A Boeing 707 flying out of Chicago's Lincoln Airport (good luck finding that airport in real life!) on an evening flight to Rome is forced to turn back after a not-so-bright bomber blows a large hole in the side of the plane. The bomber, played by Emmett Heflin, plays his role as well as any typecast character can I suppose. I mean, really, how many flights have you been on which happens to have two nuns, a priest, three doctors, an elderly stowaway, a couple of uniformed military men, a pregnant stewardess, and the niece of a customs officer who picked out the bomber in the terminal because of "something in his eyes." Give me a break! Most of the dialogue is stale and crusty, partly because everyone acts their role in this farce so seriously. This was George Kennedy's first aviation disaster movie if I'm not mistaken: his face would later become a familiar one to passengers on Hollywood's ill-fated flights. His role as Joe Patroni would make him the only actor to appear in all of the "Airport" movies.
Second in the series, this is definitely one of the better "Airport" movies. Thankfully the number of ludicrous subplots are down from its predecessor, although not enough to save key scenes from being spoofed in the "Airplane" classic. This film gets down to business, without wasting so much time as in Airport. A Boeing 747 on a flight bound for L.A. is rerouted to Salt Lake City because of weather conditions. Meanwhile a private pilot has a heart attack and loses control of his plane which smashes into the cockpit injuring the Captain, killing the flight engineer, and turning the co-pilot into an impromptu sky-diver. The stewardess, played by Karen Black, is forced to take the controls for a bit before the folks on the ground decide to drop a pilot into the plane to complete the landing. Of course one of the would-be pilots doesn't quite make it, so the job falls to aviation ultra-hero Charleton Heston. Not to worry about Captain Heston's flying experience though--he had some 707 flying experience in "Skyjacked."
In "Airport" movie number three, a luxury Boeing 747 is turned into a submarine after a plot to steal a fortune from its cargo hold is foiled by a well placed oil rig. (That's what you get for flying two hundred feet off the water!) Anyway, the plane sinks to the bottom while Captain Gallagher (Jack Lemmon) and Stan Buchek (Darren McGavin) try to figure out what to do. Meanwhile the plane's owner Phillip Stevens (played by James Stewart) and Joe Patroni (played by George Kennedy of course), begin the search for the missing aircraft. Of particular interest in this movie is the real-life rescue capabilities of the U.S. Navy which are highlighted towards the end as the plane is raised to the surface. (Of course, with budget cuts and all, the Navy has had to cut back on the number of 747s it raises from the ocean floor these days.) Most of the special effects were worked out quite nicely in this film . . . gone is the phoney image from the original "Airport." A bit of useless trivia--in the original screenplay, one of the would-be hijackers lived (the co- pilot); in the movie the last of the conspirators drowns at the end. Guess we won't be seeing him in the sequel.
In this, the last of the "Airport" series, the first U.S. commercial concorde is first targeted by a needle-nosed attack drone, then fired upon by an armed phantom fighter jet, and then later sabotaged and forced to make an emergency landing in a snow bank in the Swiss Alps. All this just to destroy some documents which implicate Kevin Harrison (played by Robert Wagner) in illegal arms sales. Come on folks, this is the U.S. were talking about here . . . with the right lawyers he could probably plea-bargain those charges down to misdemeanors and be out in a year. Anyway, the plot sends the screaming passengers plunging towards the ocean depths a couple of times and makes for some interesting, albeit fake, special effects. Watch for the scenes of the concorde speeding through the barrier nets at Le Bourget airport in Paris: the cuts to the plane on the runway are real enough, but the ones of it going through the nets look like a toy model on a plastic runway. For those of you who don't travel much there are interesting locales featured, such as Washington D.C., Paris, and of course the Swiss Alps. George Kennedy is promoted to Captain Joe Patroni (a big promotion from his TWA mechanic role in "Airport") who along with Alain Delon make this last of the "Airport" movies a thriller to the end.
