This looks amazing! The whole "opening the windows, executing a loop and firing a flare gun" sequence is like something a nine-year-old would come up with - in the best possible sense.
I remember catching this on TV on a slow Sunday afternoon once, and I absolutely could not believe what I was seeing when that happened. I actually thought I'd dreamt it the next day.
The only thing that approaches this level of absurdity is a scene in a 1990's Christopher Walker film called "McBain" in which he fires a hand gun through his plane's front window and kills a pilot of a fighter jet that was threatening him and his crew. The film has one of my favorite patented herky-jerky Walkerisms: "Let's go...to the....verandah".
The presence of Jimmy Walker and Martha Raye takes this one to a whole new level in my book 😄 Edit: and John Davidson too. I would give this movie 5 stars if he said “That’s Incredible!” at least once 😂
@@ScreamingScallop YES! I knew i recognized him, but couldn’t remember his name, and now it clicks! From the Doritos commercials! 😂 My brain thanks you for the assist 😁
Somehow David Warner manages to play it straight (and elevate the content) in every movie he's in, regardless of how moronic it. He will be sorely missed.
Indeed David Warner is sorely missed, and what makes his absence an even greater pity is how often he was so underappreciated during his acting life. I mean, the man was good in virtually anything & everything to which he lent his considerable talent. My longtime & personal fave among his many movies would have to be MORGAN! (1966), where he portrayed an exceptionally eccentric, anarchic, and borderline psychotic conceptual artist who seemingly can't restrain himself in his unusual and even bizarre campaign to win back estranged wife Vanessa Redgrave. His character also has a gorilla fixation (I can identify), and at one point in the film he's sitting in a nearly empty revival moviehouse absorbedly watching a screening of KING KONG. All in all, it's a wonderfully offbeat and surreal comedy with a strain of genuine pathos running through it.To this day it probably still remains his best remembered role. Warner consistently delivered noteworthy and at times memorable performances in any number of good--to--great films. Among these: A DAY IN THE DEATH OF JOE EGG, THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, WORK IS A FOUR--LETTER WORD (where he cultivates giant mushrooms in his basement. It's all very Sixties), MICHAEL KOHLHAUS, STRAW DOGS, THE OMEN (where he literally loses his noggin), CROSS OF IRON, THE ISLAND, TIME AFTER TIME, TIME BANDITS, A DOLL'S HOUSE, THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS, THE COMPANY OF WOLVES---and yes, let's not forget TITANIC. He also appeared in more than a few not-so-good films---but that's the movie acting biz for you.
@@gregghill2059 Well, he did play Gorkon, the leader of the Klingons, in *Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country* He was kind of a hero (or at least trying to create peace) in that.
@@TheRealNormanBates Forgot about that one. You're right, but I guess I was thinking more along the lines of Christopher Lee in "The Devil's Bride" / "The Devil Rides Out".
I'll bet Coca-Cola paid well for this film's product placement. As for a film that seems to be a spoof of itself, I have to give that honor to "Moonraker", which also came out in 1979. With its rehashed plot from "The Spy Who Loved Me", the henchman Jaws becoming more comical as the film progresses, and the fact that this is James Bond "in space", Moonraker has everything a satire film could want.
@Raven House Mystery, and yet this is the kind of James Bond movie people want to see, _again_ , 'just because'- forgetting that Bond's an employee of the wetworks division of an intelligence agency.🙄
You're _never_ going to get your money back, ever; that was the whole point of charging you two bucks, to get rid of this subpar movie and not have you pay $8.00 or $10.00 to see it.
Aww-I saw it at least a dozen times as the bottom half of a drive-in or grindhouse double or triple bill, and loved how stupidly good-natured and utterly Seventies it was every time.
@@richmcgee434 Wait a sec here---you LIKED the '67 CASINO ROYALE? Yeah? To be honest here---and of course we're all about honesty on Dark Corners---I saw it just the one time (on TCM) and I consider it one of the most UN--funny (or "least" funny, if you like) comedies/spoofs I've ever sat through. This negative assessment is based on my reaction to what I perceived as an appalling waste of real talent. But you dug it for whatever reason and that's perfectly copacetic and kosher kool, as well it should be. Thankfully we don't all have the same individual sense of humor---for what a boring world that would be. As a personal example of that, I found Mad Mel's PASSION OF THE CHRIST side-splittingly bladder-loosening hilarious---truly one of the funniest goddamnedist things I'd ever seen---but the folks all around me in the theater stayed pretty much mum. Oh I did discern what sounded like gasps, muffled sobbing, and heavy sighing. But no laughter---not even a single solitary titter. And there I was seated in the very back row shoveling overpriced popcorn & Milk Duds into my massive maw , washing it all down with a super- size Pepsi, and all the whole while thoroughly enjoying the film. And here, just lemme say that you can't realize the inherent difficulty involved in eating & drinking & cracking up with mirth all at the same time; I think I must've spewed forth the equivalent of a ton of chewed popcorn and thoroughly masticated milk chocolate all over the surrounding patrons, most especially those right below. Anyhow, I want to say that I actually felt like standing up during the movie and declaiming something along the lines of: "Jesus! Whatever IS the matter with you people? Look, it's only a movie! THat's just all special effects makeup! It's not in any way real! Man--Oh--Manomaniceivitz !! Get a grip, people. For holy fuck's sake". But I digress too far afield. As per '67 CASINO ROYALE I have to point out here that any feature film that's helmed by five different directors (John Huston, Val Guest, Ken Hughes, Robert Parrish, Joseph McGrath) and scripted by 10 different writers (Wolf Mankowitz, John Law, Michael Sayers, Michael Sayers, Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Ben Hecht, Val Guest again, John Huston again, Joseph "Catch--22" Heller, and Terry "Candy" Southern)---well, one can only intuit that probably a whole lot of things probably must've gone awry during the whole production process. As 007's nephew "Jimmy Bond", Woody Allen was given lamentably short shrift; they didn't even use the best bits he'd thought up for his own scenes. And given the viewer postings dispensing Fun Movie Facts (or whatever the hell ever), I have one for everybody: cast members Peter Sellars & Orson Welles so thoroughly loathed one another that they both flat out refused to do any scenes together. This seeming impasse was overcome by shooting their scenes on alternate days with back-of-the-head doubles standing/sitting in for the real persons concerned. Any attentive viewer will undoubtedly note that, during the roulette table scene, you have Sellars speaking across the gambling table presumably to Welles himself; but you see only the back of someone's head. And when Welles is presumably addressing or replying to Sellars, again you really see the back of someone (else's) head. Real ingenious, huh? For me anyway, the best thing in this overlong movie is David Niven---or as one ought to say, the eternally great and eternally classy David Niven---as a late middle-aged Bond pulled out of retirement to once again take on the evil minions of SMERSH. Because Niven could lend the needed dignity to any role he undertook.
