Airport '77

Landing after the TV sitcom-level cast/plot of "Airport 1975", but arriving before the ludicrous "The Concorde-Airport '79" is this slick disaster film entry. Featuring Oscar-winning and nominated stars like Lemmon, Grant, de Havilland, Quinlan, Kennedy and Stewart, it also offers one of the best caliber casts of the '70's disaster cycle. There is no deep thinking involved in watching the film, but it does offer some watery thrills and some fun thrashing around as the plane first skips along the surface of the water and then slips under. Suspense builds as the pressure continues to wreak havoc on the plane's outer skin and, unusually for an "Airport" film, pretty many lives are claimed! The death toll in this film is higher than the other three combined. It's great to see so many once and future stars flopping around in the underwater tomb, but the main attraction is Lee Grant. Clocking in with only about a dozen or so total minutes of screen time, she is utterly hilarious and unforgettable as a shrewish, boozy, sarcastic lush. No one is safe from her rude, brash comments and she is a joy to behold for bad-move connoisseurs. Her husband in the film is Christpher Lee. Fortunately, they didn't marry offscreen or she would have become Lee Lee, but that's another story.......

Following the not-so-spectacular "Airport 1975" comes "Airport '77" which is a welcome addition to the Disaster Movie genre. In typical "Airport" fashion, a routine plane ride, this time carrying various celebrities and other high-profile people, gets into some trouble when it crashes into the ocean in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle....

Though the decor of the flash plane filled with VIP's is dreary compared to the fabulous colours of the chairs in "Airport 1975", the characters are a major improvement, along with the actual danger that the passengers and crew are placed in.

In typical Disaster Movie style, the cast is large, and many of them are forgettable, however, stand-out performances in "Airport '77" include Jack Lemmon in a serious role as the likable Captain Gallagher, Lee Grant is Karen Wallace a VIP guest of the nasty variety, the underrated Pamela Bellwood as a young mother, the lovely Kathleen Quinlann is as usual outstanding, but unfortunately under-used here, but the stand-out star of the film is of course Brenda Vaccaro as Captain Gallagher's girlfriend Even Clayton. Vaccaro is certainly one of the better leading ladies in a Disaster Movie, but is also a surprising choice. Nevertheless, she is fantastic, it is a shame she is not more recognized for her work.

Overall, "Airport '77" is a terrific, and often overlooked addition to the genre, with a super cast, great direction, and a very interesting scene in which the plane is raised from the ocean, according to the credits, this is the actual method used by the Navy, which is a nice addition to the film.

I can't imagine anything thinking that "Airport '77" is a great movie. After all, it takes the usual "Airport" formula and throws it into a premise that is not only bizarre but rather silly. Yet, oddly, despite this, the movie IS enjoyable and worth seeing.

A rich guy has arranged for a private luxury 747 airliner to bring friends and loved ones to a big party. What no one realizes, however, is that several members of the crew are planning on using knockout gas to take control of the plane and then land it on some abandoned airport in the Bahamas. Apparently, it's all because they plan on stealing some paintings aboard the plane....though this seemed like silly motivation. I would have also considered ransoming off the passengers...which they aren't planning on doing.

Speaking of not planning....the overly complicated plan goes awry when the plane is flying under radar and accidentally collides with some beacon. IMDB says fog was responsible....I never noticed fog in this scene at all. Regardless, the plan crash lands in the ocean and soon sinks in what IMDB says is about 100 feet of water*. The cabin has managed to stay air tight....at least for now. But with air running out, is there any chance at rescue?

Despite a totally ludicrous premise, the film manages to make it all seem possible...which it surely isn't as you continue watching the story. Regardless, the story IS engaging and interesting. I did find it unusual that Jack Lemmon of all people plays a bit of an action hero! But still, it does manage to entertain and it sure kept me glued to the screen.

*Although they said the plane was a hundred feet down, this really could NOT have been the case, as the pilot swimming to the surface clearly would have been highly unlikely (that is a LONG way to free dive for someone untrained) and if he had survived, he likely would have been a physical mess as a result of decompression. Here, it all looked too easy to be that deep and the water clarity made it seem like the plane was about 50 feet down...from which a dive to the surface is much, much more likely to result in survival. I've made such dives to the surface myself....which isn't easy but is so much safer and easier than from 100 feet.

Gazillionaire James Stewart is shipping his collection of art to a museum and he's using his private jet to fly the collection and a few friends down to meet him in Florida.

Of course this attracts the attention of a few crooks who have a pretty well thought out plan and the copilot, Robert Foxworth, working with them. Of course all good plans go awry and they go down in the Bermuda Triangle into some relatively shallow area of the Atlantic.

Hey they could have gone down and been lost for decades like the Titanic was.

That's essentially the plot here and in true Seventies disaster film tradition you load the screen with big names, dress them fashionably and put them in harm's way. The rest of the film is devoted to their rescue.

Incidentally the footage devoted to the air sea rescue is the best thing about Airport 77. No member of the audience will not go away impressed with the U.S. Navy's capabilities in that regard.

Jack Lemmon is the pilot and in an action role which is normally against type for him, he does quite well. Almost twenty years before he supported James Stewart in Bell, Book,and Candle and now the billing is most definitely reversed.

My favorites in the film are Joseph Cotten and Olivia DeHavilland, a classy and elegant pair of passengers who so typify the glamor of old Hollywood.

Christopher Lee also performs against type, he's not the villain here in fact he turns out quite the hero among the passengers. Lee Grant is his trollop of a wife and I remember seeing this in theaters and the shouts for joy from the audience when Brenda Vaccaro punches her out.

I'm not sure which is a wilder rescue this one or that other James Stewart film The Flight of the Phoenix. There's no way any of them should survive.

But this is a Hollywood disaster epic, so all things are possible.

1st watched 8/12/2007 - 6 out of 10(Dir-Jerry Jameson): Surprisingly appealing rescue movie despite some of the silly characterizations and typical goofiness that tends to accompany these type of movies. The thing that the movie does well is hold your attention to the very end. You genuinely care for some of the characters involved primarily because of the good acting by leads like Jack Lemmon, who plays the pilot in this one. The danger also seems very real all the way up to the end which adds to it's believability. The movie starts setting up the story as an airline president and master collector, played by Jimmie Stewart, is promoting the opening of a museum and a new plane that will be sent down to the island paradise with his very special guests. Included on the plane are his daughter and grandson, whom he has not seen for a very long time. A small group including one of the co-pilots decide to capture the plane while it's airborne, putting the passengers to sleep, in hopes to take it's valuables and run off to South America. Their plan goes awry when the pilot crashes in a shallow part of the ocean(wherever that might be) in the Bermuda triangle. The rest of the movie is an underwater rescue movie as the plane drifts to the shallow bottom. There are the usual stupid moments, like allowing the pilot to go nuts but the women passengers can't for some reason, and the attempt to save the plane in-tact with the people is a little far-fetched. These are the moments that get you talking to the screen. But despite this, the overall effect of the movie is satisfying which I honestly didn't expect because these movies usually don't appeal to me. I really think that the strong presence of the believable hero in Jack Lemmon as the pilot really helped the movie become a little more than the typical disaster movie for me.