Charleton Heston flies a Boeing 707 which is commandeered by a mysterious, lipstick toting hijacker. This hijacker notes his desire to see Red Square by means of a threatening message (written in lipstick) on the lavatory mirror. Closing off the lavatory doesn't help, as later, ANOTHER message later appears in a SECOND lavatory. No doubt sensing that further restrictions on the number of available lavatories will precipitate a crisis all its own, the Captian instead opts to head for Moscow. Of course, at that time in history, Russia was not terribly eager to have planes filled with evil American capitalists landing on their airfields, much less those with lipstick-toting skyjackers. I'm sure it was interesting enough for it's time--with the Cold War over, however, it seems a bit strange now. On a worthless trivia note, watch for John Hillerman ("Higgins" from the Magnum P.I. series) as the air-traffic controller.
This Aaron Spelling production is true to its "Love Boat" heritage. A DC-10 piloted by Robert Vaughn en route to Honolulu is notified of a bomb threat en route. Of course they would have found out hours before the plane had taken off if the woman at the information desk, the airport manager's secretary, and the airport manager himself (played by Gil Gerard), not been so woefully inept as to let the letter sit around until the plane was halfway across the Pacific. The film has lots of star performances in the truest "Love Boat" style, but even an appearance by George Kennedy (who plays "Rudy," the head mechanic) wasn't enough to make this one feel quite plausible enough. So far as aviation disaster films go, I'm not sure who makes the more absurd pilot--Dean Martin or The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Perhaps one of them could explain to me why there are four thrust levers in the cockpit of a DC-10 which has only three engines. Or why the word "Los Angeles" is taboo throughout the movie--nearly every reference to the airport is always "International Airport," despite the fact that it was practically filmed on location at LAX, down to the use of real-life runway 7L. Ah well, I guess one can't be too picky . . . given the number of years since the last "Airport" movie I guess this one is about as good as we can expect to see.
In this made-for-TV movie, terrorists overtake a DC-10 en route to London but receive a surprise from the passengers. The lesson to be learned from this film: when the Captain says "don't open that door" you best obey him. Of course, worse than terrorists overtaking your flight is flying in a plane that has the same cockpit defect as the one portrayed here--yes, once again the plane has only three engines but the cockpit has four thrust levers. Little known fact of little known interest: there are two endings to this movie--one that showed in the U.S. and one that showed everywhere else.
How can one help but not love this classic of aviation disaster spoofs. For all of us who have endured so much in absurdity to receive so little in realism, Airplane appropriately spoofs otherwise sacred scenes from the classic aviation disaster films. This, together with a star-studded cast which does every gag with a straight face, makes Airplane a hilarious source of comic relief. Every possible "oversight" is made so as to make this parody all the more outrageous: sound of a prop-engine is used whenever the 707 body is shown from the outside; the mechanic pops open the nose-cone to check the oil; the plane is two minutes out of the "radar range" . . . and if you have any doubts, just check the RadarRange oven. There's more gags than can possibly be counted in this one, and every viewing will reveal a few you didn't see the time before. The plot of the movie is based out of the short story "Flight into Danger" which made its way to film in "Zero Hour." Peter Graves plays the pilot who, along with rest of the crew and most of the passengers is incapacitated from a food poisoned fish dinner. Robert Hays plays a washed-out pilot who is forced to take over the controls. My only disappointment in this one was that the producers didn't cast George Kennedy in some sort of role . . . alas, the large number of stars who had traditionally played "straight" roles is enough to make this zany send-up an all time favorite.
With most of the gags having been used up in the original "Airplane," the sequel was destined to be less funny than its predecessor. Still, the movie has its moments. William Shatner makes a superb addition to the cast of crazies who attempt to rescue the first U.S. space shuttle passenger flight from disaster. Lots of great scenes, although this one didn't have the historical significance of "Airplane" which drew largely on direct spoofs of classic disaster epics. Among my favorite scenes: William Shatner barking out orders to the ground staff as the shuttle is approaching--orders which include: ". . . I want a nine foot trench dug around the entire base . . . fill it with gasoline" and "I want a complete dossier on everyone who has seen 'The Sound of Music' more than four times."
