Airport 75

Airport 1975 is a silly movie, but it offers a dash of guilty, escapist pleasure for anyone willing to accept its obvious shortcomings. Helmed by veteran small-screen director Jack Smight, the film has the feel of a made-for-TV offering. Despite the myriad irritating subplots and pointless supporting characters, the main storyline -- that of the efforts of a group of men and women to save the plane -- is relatively engrossing, and the special effects are surprisingly effective (albeit sparse). Nancy, the character played by Karen Black, is likable; Murdock is sufficiently heroic and Patroni radiates a mixture of competence and desperation. Also worth noting is that it doesn't take forever for the mid-air collision to happen. Well before the half-way point, the plot is already in full swing. All in all this is a great guilty pleasure film from the mid 70s.

Air travel in the 1970s (which was before fare laws made it more affordable) still retained a certain amount of chic. It was expensive enough that a lot of people had still never flown. In a family with five kids, our mode of transportation was a Volkswagen Bus. The Brady Bunch was the only big family I knew who went on vacations involving air travel. (And for the record, my first flight was in 1987, when I was 22).

This movie has so many hilarious moments in it, it's hard to catch all of them. First, Karen Black, that witchy-looking broad who wore the Zulu teeth in "Trilogy of Terror" has a few intimate moments with Charlton Heston, AKA Cockpit Moses, AKA NRA is My Copilot. I'm sorry, but the idea of him and her together ... ewwww. But I digress.

Next, we have the legendary Gloria Swanson, assaying the role of ... Gloria Swanson. What this consists of is: droning on endlessly into a tape recorder (or to her luckless secretary, who probably would have considered a plane crash a welcome diversion) about her fascinating life, how she was "a rebel" in her career, etc. -- the only thing she leaves out is what it was like to be bundling with JFK's daddy -- and wearing this bizarre sort of burnoose that ends up looking like a man-eating nun's habit. Which sets us up nicely for the introduction of two nunly stereotypes.

Sister Martha Scott displays a traditional habit, including a wimple, and a traditional outlook. Sister Helen Reddy (I swear I'm not making this up) is wearing a post-Vatican II modified habit and looks a lot like Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music." Which is ironic given later events.

Getting thoroughly plowed in the airport bar are Mindy's dad, the guy who never wanted to have sex with Audra Lindley, and Carmine Vespucci. They run into Myrna Loy, who you'd think was an ordinary old-lady type, only to reveal that she swills boilermakers at every possible opportunity. If you're wondering why this was even a plot point, join the club.

And now, on to the plane. What a marvel of design that baby was! Those seats were the size of Lazy Boy recliners, even in coach class. To think that if only I'd been born to a millionaire, I could have experienced flight in the days before you get shoehorned into a seat the size of a toy poodle carrier with your knees in your face ... and not only that, THIS plane has a groovy spiral staircase leading up the flight deck, so that the passengers can ogle the stews' legs as they rush back and forth with coffee, tea or me.

Just when we think the ham can't get sliced any thicker, they wheel Linda Blair onto the plane in the role of a young girl (Sister Martha unnecessarily informs Sister Helen, "It's a young girl!" as if Sister Helen couldn't see that). And not just any young girl. A young girl who is DESPERATELY in need of a kidney transplant. Played by an actress who doesn't seem to catch on to the fact that someone in desperate need of a kidney transplant isn't going to be beaming and bubbling over about how "exciting" it is to look at all the people. However, since Linda was simply assaying yet another of the roles in her 1970s Put Upon Damsel collection, I can't fault her too much.

Meanwhile, at another airport, a former Air Force Glory Boy from "The Best Years of Our Lives" is preparing to journey home to Boise, Idaho. He calls home, and the phone is answered by none other than the blonde broad who took Uncle Charlie's apron and put the wrecking ball to "My Three Sons." She's his wife (how is it that all the lovely young actresses in this film are head over heels in love with these geriatric actors? Point to ponder). So, ignoring the forecasts of bad weather and the ominously prescient comment of a friend who says he's looking pale, our lone pilot leaps into his Patsy Cline Special and heads out in the middle of a driving rain.

Now, this sets up the pivotal scene. We have a large 747 loaded with 150 people (those seats were ROOMY, man) and an itty bitty plane with a guy who's starting to not feel so good, and they're both circling Salt Lake City, waiting for permission to land. Until Air Force Glory Boy has a heart attack and his plane collides with the jet in midair. Ouch.

Particularly since September 11, it's blackly amusing to see all the passengers sitting so calmly and obediently in their seats after the collision. Even if we were to suspend rational thought long enough to accept the idea that a collision that sucks out the first officer wouldn't be accompanied by enough pressure to suck out the entire flight crew and maybe the back wall of the flight deck, the fact that everyone just sat there, bundled up in their coats and cheesy purple airline blankets, while "THE STEWARDESS IS FLYING THE PLANE?" (thank you, Sid Caesar) is still hilarious to comprehend.

