Airport 1975
“Airport” was not among my favorite movies, but I did appreciate how it efficiently manipulated us for two hours. The clichés were old and the typecasting relentless; but we were never bored. “Airport 1975” does happen to be better than the original, which was a remake of itself.
The story is familiar. A private plane crashes into the flight deck of a 747, killing or disabling its crew. A stewardess pilots the plane by following radioed instructions, and then a rescue pilot (Charlton Heston, inevitably) is lowered from an Air Force helicopter into the gaping hole in the plane. Meanwhile, a young kidney patient grows weaker, a drunk accosts the pilot and Gloria Swanson dictates finishing touches on her autobiography (“I never did want the damn thing published while I was alive anyhow.”)
What makes this work so well is that they concentrate on action in the screenplay and direction instead of getting bogged down with subplots as “Airport” did. It can’t be helped, I suppose, that Heston and the brave stewardess (Karen Black) have been having an affair for six years; or that the airline vice president (George Kennedy promoted from his operations command in “Airport“) has his wife and daughter on board; or that we have our usual ecumenical mixture of stereotypes, racial groups, ages, sexes and people aboard. That’s all part of formula.
But at least “Airport 1975” introduces its characters quickly and without fussing around with them too long before it gets down to business. And after the midair collision (which has been telegraphed for at least twenty minutes), some really excellent special effects make you grip your armrests again. With “Airport,” you never quite felt those people were on a real plane; there shots looked faked. “Airport 1975” has much more plausible look, and a lot of effective aerial photography.
It also gives us Karen Black, the stewardess in a performance that is compelling. She’s probably too good an actress for a role like this, but she makes it real. (And who could ever quite believe Dean Martin as the pilot in “Airport”?) My only quarrel with the role is that it falls into the trap of assuming she’s incompetent because she’s a woman. Her lip quivers; her eyes well up with tears; she’s indecisive at key moments. The men on the ground decide they have to get a real pilot on board. My notion is that a real stewardess, faced with such an unlikely situation, would respond professionally and coolly.
Never mind. While the wind rips into the plane and passengers bundle up with blankets and mountains loom ahead and the first rescue pilot falls to his death and Gloria Swanson remembers her first flight (“It was in 1917; Cecil B. De Mille was the pilot; and we flew nonstop from Los Angeles to Pasadena“) while all these crazy things are happening “Airport 1975” is good, exciting corny escapism, and not something I’d want to watch as an in-flight movie.
Watch Airport 1975 For Free On Solarmovies.