Having seen a few aviation disaster movies, one becomes somewhat accustomed to implausible storylines and technical mistakes. Rarely, though, is an aviation disaster movie so egregious as to cause one to reach for the air-sickness bags in their living room. This movie, however, may prove to be the execption. The movie begins with a federal prisioner being loaded onto a commercial flight. Shortly after takeoff the prisoner's girlfriend pulls a plastic gun on the police and frees her boyfriend in a brief struggle which goes totally unnoticed by the passengers sitting directly around them. Next, the prisioner, his girlfriend, and another accomplice toting a laptop filled with plastic explosives announce that they are hijacking the plane. The pilot, Capt. Mitchell, shortly after being told that the plastic explosives could be triggered if the accomplice is jumped, proceeds to deliberately put the plane into a dive because, in her words, "if he [the hijacker] thinks we're in trouble...he'll let the emergency trucks out on the field--they can get in a lot closer to us." Yes, I see the logic...make them think the plane's in trouble by putting the plane in a dive--which tosses the hijackers all over the place, which triggers the bomb, which blows-up the plane, which kills everyone on board. Makes perfect sense to me. Of course, maybe our clueless Captain had read far enough ahead in the script to know that the laptop wouldn't blow up and the plane wouldn't disintegrate from the dive.
Things become progressively less plausible as the movie progresses. Adding insult to injury is a horrible case of "plane-swapping." Plane-swapping, as you may have gathered from prior reviews, occurs when a director, seemingly oblivious to the differences between modern aircraft, proceeds to indiscriminately alternate between a multiude of completely different aircraft for scenes supposedly portraying the same plane. In this case, the filmmakers freely switch between a 737, 767 and a DC-10--no big deal, after all they're SO much alike! Forget the details like the number of cockpit crew (2 for the 737 & 767, 3 for a DC-10), the passenger seating (3-3 for a 737, 2-3-2 on a 767, 2-5-2 on a DC-10), the cabin doors (which open out for the 737 & 767, up for a DC-10), the wing size and shape, and of course, the number of engines (two for the 737 & 767 and three for a DC-10.) The plane in this movie has 2 engines during take-off, in-flight, and landings; sprouts a third engine after landing; has two pilots in the cockpit; has doors that open up and seats 2-5-2 in coach.
There is so much more which could be said, but I'm afraid it's time to invoke my first rule about movie reviewing which is: don't spend good time rehashing bad movies.
Pandora's Clock, an NBC mini-series based on the book by John J. Nance, has proven again that no movie is so bad it can't be made worse by a preposterous plot, poor acting, and numerous mistakes. This is particularly shameful because John Nance, a former commerical airline pilot, was on the set when the movie was filmed! All someone would have had to do was ask him, but alas, that would have been too much I suppose.
The basic plot of the story goes something like this: a passenger comes in contact with a dangerous disease while vacationing near a top-secret biological warfare laboratory in Germany. (I usually try to book my travel away from such facilities.) This passenger then proceeds to board a 747 bound for New York. Shortly into the flight the man collapses--and later dies. Now the entire world is convinced that all of the passengers on the plane may have this deadly virus so they refuse to allow the plane to land anywhere. Not to worry though, as the CIA director (played by Robert Loggia), graciously offers to blow the plane out of the sky. No one seems to like the idea, so he decides to go ahead with it anyway. Apparently the CIA budgets must not be what they used to because their terrorist can only afford a Lear jet, equipped with optional short-range air-to-air missles. The terrorist proceeds to blast off an engine, causing the plane to attempt an unscheduled landing in the Canary Islands. After refueling, they decide to--I am not making this up--TAKE OFF AGAIN with three engines! Ha ha!! Of course, while it is technically possible for a 747 to take off with three engines, one generally hopes that the fourth engine is at least still attached to the wing. I can't say as I know too many pilots who would attempt to take off with an engine having been blasted off by a missle. But never mind that. The terrorist, meanwhile, having stopped off to refuel himself, overhears that a 747 recently landed nearby to refuel minus one engine. "Hmmmm..." he no doubt thinks to himself, "could this by some strange coincidence be the same 747 whose engine I blasted off just a short time ago?" Well just in case, he quickly takes off again and proceeds to shoot off another engine. This time the plane lands for good at Ascension Island, somewhere in the Atlantic. After a brief game of "chicken" with the Lear Jet, leading to the terrorist's untimely passing, the passengers disembark and return to their normal lives, only to discover THAT--well, I wouldn't want to ruin it for you if you haven't seen the ending.
