Disaster movies remained quite popular throughout the 1970s, and despite the general critical consensus that these movies aren’t very good, they were often nominated for Academy Awards (albeit usually in technical categories with a few acting nods thrown in for good measure). The difficulty was not in finding an audience but in coming up with new and interesting disasters for their cavalcade of stars to survive. This was especially true for the Airport series since their disasters had to involve air travel in some way.
Buy Airport ’77 4K UHDDespite the title of these films, after the first one they pretty much abandoned the airport locations, instead focusing on the actual planes in the sky (or, as we’ll see with this film, sometimes in other spaces). It is fascinating to me that they didn’t do something like Die Hard 2 would do many years later and have a terrorist (or even a computer malfunction) wreak havoc at an airport, causing various planes to crash. But what do I know? I’m just a guy who likes watching movies.
The first film involved a man with a bomb, the other had an in-air collision; you can almost hear the writers scratching their heads wondering what other sort of disaster they could inflict on their characters – clearly they didn’t have my brilliant creativity (or a time machine) to come up with (or steal) that Die Hard 2 idea. Instead, they basically stole their idea from The Poseidon Adventure.
That’s right, folks, this plane is going underwater.
I’m not sure this type of film needs an extensive plot synopsis, but I’ll briefly sum it up. A rich art collector (James Stewart) has decided to open his private collection to the public. He’s just built a super luxury plane, and for its maiden flight, he’s bringing along a bunch of socialites, his estranged daughter, her son, and of course that priceless art collection. Naturally, a handful of crooks concoct a plan to steal the art.
This plan involves spraying some sleeping gas through the plane’s ventilation system, then landing on some remote island, and zooming off to points unknown with the goods. Naturally, things go wrong, and they crash-land in the middle of (where else?) the Bermuda Triangle. Because this is a super awesome, brand-new plane, it does not bust open when it crashes but sinks gently to the ocean floor (which, amazingly, is not all that far down but is dangerously close to a ravine, and the plane periodically slips in that direction).
It will be up to our stalwart captain (Jack Lemmon) to keep everybody calm and get a signal to the surface to let the rescue team know where they are (for the crooks flew miles off course and kept the plane low enough to be missed by radar). It will take the Coast Guard, the Navy, and this series only recurring character, Joe Patroni (George Kennedy), to find some way to raise that plane without drowning the passengers before they run out of air.
Like all of these films, our cast is star-studded. Besides the aforementioned actors, there is also Brenda Vacarro as the pilot’s girlfriend, Christopher Lee as a rich scientist, and Lee Grant as his nagging, alcoholic wife. Olivia De Havilland and Joseph Cotten are old friends who haven’t seen each other in many years. They are all given very little to do, though Christopher Lee does get a chance to sacrifice himself for the greater good.
It is a ridiculously silly film, saved by some pretty good direction by Jerry Jameson and some damn fine acting from Jack Lemmon. That’s the thing with these films: you know exactly what you are getting into with them. The best you can hope for out of these is some suspenseful action, a well-used cast, and to never be bored. Airport ’77 delivers on two of those things. The script is tight, and the direction keeps things moving quickly. The disaster is a little silly, but putting the plane underwater adds an interesting dimension and keeps this third film from going stale. Other than Jack Lemmon, the cast is underused. But I’ll be darned if Lemmon doesn’t carry this entire thing admirably.
Kino Lorber presents Airport ’77 with a new 4K scan from the original film elements. It comes with two discs, a 4K UHD and a regular Blu-ray. Extras are surprisingly light; other than some nice technical specs, you just get one audio commentary. Especially disappointing is the fact that there was a version of this film shown on NBC that included 70 extra minutes of outtakes and new footage shot especially for that viewing. It would have been nice to see that added here.
But what we do get is one of the more enjoyable disaster movies of the 1970s.
Airport ’77 will be released September 30 on UHD and Blu-ray. It should be noted that Kino Lorber is releasing a boxed set of all four Airport films in October.
