Movies - TV
The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling Accidentally Inspired Real Bomb Threats
By BEN PEARSON
"The Twilight Zone" creator Rod Serling wrote a screenplay for a 1966 TV movie called "The Doomsday Flight" that saw a mentally disturbed mechanic planting a bomb on an airliner.
The film did well for NBC, pulling in the second-highest ratings of the 1966-67 season. However, it also inspired multiple real-life bomb threats.
Author Marc Scott Zicree said that after the premiere, "TWA, Eastern, American, Pan Am, and Northwest Airlines all received similar threats" — eight threats in six days.
"I wish to Christ I had written a stagecoach drama starring John Wayne instead," a devastated Serling told reporters in the aftermath of the threats. "I wish I'd never been born."
The bomb threats didn't stop there. In the summer of 1971, almost five years after the film aired, the Federal Aviation Administration asked stations to stop playing the movie.
Of the 500 who received the letter, only 20 responded that they would stop showing the film, but the film's distributor eventually removed it from TV.