I was once on a scary/tense flight with such bad turbulence that passengers were screaming. I also watched Airport '79, once. If I had to go through one of those experiences again I'd definitely choose the turbulence.
"There's armed phantom and he's coming right for us." My God, that delivery. I have sounded more upset when I forget my toothbrush when I'm travelling. 😂
Airport '79, the movie that's infamous for the George Kennedy sex scene - you gotta wonder who in the movie business gets paid for not only thinking up but actually giving the go-ahead for such ideas...
I was ten going on eleven in the summer of 1977. I remember the programme at my local ABC didn't change for pretty much all of it. They were showing Airport 77. A star is Born [Kristofferson Streisand version] and the Eagle has Landed for all that time. I went to see Airport 77 with my dad and mother. And I really enjoyed it . What I also enjoyed was when a guy behind me kept kicking the seat, and my dad turned round and said 'you got enough leg room there?'. He was lost for words. And didn't kick it again. Possibly as a result of this, one of the things I was given for christmas in 1979 was the novelisation of Airport 79 the concorde. I read that and I enjoyed it. But I never got round to seeing the film. I can but assume that prose made it work better than it did on screen, as whatever mental visuals I had of those aerial scenes looked more realistic than I now see that the film version did. Watching this now reminds of Irwin Allen's avalanche, which has romantic leads with no chemistry. A disaster that doesn't happen till the last third of the film. And moments that make you laugh for the wrong reason, like the emergency vehicles skidding on ice and crashing into each other and buildings. This also vaguely reminds me of the 1970's tv movie SST Death Flight [seen as one of the episodes on season zero of Mystery Science Theatre 3000], which is star studded and not bad for what it is. That features before they were famous appearances from Billy Crystal and John DeLancie. The latter speaking in a much different tone of voice to his Q one. Movies that feel like spoofs: Hobgoblins. You can but assume it was meant to be taken seriously. And of course, the Room. I mean Toomy Wiseau said after it came out that it was always intended to be a so bad it's good parody. And why would he lie?
For real? Well, I would have to say that definitely qualifies as "eerily prescient". That should be an item in that syndicated "News of the Weird" print column. Or, way better, "Ripley's Believe It or Not".
I guess the preferred & generally recommended method is still to stick the barrel of the gun well into your mouth, until the muzzle starts to tickle your tonsils. And then squeeze that trigger. Which certainly makes sense---because that way you can't possibly miss.
@@zerpblerd5966 The easy way around that would be to film from the back and have someone else do it. Just match the clothes and hair and there you go. Don't make the suicide scene look bizarre and unconvincing.
I was so sentimental for the pre-deregulation 70's, when air travel was for the "jet-set", that, Leslie Nielsen be darned, I had to go back and watch the whole naive, 70's-innocent tetralogy--And even though Airport '77 is probably the best of the three sequels, for Jack Lemmon giving it professional gravitas, I have a fondness for '79 for the split making it feel like the TV pilot for a weekly Airport series, with two different one-hour "mini-disasters" around the Paris layover, and separate celebrity-passenger casts for each.
And as for "What films feel like their own spoofs?", check out Michael Caine in 1985's "The Holcroft Covenant", where (as Roger Ebert agreed), every FIVE MINUTES in the movie, nonstop, one of the suspicious characters is stringing Caine's man-who-knew-too-much along with sudden emergency "Don't look, we're being followed" warnings and counterstrategies, until you start to wonder whether they're just making it up as they go along to prank him. 😂
@@alienmindwarp3455 Probably not, but he sure could ogle "Lucille" while watching her was her car while he's clearing weeds from a deep ditch with the rest of the chain gang.
I think the script should have had them trapped on an inaccessible peak in the Alps until Kennedy and the rest had to resort to cannibalism too stay alive.
SST Death Flight felt like a parody of it's own genre - a sabotaged Concord with the plague spreading among the passengers while Q from Star Trek argues why not land in a major city and risk making them sick too? Then there was also City On Fire...but I've never tried watching it without MST3K
I enjoyed _SST Death Flight_ when I was little, but _City on Fire!_ is such a diseased, incompetent mess that I still love it even without the MST3K treatment. Everything about it is awful, from the terrible matte work to the fact that the producers thought the few seconds of gore that nailed it an "R" rating would guarantee success for a late-'70s disaster movie. The stunts are pretty impressive, though. John de Lancie (AKA Q) was in another made-for-TV airliner disaster flick I love despite/because of its outrageous silliness: _Final Descent,_ starring Robert Urich and Annette O'Toole.
Kentucky Fried Movie had a segment called A Fistful of Yen that parodied kung fu films. I first saw it before I'd seen Enter The Dragon and thought it was okay. Then I saw ETD and couldn't take it seriously because I was getting all the jokes I'd previously missed.
Fun movie fact: "Airplane!" is NOT a spoof of the widely known "Airport '75". It's in fact a spoof of another movie called "Zero Hour!", which "Airport '75" gets its idea from (Hence the ! at the end of the title). From the Wiki: " Zero Hour! was also used as the basis for the parody film Airplane! (1980). Because Zero Hour! was owned at the time by Paramount Pictures, the makers of Airplane!, also a Paramount feature, were able to use the screenplay almost verbatim, including the hero again being named Ted Striker." I read somewhere that one way you can tell is the sound of the Boeing 747 uses the same sounds as the prop driven airliner in "Zero Hour!" (I can't seem to find if that was true). I do know the producers wanted to use a prop driven plane, but the studio wouldn't allow it, so they used a Boeing 747 as the plane and dubbed the sounds of a prop driven plane as a jab at the studio.
Except for the little girl getting her IV knocked out by the stewardess with the guitar--Which you now can't watch Linda Blair and Helen Reddy in Airport '75 without WAITING for it to happen... 🎸
Another fun fact: Arthur Hailey, one of the screenwriters on Zero Hour!, later wrote the novel Airport, which was adapted into the 1970 film that kicked off this series of increasingly ludicrous air disaster movies.
I remember how loud those Concordes used to be. Living near KMIA at the time, all the windows in my house would rattle like crazy when ever that monster took off. Sure would have been nice to fly in one but then It got sidelined....maybe this movie had something that, who knows.
Sir, hats off to you!!! This kept me in stitches. I had to pause and rewind many times, my laughter drowning you out! I have always enjoyed your Horror reviews, the reverence you give to talent like Karloff, and Cushing I find somewhat touching for lack of a better word. Your reviews are insightful, your love of cinema clearly on your sleeve. I wish you many years of success!
