Airport 1975 (1974)

User Rating:

5.2/10   

Director:

Jack Smight

Writers:

Arthur Hailey (novel)
Don Ingalls (written by)

Release Date:

18 October 1974 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Drama | Thriller

Tagline:

Something hit us... The crew is dead... Help us, please, please help us!

Plot:

A 747 in flight collides with a small plane, and is rendered pilotless. Somehow the control tower must get a pilot aboard so the jet can land.

Plot Keywords:

Pilot | Co Pilot | Stewardess | Boeing 747 | Disaster

Awards:

Nominated for Golden Globe.

US TV Schedule:

Sun. July 12

4:00 AM

AMC

Cast

Charlton Heston	...	Alan Murdock
Karen Black	...	Nancy Pryor
George Kennedy	...	Joe Patroni
Gloria Swanson	...	Gloria Swanson
Efrem Zimbalist Jr.	...	Captain Stacy
Susan Clark	...	Helen Patroni
Helen Reddy	...	Sister Ruth
Linda Blair	...	Janice Abbott
Dana Andrews	...	Scott Freeman
Roy Thinnes	...	Urias
Sid Caesar	...	Barney
Myrna Loy	...	Mrs. Devaney
Ed Nelson	...	Major John Alexander
Nancy Olson	...	Mrs. Abbott
Larry Storch	...	Glenn Purcell

Also Known As:

Airport '75 (International: English title) (informal title)

Runtime:

107 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Canada:PG (Ontario) | Australia:PG | Singapore:PG | Netherlands:12 (orginal rating) | Brazil:14 | USA:PG (Certificate #24063) | Finland:K-16 | Iceland:L | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

Edwards Air Force Base, California, USA

Company:

Universal Pictures

Trivia:

Gloria Swanson was given her own private bungalow when filming commenced at Universal Studios. Her arrival and residence, was included as part of the studio tour for tourists.

Goofs:

Continuity: During the evacuation of the 747 after landing, Beverly Garland (who played the Baron's pilot's wife) can be seen evacuating from coach.

Quotes:

Nancy Pryor: The radio's dead. We're all alone now Bette.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "The Nanny: Kindervelt Days (#2.15)" (1995)

Soundtrack:

Best Friend

"The stewardess is flying the plane?"

It wasn't until the 70s disaster movie craze was well under way that Universal got round to a sequel to its 1970 blockbuster Airport – largely because the lucrative profits deals Lancaster and Martin secured on the first film made reassembling the original cast impractical (though George Kennedy did return to provide a vague fig leaf of continuity). It wasn't until producer Jennings Lang came across a script intended as a TV movie that some bright spark thought of slapping the Airport brand on it, adding 1975 to the title and abandoning the actual Airport aspect to concentrate on the planes in jeopardy instead.

The result, Airport 1975 (actually released in 1974) is the other movie that Airplane! lampooned mercilessly, what with sick transplant patients, Hare Krishnas and singing nuns among the passengers, not to mention Charlton Heston in safari suit and shades providing the blueprint for Robert Stack's Rex Kramer and Gloria Swanson in the kind of comeback role that could have been written by Joe Gillis for Norma Desmond (although it was supposedly intended for Garbo). In fact, Swanson wrote her own anecdote-filled dialogue, and boy does it show – this isn't a part, it's a chat show appearance.

Swanson isn't the only star of yesteryear bulking up the cast, with Myrna Loy knocking back several boilermakers, Sid Caesar providing the odd wisecrack while Dana Andrews, every drink he ever took etched onto his face, gets his own back for Effrem Zimbalist crashing into his plane in The Crowded Sky by crashing into Zimbalist's 747 this time round, leaving stewardess Karen Black to fly the plane until Chucky baby comes to the rescue, taking off his shades for a midair transfer that's a mixture of daring stuntwork and pitiful backprojection. Yet it's surprisingly entertaining, superbly photographed by veteran Philip Lathrop, much better directed by Jack Smight than it has any right to be and, as the shortest entry in the series at 107 minutes, keeps things tight enough not to leave too much room to dwell on the absurdities. Well, almost: if ever there was a moment where Linda Blair projectile vomiting on a member of the cloth was not just absolutely justifiable but positively mandatory it's when Helen Reddy sings about her best friend being herself, but sadly Linda doesn't deliver the pea soup on this occasion. But while we may scoff today, Jennings Lang knew what he was doing – no singing nun movie has ever lost money at the box-office, and the film was a big enough hit to guarantee two more sequels with considerably bigger budgets, though not before, in one of those nasty ironies the series is prone to, Dana Andrews' light aircraft in the film really was destroyed in a mid-air collision in 1975. Oh, and if the midair footage looks familiar, that's because Universal recycled it for years, most memorably in the 747 episode of The Incredible Hulk TV series.