Airport 1975 (1974)

Airport '75

This sequel to the original "Airport" is much better written and acted. Unlike the first "Airport" this film actually has suspense and a plot. A small place crashes into a 747 (right into the cockpit, wouldn't you know) and either kills or severely injures the flight crew. A stewardess is left to bring the jumbo jet safely back to earth.

Charlton Heston gives a pretty good performance as the boyfriend of the pilot/stewardess and other cast members like George Kennedy (how did he get so lucky to be in all of these movies?) and Karen Black portray believeable, if not a bit predictable, characters. I will say the guys in the Salt Lake City air traffic control tower leave a lot to be desired, but they are the weakest of the film's cast.

In the end all is well and things work out. While this is not a great movie, it is far superior to the extremely boring original. November 2, 2008

MORE TENSE THAN THE ORIGINAL, BUT...........

Watching 'Airport 75' after all these years, I didn't remember very much of it. It's cast reminded me of a predecessor to the 'Love Boat' even more than the first film! Like most of these films the first three quarters of an hour or so is just meeting the cast and setting up the inevitable disaster that will unfold, but once this one gets going it has some tension....just don't think about the credibility of it too long! It's available on a box set with the other 3 Airport films at a bargain price so it your a fan of the series....... July 21, 2008

Good Stuff

Today's sequels stink. Karen Black and Charlton Heston (R.I.P.) make this one work. John Cacavas wrote a good score as well. May 3, 2008

Too Much Fun to Watch

The best of the 1970s disaster films was undoubtedly 1972's THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. It spawned a series of other disaster movies, giving jobs to all kinds of special effects people and half of Hollywood throughout that decade. People loved the mayhem back then.

AIRPORT 1975 didn't have as many Oscar winners or the symbolic storyline that grabbed so many people as POSEIDON did, but it is filled with enough stars to make it worthwhile. Charlton Heston is in a Charlton Heston role. You have two actresses from the classic SUNSET BOULEVARD, Nancy Olson as the mother of the sick girl (Linda Blair!) and Gloria Swanson as Gloria Swanson (that's Linda Harrison, the incredibly hot Nova from the original PLANET OF THE APES as Gloria's assistant--but it's stewardess Karen Black who gets Charlton Heston in this movie). Normal Fell (Mr. Roper from TV's "Three Company") and Jerry Stiller (from "Seinfeld" and "King of Queens") as loud tipsy passengers. Erik Estrada is the navigator and Roy Thinnes ends up literally in "The Outer Limits" as the doomed co-pilot. Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Larry Storch, Syd Cesear, not to mention George Kennedy, Susan Clark and Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

But even if you're not a movie buff this particular disaster is fun to watch: you'll recognize many scenes that would end up in the 1980 spoof, AIRPLANE! (I'm laughing right now as I watch it as I see scenes taken directly from the movie).

There are also some great shots of a Boeing 747 flying THROUGH the Rocky Mountains. April 19, 2008

CROSS YOUR EYES AND HOPE TO DIE!

Two nuns watch as silent screen diva Gloria Swanson makes her way through an airport, surrounded by the press. "I believe it's one of those Hollywood persons," observes Sister Martha Scott. "You mean an actress?" asks Sister Helen Reddy. Scott shudders, rolls her eyes and replies, "Or worse." Airport 1975 is proof that nothing's worse than "those Hollywood persons" who grace the bonanza of Bad Movies We Love known as "disaster films," of which this is the funniest example. As the parade of passengers continues--Myrna Loy, Susan Clark, Sid Caesar, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Roy Thinnes, Erik Estrada and Karen Black, just for starters--you keep thinking, it can't get any more cut-rate than this. Then Linda Blair rolls on in a wheelchair!

Once the big bird takes off, the laughs soar too: Sister Reddy takes guitar in hand to serenade the ailing Blair in a high camp sing-along that's even hootier than the scene in Airplane! which was meant to spoof it.

Though Airport 1975 makes a hopeless attempt to appear updated--when a man calls a novice stewardess "a teenager," she shoots back, "It's Ms. Teenager, please. I'm emancipated and highly skilled in kung fu"--it's really just Arthur Hailey's old chestnut about the plane that must be piloted back to earth by--you guessed it--Someone Who Doesn't Know How to Fly! Clearly desperate to give the tired old plot device some added suspense, the geniuses here decided to turn the controls over to Karen Black, who not only has no clue about piloting a jet, she's also cross-eyed. (In a delirious in-joke, it's Dana Andrews who turns up as the pilot of the tiny plane that crashes into our heroine's 747 to set this plot into motion. In The Crowded Sky, Andrews played the pilot whose jet was struck; then, in Zero Hour, he played Black's role.)

When the passengers hear that Black's flying the plane, they prepare to die. Swanson tosses diamonds out of her jewelry case and stuffs the taped notes for her autobiography into it instead, explaining, "It's bomb-proofed, the insurance people insisted upon it." (It's the only "bomb-proof" thing in this movie.) As Black's troubles mount, her boyfriend back on earth, pilot Charlton Heston, knows that someone's gotta go up there and bring that plane down. "You mean to tell me you're going to try to transfer a pilot into a 747 in flight?" asks an incredulous extra. "It's going to be like trying to put a raw egg back into its shell!" Heston, however, seems to know that he's nothing if not a raw egg.

When Heston helicopters by and prepares to, literally, drop in, Black acts and acts as she reaches out her arms to help pull him aboard--and then makes one of those actor's choices that distinguishes her from all the others who've played this part: She sticks out her tongue! Then she tops even that by taking a bullhorn to run amok in the aisles shouting, "There's nothing to be alarmed about, nothing!" You think, it can't get any goofier than this, but it can, and it does. The grand finale? The sight of 69-year-old Myrna Loy hurtling down the emergency slide exit, a high point of unintentional hilarity. Too good to be true, it's exceeded by 77-year-old Gloria Swanson shooting down at warp speed, her dress hiking up high enough to show a tantalizing flash of white undies. September 6, 2007

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