Fun(ish) fact: The sax player is Jimmy Walker, a comic who hit the big time for about six months in the 70s due to a supporting role in a popular sitcom. He is also in "Airplane", the only "comic" to feature in it, and has absolutely no lines. Mercifully.
An even ish-ier fun(ish) fact: I was once on a plane with Jimmie Walker and I wish he had been smoking pot while blowing a sax because he IRL was about as much fun as air sickness.
@@SurlyInsomniac Yeah, my cousin met awhile ago and the mistaken of saying he loved JJ on Good Times. Walker cursed him out and walked past him. Not a friendly fellow.
That's the one!!! When the SST accidentally goes into space and all kinds of crap happens. Visual Effects by John Dykstra of og Star Wars/og Battlestar Galactica
1. Hollywood actually made an SST disaster movie WORSE than SST: Death Flight? I am impressed. 2. I have got to use 'Your hair is like French fries' on my next date.
Yes. But also: "Your Eyes are Like Two Limpid Cesspools"....and "Your Lips---O Your Beautiful Hungry Lips---Are Like a Pair of Nightcrawlers Making Sweet Love in a Peat Bog"---and "Your Breasts--Your Lovely White Breasts---Are Like Two Mounds of Haagen--Dasz French Vanilla Ice Cream"---and "Your Bush---Your Beautiful Bush--Your Delicious Gravy Boat"....O.K., I have to stop here. I'm getting myself, like you know, a little too overworked, and like I'm starting to feel, like... Hot 'n' Nasty. Oh So Hot...and Nasty.
I first saw in in French as Airport ‘80 (took a long time to be dubbed) when I was about 14. 20 years later, I purchased the VHS. Perfect for a gloomy day!
George Kennedy is in another great 70's disaster movie... "Earthquake." It's one of my favorites. Would love to see a review of it Robin. If you haven't already.
Not a great movie but IMHO not bad enough (think of the DC review of "The Swarm" or this) to qualify for a standard review. But maybe Robin could do an Irwin Allen disaster movie retrospective?
@@gregghill2059 Allen's "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" ('79) and his magma opus volcano flick, "When Time Ran Out" are on equal footing w/"The Swarm" ...and to think Michael Caine signed on for two of those spectacles. 😳
@@goodowner5000 "Magma opus", good one! It was also a disaster at the box office, a lot worse than "The Swarm". It was made in 1980 and Wikipedia says it was the last of the disaster movies, which is appropriate since it was the end of the 1970s as well. Wonder if the same thing can be said of that other 1970s wave, the kung fu movie, in terms of frequency that is.
Wow! How many stars from when I was growing up! What memories! I love the quote from "Airplane". Wait! Are some of these scenes from "Airplane"? OMG. THE ad right after this was for "Airplane" on youtube movies!
Any film that's got Jimmie Walker, Martha Raye, Eddie Albert, John Davidson, AND Avery Schreiber has to be worth the time - at least for the nostalgia factor if nothing else.
As for Avery Schreiber I remembered him appearing in this truly oddball science fiction--cum--genre spoof THE MONITORS that came out in 1969 or thereabouts. It's all about these human-appearing extraterrestrials who, for whatever insidious purpose, all wear traditional English-style derby hats (?) Anyhow they're taking over our world and enforcing mass conformity via the suppression of all those troublesome human emotions. Toward this objective they utilize doctored TV commercials with clever (?) jingles, semi-famous media personalities (i.e., circa Sixties), and subliminal messaging to contain the restless, seemingly ungovernable human masses. (It's not unlike the plot device used in John Carpenter's THEY LIVE.) Dean Stockwell---I think it was him---was the head of the alien vanguard, while Avery Schreiber was his generally bumbling sidekick. The rest of the cast included Larry Storch (of TV's F--TROOP) and Keenan Wynn as leaders o fan underground resistance. Like I said---it's really REALLY oddball.
Been watching you for a while, imagine my surprise when my wife notices you on screen and it turns out you used to work together! Small world! Keep up the good work!
Without a single doubt. Dark Corners HAS got to do an ATOM AGE VAMPIRE review. Lemme tell you, that movie was practically destined for the Robin & Company treatment. Back in the Seventies, it seemed like ATOM AGE VAMPIRE was a virtual staple of late LATE night/Bad Movies 'Til Dawn TV. At least where I was living at the time (at home mostly). It seemed to be run so pretty much continuously that it had to be a favorite of some aesthetically-challenged programmer.
While the first Airport film is very entertaining and the second and third entries are good, the fourth entry "The Concorde: Airport '79" is one of those hilariously bad movies that can be referred to as 'so bad, it's good'. The thing that has always struck me about this film, is that unlike the first three, this one looks so much like a made-for-television film that, you are expecting a "ABC Sunday Night Movie" intro at some point.
I'm kind of amazed, Kennedy calls the fighter jet that fires on them a Phantom, and they actually used an F4 Phantom, well a badly inserted picture of one anyway.
The passengers going back on that jet the next day reminds me of some woman writing about a plane that had to make a landing for some repair or something, and the passengers got back on it when they were told to. The writer wrote that rather than get back on that plane, she'd have started a new life in the city in which the plane landed.
I TOTALLY Remember this movie..... the drone attack, the F-4 attack, but didn't remember the assassination attempt nor the landing in the Alps. Although I always wanted to see the movie again, but it would Never come up, ( the other 'Airport' movies would ). But after seeing this posting.........how silly was this movie??!! Thanks for posting the 'high/low-lights'!
Films like this used to proclaim ...With a Cavalcade of Stars!" Well, more often than not, the "stars" were really just asteroids, and more of a cortege than a cavalcade.😉
Incredibly, the screenwriter (working from a "story" from disaster-film producer Jennings Lang) would go on to win an Oscar. ...Not for this, oh god no, for his adaptation of _Forrest Gump._ The MAD Magazine parody of _Concorde_ nailed the movie's idiocy perfectly in a single panel: Maggie gives a TV report describing the plane's ability to fly at twice the speed of sound, then follows up with a report describing the drone's ability to shoot down a target flying at twice the speed of sound. "Can you see what's coming...or do I have to draw you a picture?" But you gotta love George Kennedy's ability to somehow glance out the window and see drones and fighter jets attacking from directly behind, and _still_ have time to react. Kennedy also gets naked with a prostitute in Paris, which you can never unsee. This was one of many films that got re-edited into an extended version for a two-night airing on network TV. Just imagine this mess watered down to fill three-plus hours plus commercials! But the TV version had some wild alternate scenes (particularly that of the suicide of Robert Wagner's character, this time done in front of the press) and Jessica Walter, Alan Fudge, J D Cannon and José Ferrer in added roles!
