Best movies like Race for the Yankee Zephyr

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A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Race for the Yankee Zephyr Starring Ken Wahl, Lesley Ann Warren, Donald Pleasence, George Peppard, and more. If you liked Race for the Yankee Zephyr then you may also like: Sasquatch, Vigil, Narrow Margin, Never Say Die, Aces High and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

In a lake high in the mountains of New Zealand hunter Gibbie Gibson discovers a plane wreck from WW2. When he tells it around, a gang of crooks follows and threatens him and his daughter, because they know there are 50 million dollars in the wreck. Helicopter pilot Barney helps Gibbie against them, risking his life thereby.

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Know any good movies to watch like Race for the Yankee Zephyr 1981. With a similar plot or stoyline. Suggest it.

Sasquatch

Harlan Knowles, billionaire and president of Bio-Comp Industries heads up a team of experts in a quest to locate a company plane that disappeared over the remote forests of the Pacific Northwest. Knowles is obsessed with finding the plane and rescuing his daughter, who was one of its passengers. The assembled team includes local guide Clayton Tyne, wilderness expert/author Winston Burg and Marla Lawson. Soon, the team begins to suspect that Knowles' main objective is actually to recover the prototype of a DNA testing machine called the Huxley Project, which his company has spent years and millions of dollars developing.

Vigil

Toss lives on a sheep farm with her father in New Zealand. When Toss's father dies in an accident, Ethan, an itinerant hunter, wanders onto the family farm and is given a job by her grandfather. Toss's fairly innocent relationship with Ethan is severed when he forms a relationship with her mother.

Narrow Margin

An L.A. District Attorney attempts to take an unwilling murder witness back to the United States to testify against a top-level mob boss. Frantically attempting to escape two deadly hitmen sent to silence her, they board a Vancouver-bound train only to discover that the killers are onboard with them. For the next 20 hours, as the train hurls through the beautiful but isolated Canadian wilderness, a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues in which their ability to tell friend from foe is a matter of life and death.

Never Say Die

Investigative journalist Alf Winters (Morrison), meets his American girlfriend, Melissa Jones (Eilbacher), at Auckland airport. As they park outside Alf's house, it explodes. It is soon apparent that persons unknown want them dead, but the police are either skeptical or in the pay of those responsible. They play hide and seek around New Zealand with the stalkers, all the while coping with car chases, plane crashes, bullets and explosions.

Aces High

The first World War is in its third year and aerial combat above the Western Front is consuming the nation's favored children at an appalling rate. By early 1917, the average life-span of a British pilot is less than a fortnight. Such losses place a fearsome strain on Gresham, commanding officer of the squadron. Aces High recreates the early days of the Royal Flying Corps with some magnificently staged aerial battles, and sensitive direction presents a moving portrayal of the futilities of war.

Alaska

Jake Barnes and his two kids, Sean and Jessie, have moved to Alaska after his wife died. He is a former airline pilot now delivering toilet paper across the mountains. During an emergency delivery in a storm his plane goes down somewhere in the mountains. Annoyed that the authorities aren't doing enough, Jessie and Sean set out on an adventure to find their father with the help of a polar bear which they have saved from a ferocious poacher. Conflict ensues.

Alive

The amazing, true story of a Uruguayan rugby team's plane that crashed in the middle of the Andes mountains, and their immense will to survive and pull through alive, forced to do anything and everything they could to stay alive on meager rations and through the freezing cold.

Attack Force Z

Tim Burstall directs then-up-and-comers Mel Gibson and Sam Neill in this action-packed Cannes Film Festival selection about the grim realities of World War II, a gritty drama based on actual events. Sent to rescue survivors from the site of a plane crash in the South Pacific, Capt. P.G. Kelly (Gibson) and his elite squad of Australian commandos must keep tabs on a defecting Japanese official who could hold the secret to peace.

The Aviator

A 1920s mail pilot and a rich man's daughter crash-land on a mountain full of hungry wolves.

Birds of Prey

Harry Walker, a former military pilot, works as a helicopter pilot and traffic reporter for a Salt Lake City radio station. One day while working he observes a bank robbery in progress and the kidnapping of a young woman who worked at the bank. Harry goes into pursuit which leads to an exciting conclusion.

