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Suck at 35,000 feet
By briantologist | September 27, 2004
God bless Netflix, and the fine work they do. I forget how I even heard about it, but a double-feature DVD of “Airport” and “Airport ’75″ sure did make its way to the top of our Netflix queue recently, and yesterday afternoon/evening Darleece and I got the chance/had the free time/nothing good was on TV to watch both.
Man, oh man, were we ever not disappointed. “Airport” isn’t the best, though it has its moments, not the least of which are a stern Burt Lancaster glaring at a telephone receiver before hanging it up, a blotto Dean-o Martin as (hee hee) an airline pilot who can’t keep it in his pants (his wife’s main reason for being with him is established as being, roughly, “maybe some day he’ll stop fucking other women”), Helen Hayes (First Lady of the American Theater) as a diabolical aging stowaway, and (according to IMDB, Marion Ross, asking for a blanket in an uncredited cameo. Also for some reason “Hour Magazine” host Gary Collins is in it, threatening to smack a complaining fellow passenger.
That’s the true beauty of these movies: They’re ridiculous melodramas, jam-packed with B-minus-list TV and film personalities and overstuffed with airline jargon (does this make people feel like they’re insiders in the exclusive world of airports?). No lame-ass bit of schtick is off-limits, including an honest-to-god mad bomber and the cigar-chomping rogue ground supervisor (??? again, who the hell thinks an airport employee is a badass?), naturally played by George Kennedy, who returns in all 114 subsequent “Airport” sequels.
“Airport” dragged frequently, inspiring Darleece & me to perform various minor household errands during its amazingly bloated two-plus hours, but clearly the filmmakers learned their lesson between films, and so “Airport ’75″ is paced much better, which is to say the scenes cut away without giving you too much time to dwell on how retarded they are.
’75 is even more jam-packed with new and improved B- and C-listers, not to mention some exceptional has-beens. Highlights, you ask? Only Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as a pilot with glass in his eyeballs, Helen Reddy as an honest-to-Christ singing nun, Linda Blair as a kid waiting for a donor kidney (yes!!! YES!!!), Sid fucking Caesar playing some strange amalgam of a random actor and himself, Norman Fucking Fell (aka Mr. Roper) as another random seat-filler, and their good friend Jerry Motherfucking Stiller* as their friend who’s so drunk he passes out as soon as he gets on the plane, then sleeps through every second of the ensuing drama.
Also there’s Gloria Swanson as Gloria Swanson, in an appearance that’s more sad than anything else. Of course George Kennedy returns as Joe Patroni, now struggling in his new job as an airport operations supervisor (“Mommy, when I grow up I wanna be an airport operations supervisor! Or a sniper!”).
Oh yeah … and did I mention Erik Estrada?
And then, of course, there are the leads. Aging megastar Charlton Heston and plummeting nearly-was Karen Black are, both together and alone, just fucking terrible. I can’t clearly remember any of Heston’s other roles, so I can’t say for sure whether he’s just phoning it in for this role, or if he’s just always been a shitty actor. (I’m leaning toward number two.) Karen Black, meanwhile, is really just spectacularly unattractive, in no small part due to her whopping case of crossed eyes:
I mean, okay, I know it’s not her fault she’s crosseyed, but a lot of people have eyes that go different ways, and many of them don’t pursue such incredibly visible careers in being photographed for a living. Just saying. Crosseyed or not, Black is freakin’ terrible. She was well cast as a moron in “Five Easy Pieces,” and I’m sure Robert Altman cast her for a reason in “Nashville” (haven’t seen it), but then again, a lot of useless people get into very good movies (see Julia Roberts in “Ocean’s Eleven,” for example). Then again, in a dumbass movie like “Airport ’75,” Black is very much at home; come to think of it, she may have been brilliantly cast in it.
Such fun, the “Airport” movies. What has two thumbs and “Airport ’77″ and “Concorde: Airport ’79″ in their Netflix queue? This guy. Conveniently, they’re on the same disc. Score.
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* — While in the case of Ceasar and Fell the middle name “fucking” is slightly derisive, Stiller’s middle name “motherfucking” is highly complimentary. But you know this.
Topics: Songs of Praise | 5 Comments »
September 27th, 2004 at 8:17 pm
Dude, you must see Charlton Heston in The Omega Man. That movie kicks major ass. Heston plays the last man on earth, battling the zombies who dare to interrupt his cocktail-drinking and track-suit-wearing.
And yes, he’s a shitty actor. But he’s *awesome*.
September 27th, 2004 at 9:30 pm
Man, I am so there. Yeah, he’s really just spectacular, in a different way than other notable crappy actors. He pulls it off in a truly unique way. Have you seen Soylent Green? Is it worthwhile? I’m no small bit hopeful.
September 28th, 2004 at 11:45 am
Hints about other Heston roles you may have forgotten :
1) “damn dirty apes”
2) “Thou shalt not…”
3) “my cold dead hands”
4) “okay, but try not to get it in my eyes”
September 29th, 2004 at 8:39 am
Soylent Green is awesome, in a very Logan’s Run sort of way… also in a very Planet of the Apes sort of way… also, it’s the pinnacle of Edward G. Robinson’s career…
October 5th, 2004 at 11:59 am
Good ole Netflix. I recently subscribed to Blockbuster because they’re a few bucks cheaper…I’ll see which one does better at keeping me entertained. :)
Airplane..classic.
Great site by the way!