It isn't so incredible, the screenwriter of Scary Movie 3 then latter created HBO's Chernobyl mini series. You can write for a living an then write for the art.
When I was a kid we simply anticipated these movies...I think the first one I saw was Airport '75. They were cool to my 7 to 11 year old self back then, lol.
It was a stretch having Ava Gardner get wolf whistles from sailors in 1959's "On The Beach" and you could hear the twang when she called Lorne Green "Dad" in 1974's "Earthquake". Then there was Walter Matthau in the pimp hat and Tom Baker wig as a drunk in a bar as things got shakin.
Ava Gardner back in her day was the epitome of HOT. I've always really dug her as "Maxine" in THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA. My kind of gal. Ol' Blue Eyes didn't realize how lucky he truly was---well, at least for awhile anyway.
If you're referring to all the Bond films starring Roger Moore as 007---I have to agree that you're pretty much on the mark. Roger Moore was so wonderfully suited to portraying Simon "The Saint" Templar in the great Sixties TV series; he was certainly far vastly better than Val Kilmer in the ghastly movie namesake that really had little to do with the original Leslie Charteris character. But as Bond I'm afraid he was quite a ways out of his depth; for one thing he was to much in Sean Connery's huge shadow. Sorry Rog'.
@@ashleys9397 While I agree that Roger Moore's sarcastic eyebrow has a lot to answer for I will not ignore that the tendency to crank up the camp was already in full motion with Diamonds Are Forever. So I don't think we can let Bond Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli and director Guy Hamilton of the hook.
You missed the most unintentionally funny part of the whole film: The news reports on RJ's private plane were an actor in a hole in the wall with a fake TV in front of him.
Robert Wagner as a rich guy in a film, what a stretch. I remember Jay Leno describing the difference in "Hart to Hart" and "Lime Street" and the best he could come up with is "this time Wagner has a green Rolls Royce, last time it was blue"
Watched it last night for the first time in ages. This film is so bad it's a masterpiece. George Kennedy as Patroni in the series and this film in particular is a goddam hero!
3:43 how da ya like that? The exhaust from the missile is static in the air… 🙄 Gosh, I remember watching this with friends when it first came out on video, and we had a ball making fun of it (even though (brcause?) as an airplane enthusiast I LOVED the Concorde!). Oh, how time flies. Gott get me another congregation to watch it again and have a laugh.
Yeah, the visual effects were uneven to say the least! There's a demo of the guided missile early on that hits a drone with more static explosions/smoke. VFX by Universal Hartland who also did the effects for the second half of Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rodgers in the 25th century.
The way it SHOULD have ended is: After crashing in the Alps, the passengers saw off one wing, drag it across the fuselage and weld it to the remaining good engine, all hang onto the wings, take off and arrive in Moscow ON SCHEDULE.
I went to see this when I was eight ,and it was, and is brilliant .It had some truly menacing moments .Susan Blackly holding onto the glass roof .After being menaced by an assassin .The moment Robert Wagner follows her along through the windows of the airport .The weird comedy it has through it .The Cold War angle ,George Kennedy and the smoking hot Alain Delon .What is not to love ..This film is not a classic ,but it is a lot of silly fun .Thank you for reviewing it .
1:14 "Your hair is my french fries" How could she resist? I mean he has her pinned down and everything. 1:26 is that Connie Seleca, from *The Greatest American Hero?* 2:32 now I'm having visions of *Deal of the Century* "Hey buddy! Your car has a nice flame job.. .but I think it needs a little touch up!" 3:41 anyone want to place a comment about how there is *no one in the plane?* Because I won't! 7:22 what a lot of you _don't_ know is that Robert Wagner's agent was sitting behind him. 7:42 give the stunt man credit. That was a real plane, a real person rolling out of the way and _almost_ a real lawsuit for wrongful death.
DEAL OF THE CENTURY? Why, that's uber-director William Friedkin's finest hour! And it's got Chevy Chase hogging the top credits! How could it ever possibly go wrong?
Let me share with you the 'Dark Corners Review' game... The rules: Select a film that had been reviewed by DCR, but don't watch the review.... yet! Watch the movie and guess what quotes from the movie will be used in the review. Watch the DCR of the film and take a shot of alcohol every time you guessed a quote. Do it over again until you get pissed.
But SHOWGIRLS (especially in the unrated version) is one of the most enjoyable and hence one of the "best" BAD movies ever to (dis)grace the movie screen.
@@ashleys9397 I was (and still am) HUGE into airplanes. My father bought me books on passenger and military aircraft. I of course mostly looked at pictures but my father ran down basics as we went along. First flight simulator was in 85 or 86. It was called "Jet". Played it on my Apple IIc. Now, DCS world is the way to go.
"You would not believe the journey I've had, but I'm sure the drone strike and fighter attack had nothing to do with your drone and fighter company that I'm trying to destroy." 😂 Brilliant 👏
Indeed...this movie @ best is shaky, a true hot mess all the way thru. it was made @ the end of the 70s "Airport" / disaster era. It's all over the place & way over the top. WOW!
Smoking a blunt while playing the sax in an airplane bathroom might be the peak of human coolness.
Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “joining the mile high club”
Exactly! This douchebag calls it a "horrifying stereotype." Fuck outta here.
And the church said AMEN!
It's Dyn-O-Mite!
You misspelled "douchebaggery."
This looks amazing! The whole "opening the windows, executing a loop and firing a flare gun" sequence is like something a nine-year-old would come up with - in the best possible sense.
It's the Battlefield strat.
I remember catching this on TV on a slow Sunday afternoon once, and I absolutely could not believe what I was seeing when that happened. I actually thought I'd dreamt it the next day.
I saw this once when it first aired, and the flare gun out the window was the only thing I remember because my father laughed his head off.
I had no idea how goofy this movie is. I've seen parts of the other Airport movies and they're mostly boring with a few fun bits here and there.
The only thing that approaches this level of absurdity is a scene in a 1990's Christopher Walker film called "McBain" in which he fires a hand gun through his plane's front window and kills a pilot of a fighter jet that was threatening him and his crew. The film has one of my favorite patented herky-jerky Walkerisms: "Let's go...to the....verandah".
I'm AMAZED he got through the whole review without mentioning Sylvia Kristel as the flight attendant Isabelle!
I kept waiting too!
We know that you know that we know.
It took a minute to realize that the old lady on the flight is not Barbara Billingsley (from Airplane!) but Martha Raye.
Me as well!
I knew because of the size of her mouth. And the TV ads she did.😉
Nope, Barbara Billingsley was on AIRPLANE! 😂🤣
I thought it was her too
Seems like only years ago she played Cleopatra in a sketch on The Red Skelton Hour.
