess, David Manners, Johnny Mack Brown, and Helen Chandler, a Lost Generation celebration of alcohol involving three young World War I veterans who opt to drink indefinitely and almost continuously in Paris with the vivacious and beautiful woman they've befriended.)

'The Twilight Zone'' original series
Season one (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5)'
Fall 1959 – Summer 1960
List of The Twilight Zone'' episodes
Episodes:
Where Is Everybody?
One for the Angels
Mr. Denton on Doomsday
The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine
Walking Distance
Escape Clause
The Lonely
Time Enough at Last
Perchance to Dream
Judgment Night
And When the Sky Was Opened
What You Need
The Four of Us Are Dying
Third from the Sun
I Shot an Arrow Into the Air
The Hitch-Hiker
The Fever
The Last Flight
The Purple Testament
Elegy
Mirror Image
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
A World of Difference
Long Live Walter Jameson
People Are Alike All Over
Execution
The Big Tall Wish
A Nice Place to Visit
Nightmare as a Child
A Stop at Willoughby
The Chaser
A Passage for Trumpet
Mr. Bevis
The After Hours
The Mighty Casey
A World of His Own

Cast

Synopsis

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Opening narration

Witness Flight Lieutenant William Terrance Decker, Royal Flying Corps, returning from a patrol somewhere over France. The year is 1917. The problem is that the Lieutenant is hopelessly lost. Lieutenant Decker will soon discover that a man can be lost not only in terms of maps and miles, but also in time - and time in this case can be measured in eternities.

Main story

A cowardly World War I pilot (Decker) finds himself in a 1960s airbase after flying through a cloud. As he remembers, he was on patrol with Alexander Mackaye, who was under attack by 7 German aircrafts. Instead of staying to help, Decker flew away into the clouds, leaving Mackaye to die. He learns that Mackaye survived the attack when someone came to help, and he went on to become a hero of World War II. Decker figures that it was he who saved Mackaye, so he escapes to his plane and flies back through the cloud. Later, when Mackaye arrives to inspect the base, he says Decker returned to save him—at the cost of his own life.

Closing narration

Dialogue from a play, Hamlet to Horatio: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Dialogue from a play written long before men took to the sky. There are more things in heaven and earth, and in the sky, than perhaps can be dreamt of. And somewhere in between heaven, the sky, the earth, lies the Twilight Zone.

Trivia

Filmed on location at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, California.
The vintage 1918 Nieuport biplane was both owned and flown by Frank Gifford Tallman, and had previously appeared in many World War I motion pictures.

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