So what could a sensitive, open-minded individual possibly find wrong with a movie such as this? Oh nothing--unless of course you've seen "SST: Death Flight," of which this movie is a hopeless (and completely unworthy) successor. Don't get me wrong, "SST: Death Flight," (US 1977) was a horrible movie, but at least it had a quasi-coherent plot. I mean, really--let's think about this. The entire movie revolves around the fact that this one passenger has been exposed to a deadly, contagious disease. All of the passengers are hence ostracized from the rest of the world because they must be kept quarantined until it is certain that no one has caught the disease. Yea right! They and 200 million other people that had to have come into contact with the sick guy before he boarded the plane!! Everyone in the stinking airport would have been exposed, prior to stepping on board flights to all corners of the known world. The 250 people on the 747 featured in this movie would have been the least of the world's problems. At least in "SST: Death Flight" the contagious virus plot was a bit more workable. In that movie the virus is being transported as cargo and leaks out into the passenger area. Hence, the problem is truly isolated to those on board the plane. Interestingly enough, the folks in that movie decide to try and land in Africa, just as the folks in Pandora's Clock are set to do. I guess Africa is the continent of choice when it comes to possibly lethal biological airline crises. But I digress--back to the movie at hand.
Aside from the minor complaint that the movie is completely preposterous, there were a few other details left out as well. The plane pretended to be a 747-400 on the inside but appered as a 747-300 on the outside. This was pretty obvious, given the telltale sign of--well, if they didn't think to check for it, they probably wouldn't listen even if we told them. Other interesting notes of interest: the airport scene at the beginning--supposedly representing a terminal at Frankfurt shows everyone boarding the plane through gate S8. Hmmmm . . . kind of strange since there is no known "S" terminal at FRA! (It takes a lot more than a phoney "ACHTUNG" sign on the gate door to make an airport in the U.S. become one in Germany.) Oh yes, I forgot to mention that there is a gate S8 at Seattle-Tacoma Int'l Airport!! Indeed, much (if not all) of the movie was filmed in the Seattle area. I noted with amusement the landing attempt at Mildenhall Air Base in England showed an approach on runway 34. Now of course there is a runway 34 at Sea-Tac, but why do I get the strange sensation that there ISN'T one at Mildenhall. Maybe there is, I don't know. Hopefully someone from the U.K. can enlighten us on this. By the way, one alert viewer has also informed me that a Southwest Airlines plane can be spotted in the background of one of the FRA scenes. Ha! I guess we are supposed to believe that Southwest is now offering transatlantic 737 service to FRA!!
Okay, well that's definitely more time than should have been spent on this review. Of course, it's only apropos that the review of a long and drawn out movie be as long and drawn out as possible. I understand that "SST: Death Flight" was featured on the "Mystery Science Theater" series. Perhaps Pandora's Clock will ultimately find its way to a similar place in aviation movie lore.
Rated 4 stars out of 5 despite its numerous flaws for a story that is interesting and exciting enough to keep you glued to your (economy-class) seat and for bringing the 747 back to the silver screen.