Totally Spontaneous Film Review #6: The Entire Airport Series

This is my most ambitious project yet. Today I turn on my TV and lo, AMC is running the entire Airport series of films! Every single one. It’s a tongue-in-cheek movie reviewer’s gold mine! I have found the mother lode! In this series you can find almost every actor that ever lived, including such luminaries as: Burt Lancaster, James Stewart, Jack Lemmon, Linda Blair, Darren McGavin, Dean Martin, Helen Hayes, Charleton Heston, Maureen Stapleton, Myrna Loy, Joseph Cotton, Olivia deHavilland, Christopher Lee, Charo, John Davidson (I know, I said actors) and Gary Collins, to name a few. Some of them even had careers.

Airport (1970)

1. Joe Patroni is introduced as an engineer. By the end of the series, he is a pilot. Granted, this saves a lot of film footage by actually having him on the plane instead of on the radio and not having to cut back and forth, but how does one do this? Is there a work study program or something?

2. Dean Martin is flying the plane? Holy crap! Let me off now!

3. At the beginning of the film, Burt Lancaster’s pocket buzzes and he removes what may be the world’s first pager. It’s the size of a matchbox ( and I don’t mean the toy car).

4. Jacqueline Bisset is back. The only purpose she seems to serve in this movie is getting knocked out by flying debris. Mercifully, this occurs early in the film. Not early enough.

5. Beware little old ladies with false boarding passes.

6. Steve McQueen does not appear in any of these movies. If he did, none of those planes would have crashed. I know it.

7. There are numerous close-ups of the plane's tires. This allows us to see that it has all of its hubcaps.

8. The plane in this film is brought down by an ordinary stick of TNT. Ah, the good ol’ days when terrorism was simple.

9. Two words: snow chains.

Airport 1975 (1974) <= Hey, what’s this? This move isn’t called Airport 1974! I want my money back!

This is my favorite of the series. One reason is the sterling dialogue. Lines like “Count your beads, folks!” “You’re weird, you know that?” and “You’re a disgrace to your race” are surely among the greatest ever written. The cast of memorable characters includes Efram Zimbalist, Jr. as the pilot, Erik Estrada as Julio the flight engineer (“I like my coffee sweet, mommy”), Gloria Swanson as herself (!), Norman Fell, Jerry Stiller and Conrad Janis as a trio of drunks, Helen Reddy as a singing nun and Linda Blair as the pathos-injecting gratuitous sick child whose saccharine sweetness probably caused her kidney problems in the first place.

1. Clearly Mr. Scott Freeman never saw “La Bamba”.

2. Edith Head did the costumes for this and all the Airport movies. Is she also responsible for Charleton Heston’s jacket?

3. I usually like Sid Caesar, but he is annoying and would probably sit next to me.

4. “Don’t worry, it’s just an alarm???”

5. Landing a crippled 747 with your girlfriend in the back seat has got to be the biggest testosterone rush ever. Chuck is so going to score tonight.

6. This movie follows all the conventions of the disaster film, but it lays them on a bit thick: Jimmy Stewart is ill and dying, hoping to be reunited with his daughter and grandson, the aforementioned sick saccharine child, the blind pianist declaring his love just before he dies...oh, wait, that's the next film. They all blur together.

Airport ‘77

This was the year of Star Wars, so I am expecting big things from this one.

1. A piano in the cabin. This is beyond first class. Not so good in water landings, though.

2. Giving your malfunctioning equipment a good whack works for air traffic controllers too.

3. Art thieves shouldn’t try to fly planes. They should stick to what they know – stealing art.

4. You're underwater, the door is cold all the way to the top, could be flooded - might not want to open it.

The Concorde - Airport ‘79

This is one of the worst films ever made. I cannot make fun of it, because the film does that all by itself. If you doubt me, check out the scene where Joe Patroni opens the window of the cockpit and shoots out a flare. He has to open it manually. You’d think a plane this modern would have automatic windows, at least. Nevertheless, I do have some observations:

1. Susan Blakely did not learn from others’ mistakes: she slept with Robert Wagner and therein lies the problem.

3. I will admit the French pilot is pretty. And thank God he skis.

4. “There’s one hell of a crosswind.” Yes, in the cabin. Could be from the big hole in the floor.

5. So, after being attacked with heat-seeking missiles and nearly crashing and burning on the runway, sitting between Martha Raye and her weak bladder and Jimmie Walker and his totally fake saxophone, why in holy hell would you get back on the airplane?

6. Creepy Bit O’ Trivia: this specific Concorde was the one that crashed after a tire burst while taking off from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, killing everyone aboard and four people on the ground. It was the only fatal accident in the history of the Concorde and the plane was retired from service in 2003.

All in all, next time, I’ll take a boat. I hear there’s a very nice ship called the SS Poseidon.