Washington Airport, Alan Murdock (Charlton Heston) meets his girlfriend Nancy
Pryor (Karen Black), an airline head stewardess - he is flying out to
Los Angeles during the afternoon, while she is set to work the
overnight flight and unsucessfully urges him to delay his trip so that
they can have some time together. The Columbia Airlines flight
eventually leaves that night with a variety of characters on board,
including Hollywood actress Gloria Swanson (as herself), some
Nuns, and a very ill young girl (Linda Blair) who is flying out to have
an organ transplant. Due to bad weather, the flight has to land
early at Salt Lake City, but on approach the airliner is hit by a
light aircraft, killing the crew and leaving Nancy Pryor alone at the
controls. Airline manager Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) hears about the
disaster (his wife and son are aboard), and picks up Alan Murdock (who
happened to be a Boeing 747 instructor) to fly out to Salt Lake City
and talk her down - but when they realise that the plane is almost
unflyable, they decide that someone will have to be winched aboard...
Following the amazing success of the original Airport (1970), Airport 1975 was inspiried by Airport novelist Arthur Hailey's original airplane disaster script - for the Canadian television production
Flight into Danger -
which has a crew disabled by food poisoning, leaving a light aircraft
pilot at the controls - however the mid-1970s was the era of the big
disaster movies, and so
Airport 1975's script adds a plane collision and a mid-air winching to up the stakes. Unfortunately, any links to Arthur
Hailey's carefully researched original books are completely minimal
here, in what becomes nothing more than a cliché disaster movie.
Realism is the first thing to take a dive, and we get an absurdly
convoluted plot that makes little sense (how did a light aircraft
coming in to land end up ahead of the airliner? Did none of the radar
operators notice the planes about to collide? Did none of them notice
the collision? Just how does it change from night to broad daylight so
fast?).
While
Airport (1970) gave us over an hour pre-flight to learn about the characters and their motivations, Airport 1975
gives us just 15 minutes - of which most of the time is given over to
Charlton Heston, the rest of the cast are just generic disaster movie
stereotypes, from the comic bunch of drunks, the posh actress, the sick
little girl and even some nuns (?!) and we neither know or care much
about them (a few really random scenes attempt to build character,
notably a nervous man who tries to point out his appeance in the on
flight movie, only for the print to break half-way through, and simply
come off as gratuitous) - the addition of an obnoxious media scrum is also rather pointless
and annoying. In what has to be one of the worst scenes ever filmed, one of the nuns, played by musician Helen Reddy, gives us a three minute song (a scene expertly parodied in
Airplane!
(1980). It is very noticable, from the endless string of problems
besetting the passengers, that the story would not have held up on
characters alone. Ultimately this approach destroys any real tension in
the predictable climax, and even the ending is rather too brisk and
unsatisfactory.
If
Airport 1975
is good for one thing, it is the mid-air photography - shot for
real, it gives the film a sense of authenticity that model work never could -
unfortunately accuracy is never noted too much and the plane and
weather seem to keep changing in altitude between shots (for added
excitement it seems to frequently fly
between
hills, an amazing co-incidence for a plane on auto-pilot). Most
annoyingly - despite taking pride of place on the poster-art for the
film, the collision between the planes is not actually shown. The rest
of the film is routinely directed with a generic orchestral soundtrack
that does little to raise tension.
King
of the epics, Charlton Heston takes the lead role here in what is a
largely dialogue based role, and he never really seems to get into the
film. George Kennedy returns as Joe Patroni in a larger role here and
looks very impressive, while silent movie actress Gloria Swanson has an
amusing extended cameo as herself. Karen Black is relatively
unimpressive as the female lead while Linda Blair (the world's most
famous possessed child) doesn't get much to as a sick little girl. The
rest of the cast seem fine, but their underwritten characters don't
give much chance for acting.
Airport 1975
is probably the worst of the series, falling inbetween the very
impressive first film, and the sequels which although absurd are open
and enjoyable for it. Trying to be a serious disaster film, it
completely misses out on characterisation and in trying to compensate
with over-the-top action, just becomes completely implausible. Fans of
the cheesy 1970s disaster movies might enjoy this, but anyone else is
recommended to watch
Airport
(1970) and give this a wide berth - even Charlton Heston fans can
surely find a better film with him in to watch. Not recommended.