Now, lest I give away the Cheez Whiz ending too much, let me just say that I don't understand why, if everyone else got shoved out the inflatable ramps, Karen Black and Charlton Heston were allowed to promenade dramatically down the regular steps to the tarmac (ah, those days before jetways).

Anyhoo, this one is better experienced than described. If nothing else, it's fun to spot all the "Airplane" parody fodder.

Dedicated filmgoers collect so many varied pleasures as the years go by. Who can forget the first time they saw Welles' Citizen Kane? Ozu's Tokyo Story? Antonioni's The Eclipse? What gems of insight and emotion have been mined from the works of Jean Renoir, of Max Ophuls and Fritz Lang, of Hitchcock and Mizoguchi? Yet, if I had to choose between saving all of their films or preserving Airport 75, I must admit that I would hesitate.

When it comes to a film as rich as Airport 75, where does one begin? Perhaps a drum roll of the cast that adorns this archetypal 1970's disaster epic is as good a way as any to get started: we have Charlton Heston and Karen Black as the leads, and, in a display of has-beens and never-was's that would make any Hollywood Squares devotee salivate, there's Susan Clark, Sid Caesar, Jerry Stiller, Norman Fell, Martha Scott, Beverly Garland, Sharon Gless, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Erik Estrada all on board.

And that's just for starters! Myrna Loy plays an elderly tippler, Helen Reddy is a singing nun, Linda Blair is a cheerful girl in need of a kidney transplant, and, in the pièce de résistance, Gloria Swanson is.Gloria Swanson. If you loved Airplane!, which lampooned Airport 75 in particular, you should go straight back to the horse's mouth and rent this seminal entry in bad cinema.

In a lengthy opening tracking shot that invites comparison with Orson Welles' similar feat in Touch of Evil, we follow cross-eyed stewardess Black into an airport as the names of the guilty keep coming and coming via the credits, a veritable orgy of cut-rate players. When the names finally stop, Heston quickly propositions our heroine. `I can do wonders in thirty minutes,' he promises, but Black's having none of it. `Maybe I'm tired of one-night stands,' she whines, as we imagine, quite against our will, the alarming image of the two of them in the sack. After she leaves him, the credits begin again and inform us that Edith Head designed the clothing (only senility can possibly excuse the neckerchiefs she gave to the stewardesses.)

When asked the secret of her ageless appearance by adulatory reporters, Swanson explains, `I won't take poisoned food, I don't like it.' Nuns Martha Scott and Helen Reddy observe her impromptu press conference intently. `It's one of those Hollywood persons,' says Scott with disdain. `You mean an actress?' asks Reddy. `Or worse,' Scott replies, rolling her eyes to heaven. Black tries to shield a new blond stewardess from the lustful advances of Erik Estrada, but this novice can take care of herself. `I'm emancipated, liberated and highly skilled in Kung Fu,' she boasts. `Whatever happened to womanhood?' wonders a pilot in response.

As the cast from Hell shuttle over to their flight, Swanson just won't shut up. When Norman Fell doubts if the plane will fly, Gloria says, `In 1917 I was flying in something wilder than this. You know who the pilot was? Cecil B. DeMille!' Just about everybody in Airport 75 proves to be as ready for their close-up as Swanson, especially little Linda Blair; when she is wheeled onto the plane, bad film-going delight turns into purple junk food ecstasy. She smiles satanically at everyone and says, `It's so exciting! The people are so interesting!' to her mother Nancy Olsen, who once played the ingenue in Sunset Boulevard, making this her second film with Swanson in which she doesn't share a scene with the silent diva.

`Jokes' drop like potato pancake batter into deep-frying fat. `I'll take you into the lion's den,' says Black to her blond Kung Fu-fighting co-stewardess. `Who's afraid of the lion's den, I'm Jewish!' quips blondie. Later, she calls the horny Estrada a `disgrace to your race,' and truer words were never spoken. Two old ladies cluck over a book called Epicurean Sexual Delights, and another woman anxiously hides her dog. People keep saying, `You've gotta see Gloria Swanson-she looks terrific!' Yet the camp high point, of course, is the now legendary scene where Sister Helen sings a jaw-dropping song to ailing Blair about how `you best friend is yourself.' You want so much for Blair to projectile vomit pea soup all over the plucky nun, but, alas, she just keeps smiling. The plane is filled with all kinds of weird goings-on and bizarre talk, but, as far as appalling remarks go, Fell takes the cake. `I once had a girlfriend who was half French and half Chinese,' he says. `I came home one night and she ate my laundry!'