The presence of Jimmy Walker and Martha Raye takes this one to a whole new level in my book 😄
Edit: and John Davidson too. I would give this movie 5 stars if he said “That’s Incredible!” at least once 😂
@@rosselliswilkinson I think you mean “DYN-O-MITE!!!” 😄
@Ellis, that's pronounced 'Dy-No-Mite!'
And Avery Schrieber! He was hardly a "nobody" in Hollywood but even back then he was best known for appearing in commercials and game shows.
@@ScreamingScallop YES! I knew i recognized him, but couldn’t remember his name, and now it clicks! From the Doritos commercials! 😂 My brain thanks you for the assist 😁
@@Gappasaurus, Avery Schrieber was 'Captain Manzini' on the infamous 1965 sitcom _My Mother The Car_ .
It’s always a treat to see Robin enjoy a bad movie this much
Somehow David Warner manages to play it straight (and elevate the content) in every movie he's in, regardless of how moronic it. He will be sorely missed.
Agreed. it would have been nice though to see him play the hero at least once.
I would expect nothing less from someone who has understanding of digital watches.
Indeed David Warner is sorely missed, and what makes his absence an even greater pity is how often he was so underappreciated during his acting life. I mean, the man was good in virtually anything & everything to which he lent his considerable talent. My longtime & personal fave among his many movies would have to be MORGAN! (1966), where he portrayed an exceptionally eccentric, anarchic, and borderline psychotic conceptual artist who seemingly can't restrain himself in his unusual and even bizarre campaign to win back estranged wife Vanessa Redgrave. His character also has a gorilla fixation (I can identify), and at one point in the film he's sitting in a nearly empty revival moviehouse absorbedly watching a screening of KING KONG. All in all, it's a wonderfully offbeat and surreal comedy with a strain of genuine pathos running through it.To this day it probably still remains his best remembered role.
Warner consistently delivered noteworthy and at times memorable performances in any number of good--to--great films. Among these: A DAY IN THE DEATH OF JOE EGG, THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, WORK IS A FOUR--LETTER WORD (where he cultivates giant mushrooms in his basement. It's all very Sixties), MICHAEL KOHLHAUS, STRAW DOGS, THE OMEN (where he literally loses his noggin), CROSS OF IRON, THE ISLAND, TIME AFTER TIME, TIME BANDITS, A DOLL'S HOUSE, THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS, THE COMPANY OF WOLVES---and yes, let's not forget TITANIC. He also appeared in more than a few not-so-good films---but that's the movie acting biz for you.
@@gregghill2059 Well, he did play Gorkon, the leader of the Klingons, in *Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country* He was kind of a hero (or at least trying to create peace) in that.
@@TheRealNormanBates Forgot about that one. You're right, but I guess I was thinking more along the lines of Christopher Lee in "The Devil's Bride" / "The Devil Rides Out".
I'll bet Coca-Cola paid well for this film's product placement.
As for a film that seems to be a spoof of itself, I have to give that honor to "Moonraker", which also came out in 1979. With its rehashed plot from "The Spy Who Loved Me", the henchman Jaws becoming more comical as the film progresses, and the fact that this is James Bond "in space", Moonraker has everything a satire film could want.
@Raven House Mystery, and yet this is the kind of James Bond movie people want to see, _again_ , 'just because'- forgetting that Bond's an employee of the wetworks division of an intelligence agency.🙄
Agreeded.
I actually remember seeing this in the theater during the 2 dollar matinee. I still want my 2 bucks back.
You're _never_ going to get your money back, ever; that was the whole point of charging you two bucks, to get rid of this subpar movie and not have you pay $8.00 or $10.00 to see it.
Aww-I saw it at least a dozen times as the bottom half of a drive-in or grindhouse double or triple bill, and loved how stupidly good-natured and utterly Seventies it was every time.
😂😂😂😂😂
@@Neville60001$2 back in 1979 was equivalent to around $7 today
@@paulo.henrique.1969Yeah 😂😂😂😂
Loved these movies as a kid, and they were ALWAYS on TV.
I love how Robin is trying SO hard to keep from laughing. You did good, Robin!
George Kennedy is a god among mortals; and this is his holy text. I love this film.
George Kennedy is more importantly a god among...MEN. 'Nuff said.
How do you go from being the mechanic to the pilot?
"The Late David Warner...."
Such a pro he turned in a great performance even while being dead.
though you would think he would be a bit more punctual.
@@TheRealNormanBates
(Beavis laugh)
Eh eh eh eh eh.
I remember watching this years ago and thinking "If you stick your arm out of the window of a supersonic jet, won't it just get ripped clean off?"
"Die Another Day" feels like an unintentional spoof of the James Bond movies, and honestly, it is funnier than the 60s "Casino Royale".
Well, it does feature the Invisible Aston-Martin (and no, I am not making this up).
See, I thought the 60's Casino Royale was a riot - but of course I would, since I'm James Bond just like everyone in the film.
@@richmcgee434 Wait a sec here---you LIKED the '67 CASINO ROYALE? Yeah? To be honest here---and of course we're all about honesty on Dark Corners---I saw it just the one time (on TCM) and I consider it one of the most UN--funny (or "least" funny, if you like) comedies/spoofs I've ever sat through. This negative assessment is based on my reaction to what I perceived as an appalling waste of real talent. But you dug it for whatever reason and that's perfectly copacetic and kosher kool, as well it should be. Thankfully we don't all have the same individual sense of humor---for what a boring world that would be. As a personal example of that, I found Mad Mel's PASSION OF THE CHRIST side-splittingly bladder-loosening hilarious---truly one of the funniest goddamnedist things I'd ever seen---but the folks all around me in the theater stayed pretty much mum. Oh I did discern what sounded like gasps, muffled sobbing, and heavy sighing. But no laughter---not even a single solitary titter. And there I was seated in the very back row shoveling overpriced popcorn & Milk Duds into my massive maw , washing it all down with a super- size Pepsi, and all the whole while thoroughly enjoying the film. And here, just lemme say that you can't realize the inherent difficulty involved in eating & drinking & cracking up with mirth all at the same time; I think I must've spewed forth the equivalent of a ton of chewed popcorn and thoroughly masticated milk chocolate all over the surrounding patrons, most especially those right below. Anyhow, I want to say that I actually felt like standing up during the movie and declaiming something along the lines of: "Jesus! Whatever IS the matter with you people? Look, it's only a movie! THat's just all special effects makeup! It's not in any way real! Man--Oh--Manomaniceivitz !! Get a grip, people. For holy fuck's sake".
