Review: Airport ‘77

Hoping to invite members of the public to his swanky mansion in order to show off his fancy-arse art collection, millionaire industrialist James Stewart has a new company jet fly his guests out, including estranged daughter Pamela Bellwood and his grandson. Thieves, including an inside man in the co-pilot (Robert Foxworth), have organised a plan to pilfer Stewart’s artworks that are set to be on display at the mansion. Part of the plan involves gassing passengers and crew, and crashing the plane into the water before the trio of thieves (the others being Gil Gerard and Monte Markham) are able to run off with the loot. Once everyone on board comes to, it’s up to Captain Jack Lemmon to save everyone on board. No easy task when they’ve awoken to a plane stuck on the bottom of the ocean. Brenda Vaccaro plays the chief stewardess currently dating Lemmon, Christopher Lee plays an oceanographer and experienced diver, whose bored and shrill wife Lee Grant is a constant embarrassment for him.

If you see only one “Airport” movie in your lifetime, well that’s good because the others aren’t much chop. This 1977 disaster movie from director Jerry Jameson (a TV veteran who nonetheless helmed 2015’s “Captive” with Kate Mara) is truly and honestly the only wholly worthwhile one. Yes, “Airport” had the stoic Burt Lancaster leading an all-star cast, “Airport 1975” had the reliable Charlton Heston in the cockpit leading an all-star cast…of mostly TV faces, and…let’s just skip right over “The Concorde- Airport ‘79” altogether. This one contains the best all-star cast, features the best acting across the board for a genre that doesn’t really require such a thing, and is equipped with the most interesting characters and plot of the series, too. It also has an excellent John Cacavas (“Horror Express”, “Airport 1975”, and a lot of TV) music score to boot. Some people feel a little uneasy watching such aeroplane disaster movies as this, but I think those people probably need to lighten up. This is silly entertainment, not “United 93”.

I appreciate the time taken to show us the setting up of not only the many characters here, but also the terrorists’ plot. Of all the plots in this schlocky franchise, I think this one, although outlandish, is probably the most terrifying. Scripted by Michael Scheff (a TV writer of shows like “Magnum P.I.” and “Hart to Hart”) and David Spector (his second and last credit to date, strangely) it’s probably scientifically horseshit, but you may as well not watch the movie at all with that kind of mindset.

The cast, as I said is terrific here for the most part. It’s funny, Burt Lancaster and Charlton Heston are among my all-time favourites and proven action men hero-types, and yet…Jack Lemmon’s the guy I’d want flying a plane in this scenario, even if he was stupid enough to get clonked on the head in the first place. In an excellent performance, he’s not unflappable, but he gives the character a reliable, empathetic presence that just can’t be taught. Similarly, the underrated Brenda Vaccaro is perfect and loveable as the charming flight attendant Lemmon’s in a relationship with. Then there’s the supporting cast, among which Christopher Lee, Olivia De Havilland (playing an elderly but wily, wealthy card sharp) , and especially Lee Grant stand out particularly well. Lee and Grant (see what I did there?) are perfectly mismatched as the married couple from Hell. He’s a socially conscious Jacques Cousteau-type who doesn’t have time for trivial things like spousal affection, she’s the lonely and neglected wife who will shout endlessly about how lonely and neglected she is. Both are in terrific form, even if the versatile Lee gets punked out just as he’s set to show his action hero stuff. That’s what happens when you enter a film that already has Jack Lemmon up in the air and George Kennedy on the ground (Given nothing to do though. He is merely here because Joe Petroni always has to figure into these films it seems). Grant could play her role in her sleep (it’s not much different from her role in the excellent and underrated “Voyage of the Damned”), but she deserves credit for going all-out, without going too all-out that her histrionics stop the film dead. It’s nicely modulated bitchiness and hysteria.

Elsewhere in the cast we have veteran character actor M. Emmet Walsh in one of his early roles as a medical professional whose expertise is ill-suited to the task at hand here, but is the best they’ve got on board. He’s terrific, but like Lee, has to be content with playing a supporting part in the action. Robert Foxworth wouldn’t be any of my choices to play the lead villain, but he performs the part ably enough nonetheless. The legendary James Stewart is always terrific, but I actually think playing a rich guy who prizes things over family is more Henry Fonda territory. For some reason, the sight of Maidie Norman (as De Havilland’s travelling companion) playing late 70s-era computer games with children just makes me smile. The best of the rest is probably Darren McGavin playing the on-board aeroplane engineer. He’s the only one next to Lemmon whose character is allowed to look truly competent and efficient. On the downswing we have Arlene Golonka and her idiotic baby-voiced bimbo routine. I also feel sorry for the talented Robert Hooks, he’s basically playing Ted Lange from “The Love Boat”. Yeah, the black folk in this one get to play servile roles…yikes, 1977. You were still a bit racist. Joseph Cotten is one of cinema’s finest ever character actors/B-leads, but here (as an old acquaintance of De Havilland’s) he looks glassy-eyed and groggy even before the gas kicks in. His latter day credits were mostly Italian films and Z-grade genre efforts, at least this B-grade flick was a step up I suppose. Meanwhile, these 70s disaster films always have a stupid, wet singer (occasionally a singing nun) and this one goes the extra mile by giving us a falsetto-singing, white Stevie Wonder twit warbling about beauty being in the eye of the beholder. You’re blind, you can’t see a fucking thing, dude. That dude and a young Kathleen Quinlan are simply too much cheese, they’re more “Airplane!”-worthy characters whereas the rest of the film pretty much escapes that sort of thing (The only film in the series that does for the most part escape being “Airplane!” fodder).

The best film in the series and one of the better disaster movies of the period. This is silly, but the cast is rock-solid, the story interesting and gripping (If reminiscent of “The Poseidon Adventure”). Definitely worth a look if you’re not too sensitive to such forms of entertainment these days.

Rating: B-