Florida2

Incredibly, though the film opened in 1962, my grade school teachers somehow must have known someone who knew someone and managed to show our assembly the film just two years later, and I recall being so impressed that someone could help someone with a handicap, that to this day my life is still directly influenced by being a part of the deaf and handicap community.

Of course the highlight of the film is the 12-minute dining room struggle between a wild Helen and Annie - filmed 20 years before anaerobic exercise became popular, and you can bet that not all the sounds heard are those of a Foley artist - no doubt both actors had their share of bruises after that scene! An incredible true story and a film worth it's Academy Awards, and probably one of the last great Hollywood films to be made in Black and White.

Glades2

Compared to the original version of Airport and later aviation films (The Crash Landing of Flight 243, Flight 93) the sequels to Airport all ranged from silly to terrible - for all their faults perhaps one good thing of films today is that, like Flight 93, they are much more realistic...

The acting in this sequel to the 1970 version of Airport was poor to fair - even the acting of George Kennedy, as dependable an actor as he's been, seemed to be automatic, in a sense - his 1970 role of Joe Patroni being the best...

Swearing was absent in the 1970 film but not in the sequels - why screenwriters always believe that swearing is essential escapes me - the best television programs and films often "managed" to write award-winning scripts without the need for breaking one of the 10 Commandments - apparently Charlton Heston forgot what was told to him in his role as Moses...

Helen Reddy's role as a singing nun (Julie Andrews had nothing to worry about) was ironic, considering she was the author and singer of the highly controversial "I am woman" just one year earlier...

The only bright spot was perhaps the comedic acting of Sid Cesar and other comedians of their time, in their role as nervous passengers...

Over all, a film not worth the Oscar that the 1970 film earned...

The movie seems to be another one of Producer Robert Halmi Jr.'s "follow-up films" to his work in the legendary "Lonesome Dove" series, and, in fact, the time line of this film brings the entire Lonesome Dove era up and into the 20th Century (or just into the new century, in the year 1901).

The pursuit of Billy Bucklin aside, the movie does have a similar Lonesome Dove feel to it, especially when it comes to the unfinished relationship of John McKay and Joshua - similar to that of Woodruff Call and Newt in the first Lonesome Dove film.

However, while not directly related to the story's ending, the film does illustrate how individuals in that period of American history, similar to men like Call - and McKay and Hutchinson - were now discovering in their later years, that their feelings for the American West had become ironically similar to those of the Native Americans they helped to displace - that the wild, unclaimed vast landscape, much to their sadness or even anger, had begun to disappear into history.

Unfortunately, viewers who decided to abandon the last few minutes of this film (once the gunfire ended) missed McKay's parting words on this subject, which might give meaning to many older Americans who feel similarly when it comes to life 100 years later, in the early 21st Century...