Cliffhanger

A year after losing his friend in a tragic 4,000-foot fall, former ranger Gabe Walker and his partner, Hal, are called to return to the same peak to rescue a group of stranded climbers, only to learn the climbers are actually thieving hijackers who are looking for boxes full of money.

Blood Money

Three friends on a wilderness excursion must outrun a white collar criminal hellbent on retrieving his cash, but soon their greed turns them against each other. A modern re-telling of Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

The Cure

When a young female scientist discovers that the pharmaceutical company she works for had developed a cure for cancer years earlier, she attempts to release it to the world. Knowing that they make more money from chemotherapy drugs than the cure, the company does everything it can to stop her.

Flight of the Phoenix

When an oil rig in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia proves unproductive, an aircraft crew are sent to shut the operation down and fly them out. On the flight out over the desert on the way to Beijing, Capt. Frank Towns and co-pilot A.J. are unable to keep their cargo plane, a C-119 Flying Boxcar, in the air when a violent sandstorm strikes. Crash-landing in a remote uncharted part of the desert, the two pilots and their passengers -- a crew of oil workers and a drifter -- must work together to survive by rebuilding the aircraft. Soon, low supplies and a band of merciless smugglers add even greater urgency to their task.

Fire Birds

A joint task force operation between the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Army has been formed to dismantle one of the largest drug cartels operating in South America. Multiple attempts to assault the cartel's mountainous compound have been thwarted by a Scorpion-attack helicopter piloted by a cartel leader, Eric Stoller (Bert Rhine). After having several aircraft shot down, most notably a pair of UH–60 Black Hawks and their AH–1 Cobra escorts, the army turns to the new AH–64 Apache attack helicopter, which can match its enemies' maneuverability and firepower.

Fortress

When the commander of the crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber is killed in action in a raid over Sicily in 1943, his replacement, a young, naive pilot struggles to be accepted by the plane's already tight-knit Irish American crew.

Shadow in the Cloud

A WWII pilot traveling with top secret documents on a B-17 Flying Fortress encounters an evil presence on board the flight.

High Road to China

A biplane pilot is saddled with a spoiled industrialist's daughter on a search for her missing father through Asia that eventually involves them in a struggle against a Chinese warlord.

Sky Pirates

Air force Lieutenant Harris starts for a flight to Boa Boa, on board Reverend Mitchell with a box containing a part of a top-secret extraterrestrial key. They get lost in a supernatural storm and find themselves after an emergency landing in kind of a Bermuda triangle, 5,000 miles off their course. Home again, no one believes Harris' story, and his crew suspiciously denies it too. Harris is thrown in jail, but manages to escape. Together with Mitchell's daughter he seeks the lost part of the key and its secret.

The Mountain

Selfish Chris Teller pressures his older brother, a retired climber, to accompany him on a treacherous Alpine climb to loot the bodies of plane crash victims.

Sands of the Kalahari

A diverse group of individuals struggle to survive in the Kalahari desert after their passenger plane crashes.

The Survivor

When a 747 crashes shortly after take-off, the sole survivor is the pilot. Virtually unhurt, he and the investigators look for the answers to the disaster. Meanwhile mysterious deaths occur in the community and only a psychic, in touch with the supernatural, can help the pilot unravel the mystery surrounding the doomed plane.

Mother Lode

A couple of youngish adventurers go into the wilderness of British Columbia in search of a lost colleague. Their plane crashes and they find themselves at the mercy of a crazed old Scottish miner, who has lived in isolation for many decades searching the mountain caves for a chamber of long lost gold. He is prepared to do anything - including murder - to keep his gold for himself.

Airborne

A gang of thieves break into a top secret government research centre and steal a deadly virus. Mach 1, a top secret special operations team, is called in to recover it. The team, lead by Commander Bill McNeil (Steve Guttenberg), boards the thieves' plane midflight and recovers the virus. When two members of the team are subsequently murdered, McNeil suspects that the thieves might have inside help. In an attempt to track down who was responsible, the team steals the virus in a hope that the thieves will come after them.

Hell in the Heavens

During World War I, an American pilot vows to bring down the German ace responsible for his friend's death.