But I digress too far afield. As per '67 CASINO ROYALE I have to point out here that any feature film that's helmed by five different directors (John Huston, Val Guest, Ken Hughes, Robert Parrish, Joseph McGrath) and scripted by 10 different writers (Wolf Mankowitz, John Law, Michael Sayers, Michael Sayers, Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Ben Hecht, Val Guest again, John Huston again, Joseph "Catch--22" Heller, and Terry "Candy" Southern)---well, one can only intuit that probably a whole lot of things probably must've gone awry during the whole production process. As 007's nephew "Jimmy Bond", Woody Allen was given lamentably short shrift; they didn't even use the best bits he'd thought up for his own scenes. And given the viewer postings dispensing Fun Movie Facts (or whatever the hell ever), I have one for everybody: cast members Peter Sellars & Orson Welles so thoroughly loathed one another that they both flat out refused to do any scenes together. This seeming impasse was overcome by shooting their scenes on alternate days with back-of-the-head doubles standing/sitting in for the real persons concerned. Any attentive viewer will undoubtedly note that, during the roulette table scene, you have Sellars speaking across the gambling table presumably to Welles himself; but you see only the back of someone's head. And when Welles is presumably addressing or replying to Sellars, again you really see the back of someone (else's) head. Real ingenious, huh?
For me anyway, the best thing in this overlong movie is David Niven---or as one ought to say, the eternally great and eternally classy David Niven---as a late middle-aged Bond pulled out of retirement to once again take on the evil minions of SMERSH. Because Niven could lend the needed dignity to any role he undertook.
@@richmcgee434 I thought I was the only one who likes that film!
@@GeeVanderplas Nope, there's at least the two of us. Both of whom are James Bond, of course. :)
So this is how you get Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert back together again.
Just like flipping a Switch.
@@ChrisMaxfieldActs , 'Just like flipping a _Switch_ .'
FIFY.
I was once on a scary/tense flight with such bad turbulence that passengers were screaming. I also watched Airport '79, once. If I had to go through one of those experiences again I'd definitely choose the turbulence.
"There's armed phantom and he's coming right for us."
My God, that delivery. I have sounded more upset when I forget my toothbrush when I'm travelling. 😂
"I'd probably just watch Airplane!" The amount of times I've given that as life advice is staggering.
Airport '79, the movie that's infamous for the George Kennedy sex scene - you gotta wonder who in the movie business gets paid for not only thinking up but actually giving the go-ahead for such ideas...
?Possibly Jonnings Lang, who (I think) also greelighted The Sting 2?
okay, well now i HAVE to see this movie 🤣
I was ten going on eleven in the summer of 1977. I remember the programme at my local ABC didn't change for pretty much all of it. They were showing Airport 77. A star is Born [Kristofferson Streisand version] and the Eagle has Landed for all that time. I went to see Airport 77 with my dad and mother. And I really enjoyed it . What I also enjoyed was when a guy behind me kept kicking the seat, and my dad turned round and said 'you got enough leg room there?'. He was lost for words. And didn't kick it again.
Possibly as a result of this, one of the things I was given for christmas in 1979 was the novelisation of Airport 79 the concorde. I read that and I enjoyed it. But I never got round to seeing the film. I can but assume that prose made it work better than it did on screen, as whatever mental visuals I had of those aerial scenes looked more realistic than I now see that the film version did.
Watching this now reminds of Irwin Allen's avalanche, which has romantic leads with no chemistry. A disaster that doesn't happen till the last third of the film. And moments that make you laugh for the wrong reason, like the emergency vehicles skidding on ice and crashing into each other and buildings.
This also vaguely reminds me of the 1970's tv movie SST Death Flight [seen as one of the episodes on season zero of Mystery Science Theatre 3000], which is star studded and not bad for what it is. That features before they were famous appearances from Billy Crystal and John DeLancie. The latter speaking in a much different tone of voice to his Q one.
Movies that feel like spoofs: Hobgoblins. You can but assume it was meant to be taken seriously. And of course, the Room. I mean Toomy Wiseau said after it came out that it was always intended to be a so bad it's good parody. And why would he lie?
The Concorde used in the movie is the same one that crashed in Paris and brought an end to the Concorde program.
For real? Well, I would have to say that definitely qualifies as "eerily prescient". That should be an item in that syndicated "News of the Weird" print column. Or, way better, "Ripley's Believe It or Not".
Who shoots themselves like that? Put it AGAINST your head! What if you miss? Then you just look to be a right fool.
I guess the preferred & generally recommended method is still to stick the barrel of the gun well into your mouth, until the muzzle starts to tickle your tonsils. And then squeeze that trigger. Which certainly makes sense---because that way you can't possibly miss.
Grotesquely, that shot is straight-up thievery, stolen from Alfred Hitchcock's _Spellbound_ (1945).
@@zerpblerd5966 The easy way around that would be to film from the back and have someone else do it. Just match the clothes and hair and there you go. Don't make the suicide scene look bizarre and unconvincing.
Maybe not showing Wagner press the gun to his head made it easier to get a PG rating.
@@VonWenk Ah, now that would explain it
So that's what Number Two was doing when Dr. Evil was frozen!
That and building a factory that made miniature models of factories.
I was so sentimental for the pre-deregulation 70's, when air travel was for the "jet-set", that, Leslie Nielsen be darned, I had to go back and watch the whole naive, 70's-innocent tetralogy--And even though Airport '77 is probably the best of the three sequels, for Jack Lemmon giving it professional gravitas, I have a fondness for '79 for the split making it feel like the TV pilot for a weekly Airport series, with two different one-hour "mini-disasters" around the Paris layover, and separate celebrity-passenger casts for each.
And as for "What films feel like their own spoofs?", check out Michael Caine in 1985's "The Holcroft Covenant", where (as Roger Ebert agreed), every FIVE MINUTES in the movie, nonstop, one of the suspicious characters is stringing Caine's man-who-knew-too-much along with sudden emergency "Don't look, we're being followed" warnings and counterstrategies, until you start to wonder whether they're just making it up as they go along to prank him. 😂
that's the one where the plane ends up underwater and Chris Lee plays a scuba diver, right?
@@ericjanssen394 Isn't that the one where Michael Caine's love interest, played by Victoria Tennent, turns out to be her brother's lover (yuck)?
Paris to Moscow via the Swiss Alps?
After that landing in the Alps, I'm sure the plane could be buffed out and continue to Moscow. George Kennedy can do anything!
He sure could pummel the holy crap out of Paul Newman.
But could he eat 50 eggs?
@@alienmindwarp3455 Probably not, but he sure could ogle "Lucille" while watching her was her car while he's clearing weeds from a deep ditch with the rest of the chain gang.
I think the script should have had them trapped on an inaccessible peak in the Alps until Kennedy and the rest had to resort to cannibalism too stay alive.
