Starflight One

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.

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.

The earlier reviewer who said that Starflight (or as my video copy is titled, Starflight One) should have been called Airport '83 hit the nail on the head. This is very much an Airport style disaster movie, albeit one with pretty decent effects (for a TV movie from 1983!) and a very original storyline. Its not great by any stretch of the imagination, but I found it to be a diverting way to spend 2 hours, and that is all I asked from it. I liked Lee Majors, and Hal Linden, but the rest of the cast was lacking. Dykstra's effects are very good for the most part, and I really enjoyed his model work and motion control shots -- very nice especially considering they were crafted for the small screen. If you like Airport and its sequels (as I do), then this hard to find TV movie is worth checking out.

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.....

I'll admit it: I used to love this movie as a kid. But that was when I thought anything was possible. Now that I'm older (and have seen the Airport Movies), I realize just how bad this movie really was.

First, it should have been called Airport '83, since it has a nearly identical plot to the rest of the Airport series (especially The Concorde: Airport '79, where technical malfunctions screw up the Concorde).

Second is the truly abominable acting. Lee Majors, the Six Million Dollar Man himself, stars as the plane's captain, who is married but shacking up with the head stewardess (Lauren Hutton, which explains why she is given a first-class seat out of the plane at the end). Hal Linden plays the designer and head engineer of Starflight One, who seems very uncomfortable in his role. The rest of the cast was too terrible to mention as their parts didn't even get off the ground, so to speak.

Third are the obvious mistakes, scientific errors, and plot holes that are large enough to fly a Star Destroyer through. For example: -Starflight was equipped with a flange that allowed an airlock to be fitted over it. But if it was never designed to operate in a vacuum (like outer space), why have it there in the first place? -Captain Briggs mentions that everything still worked, including the engines. If the engines worked, and they were in a decaying orbit, why not just transfer to a higher orbit? -In this movie, NASA service techs seem to be recruited from NASCAR, since they are able to service and launch the Space Shuttle Columbia several times in two days (which is physically impossible, and why didn't that second shuttle help out sooner?). -It was mentioned that Starflight was not built with a heat shield. Bt at the speeds that it was designed to operate at, kinetic heating and friction would necessitate SOME kind of protective layer on the aircraft.

-How come we never see the blonde female astronaut's face? -Starflight uses scramjets to provide thrust, but these engines cannot operate from a stand-still as they are shown to do; they must be in motion before they can operate. -An aircraft that is designed to operate at Mach 6 and higher speeds would not likely have such huge wings in proportion to its body, or even be spindle shaped; in fact, its actual design would most likely be a lifting body.

And now for the good stuff: why I liked this movie. John Dykstra, who came up with the ships for Star Wars and Firefox, was the one who designed Starflight One; the plane, while not believable, still looks very good. Also, Lalo Schifferin's score was very good and dramatic. In all, about a 6 out of 10.