Airport 1975 (1974)

Nope, that's not a typo. Airport 1975 was made and released in 1974. Many months before 1975 even.

People in This Movie:

- Charleton Heston, America's Greatest Actor
- Jerry Stiller (Frank Costanza!)
- Norman Fell (Mr. Roeper From Three’s Company!)
- An elderly Dana Andrews.
- Gloria Swanson (evil lady from Sunset Boulevard)
- Karen Black as Chuck Heston’s love interest. Scientologist + NRA nutcase = ugh (although Heston does sport a lime green turtleneck and sleeps on a bright purple sofa in this, which is pretty badass)
- Erik Estrada!
- Michael Westen’s mom on "Burn Notice"
- Sid Caesar
- George Kennedy



Just Cold Reviewin'

There aren’t much expectations when you’re about to watch Airport 1975, the first sequel to Airport, which itself was a terrible movie. Hell, even Burt Lancaster called Airport a piece of shit, and he was the star. There’s a world of difference between Airport and Airport 1975. While the original was a slice of pro-‘merican optimism, about those hard-workin’ men doing their jobs to make sure that airport operated grandly and all those flights landed, Airport 1975 has thrown out any sense of humorless industrialism for pure campyness. Loaded with stars who needed the work, Airport 1975 is a first-class 70s b-movie camp-fest, which are some of the best movies to watch late at night, after a few glasses of whiskey.

While most people have seen the parody movie Airplane, few have seen Airport 1975 or any of its sequels. But as you're watching Airport 1975, you’ll soon realize that much of the gimmicks from Airplane are parodies lifted from this film. Airport’s other sequels—Airport 1977 and Airport: Concorde (79) are so ridiculous that you really can’t parody them—one involves the flight going to the bottom of the sea with Jimmy Stewart as an angry old millionaire. Poor Jimmy Stewart. Between this and that awful Lassie remake, he wasn't getting too much work in the late 70s.

The plot’s pretty straightforward: Dana Andrews has a heart attack and smashes his little plane right into the front of the 747, causing surprisingly little damage (essentially the cockpit glass shatters and two of the pilots get sucked out; the third one dies, leaving stewardess Karen Black in charge of flying the plane). I’m not a scientist or anything, but I’m pretty sure two planes colliding, even if one’s a lot small than the other, would involve a little more than the windshield breaking. But this is Airport 1975. They couldn’t even get the year right on the title, so this isn’t a movie you should be thinking about closely. Or at all.

There are some incredibly goofy things about this movie, like nuns on a plane. Have you ever seen a nun on a plane? Or deathly ill children on stretchers waiting for a special transplant? This just doesn’t happen. Whenever I go on a plane it’s just businesspeople and some families going on vacation. That’s about it. Also, Charleton Heston usually isn’t the pilot. Usually.

The sole constant character in all of the Airport movies is George Kennedy, who fucking owns in general, but also makes these movies somewhat watchable. Kennedy’s just a regular blue collar guy who reluctantly saves airports from the brink of collapse, because no one else can.

Greatest line in the movie: “Salt Lake City? I went there once. It was closed.” Thank you Mr. Roeper. The collective groan from the entire plane when the captain announced that they were re-routing to Salt Lake City was fantastic. This of course was before crazy old Dana Andrews smashed into the plane, re-routing them to death. But thankfully George Kennedy and Chuck Heston fly up to the damaged 747, and Chuck hops aboard (?) and flies it to safety. Which was a wonderful statement on women’s lib, as that stewardess Karen Black certainly wouldn’t be able to handle those big scary airplane controls.

Honestly, I’m surprised Chuck Heston didn’t just shoot the fucking plane down.