Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Absolutely brilliant

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP is a disaster film with a difference; it opens with Michael Hordern having a frightening dream, or perhaps a premonition, of a plane crash-landing on the north coast of Japan. The film that goes back in time to recount the events of a fateful trip, in which a motley group of passengers find themselves on a seemingly disaster-bound flight. This is a neat thriller which feels much like the FINAL DESTINATION of its day, although better plotted and acted. Michael Redgrave headlines the cast in a typically refined and likable performance, but nobody here puts a foot wrong, really, and all of the assembled actors give strong performances. It's one of those quiet suspense thrillers that nonetheless grips you from beginning to end, so that you're absolutely riveted come the inevitable climax. Another winner from Ealing, in other words.

This film has been undeservedly overshadowed by that other classic British film on the supernatural 'Dead of Night'.Efficiently directed by Leslie Norman, who gets good performances out of all the actors, it is that best of supernatural films, a film about ideas and characters caught up in an increasingly mysterious, ominous and threatening situation rather than a conventional ghost or horror story, or collection of such stories as in Dead of Night'. The scripting is excellent, as it should be from the pen of RC Sheriff who wrote the classic WWI story Journey's End. It is fascinating to learn that the inspiration for the film was an actual premonition recounted by a senior RAF officer Victor Goddard.The true film about the supernatural is my view a film not so much about ghosts or demons but about ideas and philosophical concepts as the characters find themselves locked into a supernatural drama of Fate over which they realise with mounting unease, even fear they have no control. That a dream which was recounted at a party with which they all become familiar - the gradual revelation to each of them is nicely paced - may be presaging the fatal air crash in which they may all perish.Most of the characters are the British at their most famously pragmatic; the Air Marshal (stolidly played by Michael Redgrave, for the most part, but who himself gives a marvellous suggestion of barely controlled hysteria towards the end of the film as he tries to order the captain of the doomed flight to go against the latter's better judgement as to how to handle a crash landing), the pilots, the young lady secretary, the aide to the Air Marshal (played by Denholm Elliott in a nicely judged performance subtly suggesting how his character, as a former Battle of Britain pilot, is suffering from what later would be called post-traumatic stress disorder). Underneath, however, you sense in each of them a backstory in which given sufficient prodding by fate as occurs in this story their characters would inevitably begin to betray doubts as whether to the world which they usually inhabit is quite as they would like to believe. That the British stiff upper lip and lack of imagination has its limits. There is a marvellous saying by the British scientist J.B.S. Haldane I would like to quote here. "I have a suspicion that the world is not only stranger than we conceive but stranger than we can conceive." Alexander Knox is particularly effective as the outwardly rational Civil Servant who is repressing inner demons, possibly created or exacerbated by his time as a POW, which increasingly cause him to feel, as the dream unfolds, that he is hardly in control of his own life. Michael Hordern is excellent value as the dreamer of the dream whose recounting of which at the party, sets the whole plot in motion. Hordern manages to slyly suggest something supernatural about his character, even though he is an officer in the British Navy, something of what they call in mythology 'the trickster spirit'.

Thrilling airplane picture, and I can't think of many other airplane pictures to compare it to. Much better than 'The High And The Mighty"(1954), and "Five Came Back"(1939), and different than "Lost Horizon"(1937). "The Night My Number Came Up" is a compelling and suspenseful film about differing conceptions of fate as presented in a dream - the dream of someone who was not a passenger on the trip.Briefly, a man at a party recounts a dream he had about an airline crash. He is talking to a group who are flying the next day, and some of the travelers are spooked. He then departs and the group discuss his dream; some dismiss it and others show great concern. But during the trip elements of the dream begin to fall into place.The acting is first-rate throughout the cast. The main character is seldom-seen Alexander Knox as a passenger flying for the first time. Stalwart Michael Redgrave is his flying companion, and Denholm Elliot and Sheila Sim lend strong support. The picture has a claustrophobic feel as most of it takes place in the passenger cabin, perhaps increasing the feeling of impending doom. This may be in the picture's favor, as it adds to the tension and heightens the suspense, the way many movies attempt but few succeed the way this one does.

I originally saw this great film not long after it was released in 1955. I remember sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the climax to come and make the prophecy come true. When the climax came I remember heaving a huge sigh of relief, so great was the tension created by the cast and directors. This is the type of film that 'sneaks up on you' because it was not released here as the main attraction (In the days when a black and white film was shown first and I thought it was far better than the film I had gone to see. I have seen it only once since then and it captured my attention just as much then. I wish a film company or TV channel would release it. I would dearly like to obtain a video copy of it as this seems to be the only way I'll ever get to see it again. Ron Sawers