Flying may be the safest way to travel statistically speaking, but the Airport franchise pretty much did everything it could to disprove that theory over four movies full of ariel effrontery. The fact that a movie like Airport managed to spawn as many movies as it did is a miracle more impressive than the acts of the men and women who manage to save the day from all the flight-based fuckery as the genre isn’t exactly built for repeated visits.
But by 1977, the Airport movies had ballooned into a trilogy and even though the films were having to come up with ever more tenuous reasons why a 747 would find itself involved in such peril, it was still busting out those starry, randomly thrown together casts and finding something for George Kennedy’s repeatedly returning Joe Patroni (now an aeronautics expert) to do. It’s big, it’s histrionic and it barely features an airport at all in this one, but Aiport ’77 attempt to out-drama them all with the franchise’s most bizarre accident yet. Please extinguish your cigarettes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to splash land.
Loaded philanthropist Phillip Stevens is planning something special as he’s arranged for multiple guests to hop aboard his own personal, luxury 747 in order to fly them all to his estate in Palm Beach, Forida. However, his desire to fly everyone to tbe state of meth and crocodiles carries a more tragic tinge when we discover that his estranged daughter and her son are on board as the wealthy old man hopes to reconnect as he is secretly dying. Also located on this random-ass flight list are art critics, Marine experts, catty wives who enjoy a drink too much and a selection of art thieves who figure that hijacking the plane and gassing everyone on board mid-flight is a full proof way of stealing some priceless painting that Stevens is have transported.
Before you know it, ringleader and co-pilot Bob Chambers and his cronies have knocked everyone out and are flying low over the ocean in order to avoid radar so they can land on a private island to make their escape; however after nearly colliding with a large, offshore drilling platform (quite literally the only thing in the ocean), the plane stalls and splash lands, ultimately sinking to the bottom of the sea.
In a classic good news/bad news scenario, the place where the 747 has sunk is shallow enough to avoid crushing the plane like and empty beer can, but water is getting in and in an attempt to not get tracked, the robbers (who are now all dead expect for Bob) managed to hide their last known location before the accident. So it’s down to heroic Captain Don Gallagher to try and figure out how the hell a plane full of people can manage to get their location out to the rest of the world and subsequently escape from this mess before they become the latest victims of the legend of the Bermuda Triangle.
As I’ve stated many times before, I love an old disaster movie and I’m such a fan of all the tropes, over serious line deliveries and spot-the-actor casts, that even the more wonky entries make me happy as a pig in shit to settle down and watch a bunch of characters act terrified for two hours. While the Airport franchise had already gotten fairly preposterous with its previous entry (a mid-air collision took out the crew in that one) ’77 makes a vested effort to grasp the brass ring this time as its entire premise hangs on escaping a plane that sitting snuggly at the bottom of the sea. It’s ballsy as hell and the addition of a cluster of art thieves who cause the crash in the first place (presumably in an effort to leave the plane itself technically blameless to assuade worried passengers) gives the film a weird thriller aspect that feels a bit like the plot of the second Poseidon Adventure movie which is another rare example of a disaster franchise. However, while all the supporting characters are as well defined as in previous examples of the genre and generally only stand out by being played by people who have been in other things you’d seen before (trust me, IMDb will get a helluva workout while you’re watching this), the movie also managed to hold your attention by literally giving you something you never thought you’d ever see – Jack Lemmon playing a mustachioed action hero.
He’s not half bad too and while you’re struggling to remember where you’ve seen half the cast before, he’s rushing around, debating the best methods of escape with Darren McGavin (Kolchak: The Night Stalker) or making sure that the wounded are being treated by M. Emmet Walsh’s (Blood Simple) overtaxed vet. But while he gets moral support from Stevens assistant – who I’d also his girlfriend (played by Brenda Vaccaro from Supergirl), he has to also fend of the drunken barbs of the harpyish wife (Lee Grant from Omen II) of a nice guy marine expert played by Christopher Lee (who must know who he is!).
The drama intensifies and while the movie often becomes a little too obsessed with the mechanics of its own heist and ultimate rescue attempt – both of whom are shot in great detail and go on for ages – it manages to deliver some prime, accidental camp thanks to all those over-serious performances. While both Lemmon and James Stuart (who plays the ailing philanthropist who thought it was a good idea to turn a 747 into a fucking penthouse in tbe first place) actually manages to bring some actual gravitas to the film, everyone else has to double their scene chewing efforts as returning Airport good luck charm, George Kennedy, only has about four scenes in this one. Of course, when the watery shit really hits the fan, we’re treated to some choice moments that manage to inadvertently strike the funny bone with such force, you may want to be sitting down when thy occur.
Take the moment when Lemmon and Lee volunteer to flood the cargo compartment they’re in to try and swim to the surface to set off a transponder only for the former Dracula to get into a spot of bother with the sudden rush of water. While using the plane’s oxygen masks as suba equipment is about as fucking dubious as anything I’ve ever seen in a disaster movie, the moment when Grant’s drunken spouse watches in horror as her husband’s lifeless body slowly floats past her window caused me to laugh so hard I had to pause the damn film for a good five minutes. OK, so it’s not supposed to be a moment of high comedy and it’s still not quite as perfectly hilarious as the “GRAB HIM, HE’S GOT A BOMB!” moment from the original, but it’s exactly this sort of ironic shit that keeps me coming back the the golden age of the disaster film time and time again. I mean, how an I supposed to take a blind musician getting crushed by their own piano seriously when there’s also a scene where Grant tries to open the plane door in a fit of grief only for Vaccaro to lay her out like a heavyweight boxer?
Is Airport ’77 what you’d call a good film? Well, let me answer that with another question: isn’t a fun, cinematic experience just as good, regardless of the reasons of why it entertains? Airport ’77 make have as many flaws as Lee amd Grant’s marriage, but I had a fucking ball watching the screaming passengers of a sunken plane put some over-emotion in the ocean.
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