The Crowded Sky

When Navy pilot Dale Heath takes off, he doesn't expect his navigational equipment to fail and must adapt when it goes out along with his radio. Heading straight for a commercial jet piloted by Dick Barnett, whose plane is full of passengers, Heath can't tell which way to turn in order to avoid a catastrophe.

A Bullet Is Waiting

A plane carrying a sheriff and a man indicted for manslaughter is wrecked on a lonely California beach and the prisoner manages to escape, after a struggle, only to be taken in hand by the female manager of a remote sheep ranch.

Secret of Treasure Mountain

Three bank robbers escape into the western wilderness, where they hear of a fortune in gold supposedly hidden in Treasure Mountain. Is the treasure real, and will it be discovered before greed destroys them all?

Killer Fish

Jewel thieves attempt to recover treasure from piranha infested waters. Mistrust and betrayals happen amongst the gang in the quest for gold.

Sam Whiskey

Sam Whiskey is an all-round talent, but when the attractive widow Laura offers him a job, he hesitates: he shall salvage gold bars, which Laura's dead husband stole recently, from a sunken ship and secretly bring them back to the mint before they are missed. But how shall he manage to get several hundred pounds of gold into the mint without anyone noticing?

The Eliminator

Former LAPD cop, Dakota Varley, enters a power boat race seeking the prize of $250,000, but immediately discovers, first hand, that this race's risk matches the prize: one racer is killed, 3 others seriously injured in multiple action-packed crashes and explosions. Varley tries to leave the lake and collect his prize money but is drugged and kidnapped by Dawson and thrown into a different world: a world where survival means everything and no-one follows the rules. Surrounded by heavily-armed men, he soon learns that he and six other victims have been assembled to be contestants in the ultimate survival game: they will be hunted nightly by hunters with rifles until there is one remaining survivor, who will win a $10,000,000 cash prize!

A Cry in the Wild

13-year-old Brian is the sole survivor of an unreported plane crash. Alone in the Yukon wilderness, Brian must learn to survive by his wits, find food and shelter, and brave wild, hungry animals until or if he is found.

Survival Quest

A bunch of city slickers from different backgrounds go into the wild mountains to be one with nature, but basically to have a good time. However, a paramilitary group has chosen the same time to go camping. When one of the soldiers thinks their boss has been killed by one of the city slickers, he coaxes his team into exterminating all of them. They will have to rely on their wits and on each other in order to survive.

Hot Ticket

Two beautiful hostages find themselves pitted against cold-blooded killers intent on escaping with a million dollars in 'laundered' currency. Stranded in an alpine wilderness, the hunters and the hunted play an action packed cat and mouse game with the money and their lives hanging in the balance

Final Approach

Final Approach deals with the mental condition of Amnesia when a stealth test pilot, Col. Jason Halsey, is involved in an air disaster. A psychiatrist Dr. Dio Gottlieb attempts to help Halsey to recover his memory, but his motives seem strained. Is Gottlieb giving professional help or is he a counter-intelligence agent sent to debrief Halsey?

Spin

"Spin" tells the story of a boy who loses his parents in a plane crash, is taken in by his uncle (Tucci), who then leaves him for ten years in the care of his Hispanic ranch hand (Blades) and his wife (Delany). Once in high school, Eddie (Merriman) reconnects with a girl from his past (Garces), and their growing interracial relationship teaches the sometimes-sullen Eddie to think of others before himself.

Silver Wolf

A boy learns to deal with personal loss by making friends with a wild animal in this drama for the entire family. Jesse is a 16-year-old who is trying to put his life back together after the death of his father, who died while trying to rescue him in the wilderness. Jesse goes to live with his Uncle Roy, who lives in the rugged mountains of Washington State. While exploring, Jesse finds and rescues a wolf who has been seriously wounded; Jesse bonds with the animal, and while Roy understands the dangers of trying to tend to a wild animal, reluctantly allows Jesse to keep him. Jesse, who is fond of snowboarding, teaches the wolf to be his partner in skijoring, a sport in which a dog is used to haul a man on skis. John Rockwell the owner of a ranch, has different plans for the animal; he sees the wolf as a threat to his stock and is determined to see that the animal is put down.

