In between the release of Airport (1970) and Airport 1975 (1974), there had already been a slew of disaster movies to hit the big screen. This includes some of the best ones, like The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974), and Earthquake (1974). There would be many more to come, but already you can start to see the ideas running dry.
Buy Airport 1975 4K UHDA small, private plane crashes into a large Boeing 747, knocking a hole in its cockpit, killing the plane’s navigator (Erik Estrada) and copilot, while severely injuring its pilot (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.). It is that last part I find interesting. The captain does lose consciousness for a little while, but quickly recovers. He’s clearly injured for the entirety of the flight, but at one point is able to help answer some questions concerning a certain flight maneuver. But he never once attempts to fly the plane. He never returns to the cockpit. In most films like this, he would heroically attempt to keep flying, possibly dying for his effort, or they’d just kill him off from the start. Benching him in the back of the plane, where he mostly just lies moaning in discomfort is such an odd thing to me.
The actual flying is then left up to the First Stewardess Nancy Pryor (Karen Black). Unfortunately, she is a woman, and the film seems to hate women. Before the crash, all the stewardesses are sexually harassed by the pilots and navigator (Erik Estrada especially treats them like meat). And Nancy spends most of her scenes trying to fly the plane in utter fear, unable to do the simplest of tasks, even though, presumably as First Stewardess, she’s had plenty of experience on a plane in and around the cockpit.
But really her fear is designed for the film to have to bring in Captain Al Murdock (Charlton Heston – who gets first billing but doesn’t actually show up until a good half hour of the film’s runtime). He tries to guide Nancy into flying the plane over the radio, but when she proves too incapable, he flies up in a helicopter and essentially tethers himself to the 707 through the large hole in the cockpit. Thus giving our film a much-needed jolt of excitement and the film’s biggest set piece.
The film regularly checks in with various passengers. Gloria Swanson essentially plays herself, an aging actress more concerned with the master tapes of her soon-to-be-released autobiography than her own safety. Myrna Loy is Mrs. Devaney, a poorly written part that’s basically playing straight-man to Sid Caesar, who plays a small-time actor who keeps asking her if she’s seen him in any of his movies. Dana Andrews is the poor pilot of the smaller plane that crashes into the 747. Jerry Stiller gets a few laughs as a drunk who sleeps through the entire ordeal, waking up after it is all over, bewildered that they already arrived. And Linda Blair is a sick little girl on her way to get an organ transplant. Much is initially made of the fact that she can’t be off her dialysis machine for much longer than the flight is supposed to last, but then the film mostly drops that plot line – something they could have wrung for quite a bit of tension. Instead, she mostly seems like a happy little girl.
The only returning character from Airport, the only connection to that film at all actually, is Joe Patroni (George Kennedy.) In Airport, he was the chief mechanic and was vitally important in saving the lives of all the passengers on the doomed airplane. Here, he’s been promoted to Vice President of Operations but is given much less to actually do. His main role seems to be talking about how awesome the Boeing 747 is, making one wonder if he didn’t take home a second paycheck from the airline.
I am a sucker for 1970s disaster movies. I love them all, even the not very good ones. And you can be certain Airport 1975 is not a very good movie. All the characters are thinly drawn, making it nearly impossible to care what happens to any of them. The men often belittle the women when they aren’t downright harassing them, and the women are mostly incapable of providing much help. The disaster is still relatively small scale, and the film fails to create the requisite tension, or even provide that many thrills.
Still. there is something sort of amazing watching Charlton Heston be dropped from a helicopter on a rope into that gaping hole, and it does feature a nun singing a lullaby to a smiling Linda Blair, and that’s not nothing.
Kino Lorber’s new 4K UHD transfer looks quite good.
Extras include:
DISC 1 (4K UHD):
- Brand New HDR/Dolby Vision Master – From a 4K Scan of the 35mm Original Camera Negative
- NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson
- 5.1 Surround and Lossless 2.0
- Triple-Layered UHD100 Disc
- Optional English Subtitles
DISC 2 (BLU-RAY):
- Brand New HD Master – From a 4K Scan of the 35mm Original Camera Negative
- NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson
- Theatrical Trailer (Newly Mastered in 2K)
- 5.1 Surround and Lossless 2.0
- Dual-Layered BD50 Disc
- Optional English Subtitles
Airport 1975 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.