Airport 75 exhibits a deliciously crummy television aesthetic. When the plane is hit, most of the pilots (including, thankfully, Estrada) are sucked out into space. As Black, The Cross Eyed Stewardess Who Has To Fly The Plane!, takes over the controls, the fact that she is traveling at airplane speed and is sitting right next to a massive hole in the cockpit is represented visually by her cast-iron hairdo blowing gently in the breeze! The way that Heston talks her through her ordeal is purely sexist, with all kinds of, `Baby, calm down honey,' stuff. It's as if all the controls were phallic-there's constant hilarious innuendo about nose dives and `keeping it up.'

As for Black, who really carries the whole movie, this is an immortal performance. With her dueling lazy eyes, she is able to keep watch over all the buttons and switches at once; she flares her nostrils, bugs her freaky orbs, and even sticks out her tongue when trying to get a pilot into the plane. When Heston, in an atrocious yellow turtleneck, manages to get aboard, Black tells the passengers that they'll have to shut down one engine. I adore the voice of one of the extras who pipes in, `We're gonna die!' in a dry, matter-of-fact voice.

They do land the plane without a hitch, and the ending, appropriately, belongs to Swanson. When she slides down the emergency landing shute, La Swanson's body double flashes us a glimpse of white panties (definitely the funniest image in the movie.) When her assistant murmurs that it's a good morning, Gloria says rather touchingly, `Every morning is beautiful, you're just too young to know.' This demonstrates that Airport 75 is, finally, a contemplative film about life and its finish-or at least the finish of many show biz careers.

Though Airport 75 is the height of the Airport oeuvre, Airport 77 is worth checking out for Lee Grant's astoundingly bad performance as an alcoholic (on television there is also an extra hour of flashbacks to the passenger's lives!) And Airport 79: The Concorde has pilot / airline manager extraordinaire George Kennedy wrapping it all up with the line, `They don't call it the cockpit for nothing sweetheart!' as stewardess Sylvia Kristal recoils in horror. Kennedy appears in all four Airport movies as the same character, Petroni. Why anyone let this guy near an airport after a while is up for debate-it's like continuing to invite Jessica Fletcher to your parties: you know someone's going to get killed.

This is the second of four movies in the "Airport" series . It's exciting and amusing but full clichés and stereotypes with mediocre performance by all-star-cast . The movie is another jetliner epic with hero Heston . A commercial airline of the American Airlines 747 Boeing (piloted by Efrem Zimbalist Jr. , Roy Thinnes , Erik Estrada) is crashed to another smaller plane (piloted by Dana Andrews) . Then the flight attendant (Karen Black who brings conviction to her character as dedicated stewardess turned pilot ) taking on control of the dangerous travel and forcing daring rescue attempt (by Ed Flanders and Heston) . The film is detailing hectic flighty piloted by a stewardess and the relationship among passengers . All clichéd and stock roles with regurgitation of all usual stereotypical situations from disaster films , the nuns ( Helen Reddy as singing nun and Martha Scott ), an aging alcoholic woman (Myrna Loy , but Joan Crawford was firstly approached to play the character who turned down), nervous passengers , an old actress (Gloria Swanson) . Taking place on freeze skies and Rocky Mountains as background , the airplane heading to Salt Lake City . If you've seen the original ¨Airport¨ ( by George Seaton ) based on the Arthur Hailey's novel 'the daddy of them all' , you have seen them all .

The picture contains thriller, suspense , drama , moderate tension and is quite entertaining although with some flaws and gaps . Filmed at the height of the disaster genre in the 7os , this entry in the spectacular series benefits from a strong acting by Charlton Heston who spent time on a simulator in preparation for the role , bringing life to character , he also starred a similar role at ¨ Skyjacked (1972)¨ by John Guillermin . Gloria Swanson performs herself in her ending movie . Look quickly to Nancy Olson , Linda Blair , Sid Caesar, Beverly Garland , Norman Fell and Jerry Stiller , Ben Stiller's father , among others . And , of course, appears the classic character Patroni played by usual George Kennedy . The motion picture was regularly directed by Jack Smight , habitual TV director and occasionally for big screen (Midway , Harper , No way to treat a lady) . It's an inoffensive diversion but is sometimes tediously unspooled and it was parodied heavily in Airplane! (1980) by Jim Abrahams and David Zucker . The film will appeal to Charlton Heston fans and disaster genre enthusiasts .

A mid-air collision leaves a 747 without a pilot. Charlton Heston, Karen Black and George Kennedy star in this campy far fetched adventure. Acting is wooden and unconvincing and the plot ranges from strange to absurd but the air sequences are by far the best in any air disaster film and well worth a look. It is a typical disaster film for it's time but is thankfully one of the good ones unlike The Concorde or The Swarm. People give it a hard time claiming it to be one of the worst films ever made but it obviously isn't as there are many millions of mainstream films worse than this and many worse disaster movies if you want proof watch any of Irwin Allen's late 70's productions.