This actually was quite an effective little chiller- until the end

A lot of negative ink has been hurled at this movie through the years and while some of the criticism IS justified, much of it is not, for at least the first three quarters of the movie anyway. From the beginning to about the middle of "Horror at 37,000 Ft" is nothing short of brilliant. Here we have the perfect atmosphere of a trans-Atlantic night flight with eerie, unseen forces that make very terrifying sounds. One sounds like a giant cricket, while the companion noise sounds like sound waves that get higher and higher until they make one cringe--much like fingernails dragged across a chalkboard. What makes it more terrifying is that you don't SEE the monsters, and that is what terrifies people the most in a film--the monster, alien, or ghost that you don't see at first. The viewer is left to wondering "My God. What could the creatures that are trying to break out of the silver crate in the cargo hold, making all those terrifying sounds, look like? I often tried to picture the cricket sounding creature to look like the thing from the "Alien" movies, with glowing yellow eyes and covered with the chocolate-like substance that oozed through the floor of the plane in the film. This I felt was VERY effective and the director did a good job in creating this type of chilling atmosphere. Also the acting was excellent, especially on the part of the orange-haired actress. When she was carrying the doll to the back of the plane in order to appease the monsters that were making the "cricket" and "sound wave" noises, SHE LOOKED TERRIFIED. This, I felt was perhaps the most convincing performance of the entire film.
However, with how many good points this film did contain, towards the end is where I felt the greatest disappointment and the whole movie nearly went down in flames (no pun intended). First, the acting went from convincing to absolutely hokey. Also, when the floor is ripping up, you can see the STRINGS!! I said to myself, "What on earth happened here? They had such a good thing going and now we are running into stereotypical 70's shlock. It was like the directors and producers had a grenade in their hand that detonated just before they got a chance to throw it." Well, I guess that it was good as it was going to get and the first part of the film was nearly worth the price of admission and I remember this film scaring the living daylights out of me when I saw it as a child. So, all-in-all, not a complete, total loss, but still, could have been a lot better at the end. So, while this is actually one of my favorite movies of all time, I still must say that have to agree with the ones on this site who gave this movie negative ratings, at least as far as the ENDING of the movie goes. Also, the film was like a cross between "Alien" and "Poltergeist" and one cannot help to wonder whether both Ridley Scott and Steven Speilberg got their ideas from "Horror at 37,000 Ft" nearly 10 years later. Another possible redeeming quality of this film, I suppose.