Stinker Madness - The Bad Movie Podcast

If you’re in the mood for a mid-altitude crisis that checks every air disaster box without ever pushing the emergency slide of insanity, Rough Air: Danger on Flight 534 is the in-flight entertainment you never asked for—but might not mind watching with a bag of stale pretzels. This 2001 made-for-TV thriller stars Eric Roberts, who delivers one of the most aggressively disinterested performances in a movie about a plummeting death tube ever recorded. And yet, somehow, the film still finds a way to stay airborne as an enjoyable slice of light turbulence TV cheese. The plot is your standard disaster blueprint: a disgraced pilot (Roberts) is pulled out of aviation exile to take over a flight after the captain suffers a sudden heart attack mid-flight. Cue the typical cabin drama: nervous passengers, a weepy stewardess, shaky controls, a storm system on the radar, and the always-welcome fuel crisis. But instead of going full barrel roll into each disaster trope, the film kind of… brushes up against them. It starts