@Ron D, for what and why?
SST Death Flight felt like a parody of it's own genre - a sabotaged Concord with the plague spreading among the passengers while Q from Star Trek argues why not land in a major city and risk making them sick too?
Then there was also City On Fire...but I've never tried watching it without MST3K
ugh, both of those put me to sleep.
You've left out THE MAD BOMBER, staring chuck Conners
I enjoyed _SST Death Flight_ when I was little, but _City on Fire!_ is such a diseased, incompetent mess that I still love it even without the MST3K treatment. Everything about it is awful, from the terrible matte work to the fact that the producers thought the few seconds of gore that nailed it an "R" rating would guarantee success for a late-'70s disaster movie. The stunts are pretty impressive, though.
John de Lancie (AKA Q) was in another made-for-TV airliner disaster flick I love despite/because of its outrageous silliness: _Final Descent,_ starring Robert Urich and Annette O'Toole.
Thanks, I was trying to think of the film with the SST that had engines hanging off of it like a B-58 Hustler.
How come there's no _MST3K_ version of this movie? It's ripe for the making fun of so much, it's almost funny.
Kentucky Fried Movie had a segment called A Fistful of Yen that parodied kung fu films. I first saw it before I'd seen Enter The Dragon and thought it was okay. Then I saw ETD and couldn't take it seriously because I was getting all the jokes I'd previously missed.
Fun movie fact: "Airplane!" is NOT a spoof of the widely known "Airport '75". It's in fact a spoof of another movie called "Zero Hour!", which "Airport '75" gets its idea from (Hence the ! at the end of the title).
From the Wiki: " Zero Hour! was also used as the basis for the parody film Airplane! (1980). Because Zero Hour! was owned at the time by Paramount Pictures, the makers of Airplane!, also a Paramount feature, were able to use the screenplay almost verbatim, including the hero again being named Ted Striker."
I read somewhere that one way you can tell is the sound of the Boeing 747 uses the same sounds as the prop driven airliner in "Zero Hour!" (I can't seem to find if that was true). I do know the producers wanted to use a prop driven plane, but the studio wouldn't allow it, so they used a Boeing 747 as the plane and dubbed the sounds of a prop driven plane as a jab at the studio.
Except for the little girl getting her IV knocked out by the stewardess with the guitar--Which you now can't watch Linda Blair and Helen Reddy in Airport '75 without WAITING for it to happen... 🎸
Another fun fact: Arthur Hailey, one of the screenwriters on Zero Hour!, later wrote the novel Airport, which was adapted into the 1970 film that kicked off this series of increasingly ludicrous air disaster movies.
Striker's combat flashbacks in Airplane are in fact clips from Zero Hour.
@@SkepticalTraveler I forgot about that!
That _wasn't_ a 747 used in _Airplane_ , but a more standard airliner, the name of which escapes me at the moment.
Yeah, loved this series, Kennedy always saving the day some how. I would if they could make a series based on Love Boat or the Pacific Princess?🤗
They should have made:Emmanuelle flies Concorde
You didn't need Airplane to parody disaster films when you had this
George Kennedy, "Did we hit him?"
Alain Delon, "I don't think so."
George Kennedy, "Concord to tower; we are requesting a go around."
I remember how loud those Concordes used to be. Living near KMIA at the time, all the windows in my house would rattle like crazy when ever that monster took off. Sure would have been nice to fly in one but then It got sidelined....maybe this movie had something that, who knows.
Jacke the Ripper is on the plane, there's a human heart in the fridge...
"I had the best seat in the house!" ~Eddie Albert
Sir, hats off to you!!! This kept me in stitches. I had to pause and rewind many times, my laughter drowning you out! I have always enjoyed your Horror reviews, the reverence you give to talent like Karloff, and Cushing I find somewhat touching for lack of a better word. Your reviews are insightful, your love of cinema clearly on your sleeve. I wish you many years of success!
I'm waiting for Leslie Nielsen to smack a woman and tell her to calm down.
I love this! The original “Airport” was the first movie I saw with my own money. I still get a kick out of it.
Fun(ish) fact: The sax player is Jimmy Walker, a comic who hit the big time for about six months in the 70s due to a supporting role in a popular sitcom. He is also in "Airplane", the only "comic" to feature in it, and has absolutely no lines. Mercifully.
An even ish-ier fun(ish) fact: I was once on a plane with Jimmie Walker and I wish he had been smoking pot while blowing a sax because he IRL was about as much fun as air sickness.
that's DY-NO-MITE!
@@SurlyInsomniac Yeah, my cousin met awhile ago and the mistaken of saying he loved JJ on Good Times. Walker cursed him out and walked past him. Not a friendly fellow.
He played a airplane mechanic who "opens" the front of the jet like a car hood.
Martha Raye was a comedienne, but she did her funny stuff while acting and was not a stand up.
The last? I've always counted "Starfligh: The Plane That Couldn't Land" among the Airport movies.
That's the one!!! When the SST accidentally goes into space and all kinds of crap happens. Visual Effects by John Dykstra of og Star Wars/og Battlestar Galactica
and it also has music by Lalo Shifrin, who also composed for this movie. Both scores sound very similar in places.
Holy crap that Gremlins joke made me laugh my ass off! 😆
The Concorde used in the movie F-BTSC (registration clearly visible during the opening credits) actually crashed in 2001. Some sort of a curse!
Wait, wait, WAIT!
Not a single 'ding' about George Kennedy flying a Super Sonic PASSENGER transport, like a fighter plane???????
Yep.I remember seeing this one on TV when I was young and it was a total blast!
I have to say, this was one of your best and most hilarious reviews! 😆
“The bathroom is broken!”. What classic line from a classic actress. Martha Raye rules!!
I love anything with George Kennedy in it!
1. Hollywood actually made an SST disaster movie WORSE than SST: Death Flight? I am impressed.
2. I have got to use 'Your hair is like French fries' on my next date.
Yes. But also: "Your Eyes are Like Two Limpid Cesspools"....and "Your Lips---O Your Beautiful Hungry Lips---Are Like a Pair of Nightcrawlers Making Sweet Love in a Peat Bog"---and "Your Breasts--Your Lovely White Breasts---Are Like Two Mounds of Haagen--Dasz French Vanilla Ice Cream"---and "Your Bush---Your Beautiful Bush--Your Delicious Gravy Boat"....O.K., I have to stop here. I'm getting myself, like you know, a little too overworked, and like I'm starting to feel, like... Hot 'n' Nasty. Oh So Hot...and Nasty.
I first saw in in French as Airport ‘80 (took a long time to be dubbed) when I was about 14. 20 years later, I purchased the VHS. Perfect for a gloomy day!
