James Stewart's plane crashes in the desert and when, after days in the sweltering heat, you think he might take a juicy bite out of Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch or Hardy Kruger to get some protein, a plan is hatched to build a smaller plane out of the wreckage. This all-star survivalist epic has all the expected ingredients and more - Attenborough's nerves are shattered, Kruger is the embodiment of Germanic efficiency, Finch is stiff-upper-lipped, Stewart is Charles Lindbergh with a wing down, and all of them sweat and grow beards with élan. Director Robert Aldrich keeps things boiling for perhaps longer than is necessary but he still delivers a genuinely exciting climax.

A cargo aircraft crashes in a sandstorm in the Sahara with less than a dozen men on board. One of the passengers is an airplane designer who comes up with the idea of ripping off the undamaged wing and using it as the basis for a replacement aircraft they need to build before their food and water run out.