Falcon Down

U.S. Air force officer Hank Thomas attempts to expose a military cover-up after a civiian airliner crashes.

Tarzan Finds a Son!

A young couple die in a plane crash in the jungle. Their son is found by Tarzan and Jane who name him Boy and raise him as their own. Five years later a search party comes to find the young heir to millions of dollars. Jane agrees, against Tarzan's will, to lead them to civilization.

Gold Raiders

An unmarked U.S. Airforce plane carrying $200 million in gold is shot down over Communist Laos. In a race against time the CIA dispatch an elite force of hand-picked agents to recover the treasure before it falls into enemy hands.

The Steel Lady

Surviving a plane crash in the Sahara, four oilmen find and manage to repair a German Afrika Corps tank which had been buried in the sand since WWII.

Broken Journey

A plane flying over the Swiss Alps develops engine trouble and is forced to crash-land on a glacier. Unable to radio for help because of damaged batteries and with limited food supplies, the survivors must come to a decision -- whether to stay and wait for help they believe is coming or to leave the shelter of the wrecked plane and set out in bad weather to try to reach civilization.

Silent Hunter

Hardened, relentless cop Jim Parandine (Miles O'Keeffe) is pushed to the edge when his family is murdered by some criminals. He becomes a recluse in the mountains, where years later, the same criminals end up to rob a bank. Jim uses his Navy Seal training and police experience to hunt down the criminals one by one and get vengeance for his loved ones.

Apocalypse Pompeii

When a former Special Ops commando visits Pompeii, his wife and daughter are trapped as Mt. Vesuvius erupts with massive force. While his family fights to survive the deadly onslaught of heat and lava, he enlists his former teammates in a daring operation beneath the ruins of the city of Pompeii.

Tracker

An ex-Boer war guerrilla in New Zealand is sent out to bring back a Maori accused of killing a British soldier. Gradually they grow to know and respect one another but a posse, led by the British Commanding officer is close behind and his sole intention is to see the Maori hang. Written by Filmfinders 1903. A guerilla fighter from the South African Boer war called Arjan (Winstone) takes on a manhunt for Maori seaman Kereama (Morrison), who is accused of murdering a British soldier. What follows is a cat and mouse pursuit through the varied landscape of NZ with both hunter and huntee testing their bushcraft and wits against that of the other. Written by Anonymous

Rough Stuff

A rag-tag group of treasure hunters travels into the bush in search of a legendary stash of gold. The gang is soon roped into a world of danger, lies and betrayal.

Sky Raiders

Captain Bob Dayton and Lieutenant Ed Carey are partners in a company called "Sky Raiders" which seeks US government contracts for its inventions. Enemy spies attempt to steal, sabotage and discredit the inventions and founders of the company.

The Dawn Express

A Nazi spy ring is after a chemical formula that increases the power of ordinary gasoline for U.S. Army aviation use. Two U.S. chemical companies are developing the formula, with each working on half for security purposes. The spies get half the formula and know that either of two chemists, Robert Norton or Tom Fielding, knows the rest. They capture Fielding, through a ruse by gang member Linda Pavlo, and threaten the life of his sister Nancy and his mother if he does not give them the formula. To protect his friend Fielding, who does know the formula and is engaged to Nancy, Tom pretends to know the secret and boards the Dawn Express plane with the spy leader and his gang.

Against the Wild

The action-packed feature film tells the dramatic tale of two siblings and their Alaskan Malamute, who must make an emergency landing when their small plane has engine problems. They find themselves in a beautiful but potentially dangerous natural environment that they must overcome together.

Erebus: Operation Overdue

On 28 November 1979, an Air New Zealand jet with 257 passengers went missing during a sightseeing tour over Antarctica. Within hours 11 ordinary police officers were called to duty to face the formidable Mount Erebus. As the police recovered the victims, an investigation team tried to uncover the mystery of how a jet could fly into a mountain in broad daylight. Did the airline have a secret it wanted to bury? This film tells the story of four New Zealand police officers who went to Antarctica as part of the police operation to recover the victims of the crash. Set in the beautiful yet hostile environment of Antarctica, this is the emotional and compelling true story of an extraordinary police operation.

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