Rota do Perigo

When I saw this film during it's first airing back in 1983, at the age of 14, I thought it was a good movie. It had one of my favorite actors, Lee, the Six-Million Dollar Man, Majors in it. My generation also grew up on disaster films and this movie carried on the torch. Actually it is probably one of the last of the 70'ish type disaster movies. The plot, IMO, closely resembled that of AIRPORT-77, only this plane was stranded in space instead of underwater in the ocean.

I, especially now as an adult, can see why people may dislike this film. Although this film is supposed to be realistic it is about as realistic as and child's fairy tale. You know what, I don't care. I still enjoy this film. I don't watch a film like this for the real life science and technology. I watch it for fun and take the science and technology about as seriously as I do that of a Star Trek film or show.

Chezzy films may not be for everyone but for those that don't mind a little cheese this film will probably be worth viewing, at least once.

"Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land" is a silly made-for-TV disaster flick that could have been titled "Airport '83: Trapped in Space". While the film is modestly entertaining at times, it's just too preposterous to believe. The plot: a hypersonic jet takes off for Australia and ends up stuck in outer space by accident. Director Jerry Jameson fared better with "Airport '77", and the cast (Lee Majors, Hal Linden, Lauren Hutton, Tess Harper, Ray Milland, etc.) have done better work than this. Not a real bad movie but not a real good one either. This movie originally aired as a three hour movie on TV; the home video version was edited by about 30-40 minutes and retitled "Starflight One".

** (out of four)

A mess. It really says a lot about the genre that Airplane! Is the most well-remembered disaster film to come out in the 1970s. This is basically Airplane! In space, which I realize is the plot of Airplane II: The Sequel. Why anyone would want to make a more serious version of Airplane II the year after that film's release is beyond me.

It starts off with a general inability to set a compelling tone and continues from there in fits and starts of non-action and non-plot. Non-sense eventually joins, too, as there really doesn't seem to be much concern about running out of oxygen or the passengers getting hypothermia or anything like that. Just don't bother.

This might have been made in 1983 but it carries the smell of a leftover of the 70s disaster film genre and their many TV knockoffs (director Jerry Jameson being responsible among other things for "Airport 77") with the long litany of big names in the cast and cliche filled subplots. Indeed, "Starflight" is really just a reworking of the 1977 TV-movie "SST: Disaster In The Sky" when you get down to it only this time we have the silly wrinkle of a hypersonic plane getting forced into orbit somehow by accident. There then follows the hilarious implausibility of a single space shuttle that is somehow able to be launched at a moment's notice, then land and relaunch within a couple hours (it actually takes days to get a shuttle hooked up to a new external tank and rocket boosters and then get rolled out to the launch pad). And then get a load of this: Pilot Lee Majors is insistent that the entire crew stay aboard to the end, stewardesses included, but oops, when it comes to the stewardess that he's shacking up with (Lauren Hutton) he makes darn certain that she alone among the crew gets a privileged pass off the ship before the moment of danger comes in re-entry! Guess the moral of the story is if you want to avoid the danger of possible death, make certain you're sleeping around with the people in authority.

And by the way "Goulash" from Bombay, if you're a real person who really loved this movie that much, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.....

You will find parts of this movie, little segments of it, embarrassingly funny. When I first saw it in 84, it was engrossing. When watching it back I 2003, I just found it pretty pathetic, and felt a schmuck for watching back in the eighties. But they were very cheesy and dark times. The same goes for those Airport films, me and Dad ribtickling ourselves over them. What we've got here is a fictional, what if scenario, about a hyposonic airplane, a Concorde shuttle that can make the distance from Los Angeles to Sydney in two hours. In no way is a two second exterior shot of Sydney airport, Sydney airport. What cheek. We have a good cast here too, notably Linden and Majors, one of many few films he did. While in the air, a rocket has exploded sending hulks of a metal careering towards the super cool airplane. Forced to rear up, drastically, they caught in orbit, for which there is no way to return. I remember in olden days, this got incredibly tense. And when the plane set down again, a relief came over me, although a score of passengers got lost in one of those shutes that blew up. But you just take Starflight One for what is it, a guilty cheesy, eighties pleasure, for the whole family, with unintentional laughs here and there.