Wow! I've heard of this movie, of course, but I had no idea it was so, so, epically bonkers and insane.
Another hilarious show! Thank for doing all the research and reviews! 😍
George Kennedy is in another great 70's disaster movie... "Earthquake." It's one of my favorites. Would love to see a review of it Robin. If you haven't already.
Not a great movie but IMHO not bad enough (think of the DC review of "The Swarm" or this) to qualify for a standard review. But maybe Robin could do an Irwin Allen disaster movie retrospective?
@@gregghill2059 Allen's "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" ('79) and his magma opus volcano flick, "When Time Ran Out" are on equal footing w/"The Swarm" ...and to think Michael Caine signed on for two of those spectacles. 😳
@@goodowner5000 "Magma opus", good one! It was also a disaster at the box office, a lot worse than "The Swarm". It was made in 1980 and Wikipedia says it was the last of the disaster movies, which is appropriate since it was the end of the 1970s as well. Wonder if the same thing can be said of that other 1970s wave, the kung fu movie, in terms of frequency that is.
@@goodowner5000 Don't you really mean "magma--OOPSUS"?
George Kennedy is probably my favorite character in that movie. I remember feeling the Peanut M&M'S rumbling in my stomach from the Sensurround.
Wow! How many stars from when I was growing up! What memories!
I love the quote from "Airplane". Wait! Are some of these scenes from "Airplane"?
OMG. THE ad right after this was for "Airplane" on youtube movies!
Oh now I want a winter afternoon with a bag of popcorn and the airport movies!😍
Any film that's got Jimmie Walker, Martha Raye, Eddie Albert, John Davidson, AND Avery Schreiber has to be worth the time - at least for the nostalgia factor if nothing else.
In ‘77 Jimmie Walker was a huge get for them. I’m sure they sold thousands of tickets at urban theaters on his name alone.
I always liked Avery Schreiber, with or without Jack Burns!
You forgot to mention Charo.
@@mariakelly90210 Cuchi-cuchi!
As for Avery Schreiber I remembered him appearing in this truly oddball science fiction--cum--genre spoof THE MONITORS that came out in 1969 or thereabouts. It's all about these human-appearing extraterrestrials who, for whatever insidious purpose, all wear traditional English-style derby hats (?) Anyhow they're taking over our world and enforcing mass conformity via the suppression of all those troublesome human emotions. Toward this objective they utilize doctored TV commercials with clever (?) jingles, semi-famous media personalities (i.e., circa Sixties), and subliminal messaging to contain the restless, seemingly ungovernable human masses. (It's not unlike the plot device used in John Carpenter's THEY LIVE.) Dean Stockwell---I think it was him---was the head of the alien vanguard, while Avery Schreiber was his generally bumbling sidekick. The rest of the cast included Larry Storch (of TV's F--TROOP) and Keenan Wynn as leaders o fan underground resistance. Like I said---it's really REALLY oddball.
Been watching you for a while, imagine my surprise when my wife notices you on screen and it turns out you used to work together! Small world! Keep up the good work!
With all the celebrities on board it looked like an episode of The Love Boat. Can you please do a review of Atom Age Vampire?
I believe "Airport '79: The Concorde" & the game show Hollywood Squares had the same casting agent.
Without a single doubt. Dark Corners HAS got to do an ATOM AGE VAMPIRE review. Lemme tell you, that movie was practically destined for the Robin & Company treatment. Back in the Seventies, it seemed like ATOM AGE VAMPIRE was a virtual staple of late LATE night/Bad Movies 'Til Dawn TV. At least where I was living at the time (at home mostly). It seemed to be run so pretty much continuously that it had to be a favorite of some aesthetically-challenged programmer.
While the first Airport film is very entertaining and the second and third entries are good, the fourth entry "The Concorde: Airport '79" is one of those hilariously bad movies that can be referred to as 'so bad, it's good'. The thing that has always struck me about this film, is that unlike the first three, this one looks so much like a made-for-television film that, you are expecting a "ABC Sunday Night Movie" intro at some point.
I'm kind of amazed, Kennedy calls the fighter jet that fires on them a Phantom, and they actually used an F4 Phantom, well a badly inserted picture of one anyway.
The passengers going back on that jet the next day reminds me of some woman writing about a plane that had to make a landing for some repair or something, and the passengers got back on it when they were told to. The writer wrote that rather than get back on that plane, she'd have started a new life in the city in which the plane landed.
I TOTALLY Remember this movie..... the drone attack, the F-4 attack, but didn't remember the assassination attempt nor the landing in the Alps.
Although I always wanted to see the movie again, but it would Never come up, ( the other 'Airport' movies would ). But after seeing this posting.........how silly was this movie??!!
Thanks for posting the 'high/low-lights'!
Films like this used to proclaim ...With a Cavalcade of Stars!" Well, more often than not, the "stars" were really just asteroids, and more of a cortege than a cavalcade.😉
Incredibly, the screenwriter (working from a "story" from disaster-film producer Jennings Lang) would go on to win an Oscar. ...Not for this, oh god no, for his adaptation of _Forrest Gump._
The MAD Magazine parody of _Concorde_ nailed the movie's idiocy perfectly in a single panel: Maggie gives a TV report describing the plane's ability to fly at twice the speed of sound, then follows up with a report describing the drone's ability to shoot down a target flying at twice the speed of sound. "Can you see what's coming...or do I have to draw you a picture?" But you gotta love George Kennedy's ability to somehow glance out the window and see drones and fighter jets attacking from directly behind, and _still_ have time to react. Kennedy also gets naked with a prostitute in Paris, which you can never unsee.
This was one of many films that got re-edited into an extended version for a two-night airing on network TV. Just imagine this mess watered down to fill three-plus hours plus commercials! But the TV version had some wild alternate scenes (particularly that of the suicide of Robert Wagner's character, this time done in front of the press) and Jessica Walter, Alan Fudge, J D Cannon and José Ferrer in added roles!
It isn't so incredible, the screenwriter of Scary Movie 3 then latter created HBO's Chernobyl mini series. You can write for a living an then write for the art.
And William Schallert as the doctor telling Kennedy the bad news...
When I was in the Navy in the mid-'80s we'd see the Concorde flying overhead into NYC from our base in NJ. I always thought it looked so cool.
Saw it several times on French TV in the 80s and 90s.
Really? Mon Dieu! Was it dubbed into French? Or did they use subtitles?
--Surely this movie is a spoof of itself.
--It is, unwittingly. And don't call me Shirley.
Battle Of The Network Stars Meets Aaron Spelling!
When I was a kid we simply anticipated these movies...I think the first one I saw was Airport '75. They were cool to my 7 to 11 year old self back then, lol.
It was a stretch having Ava Gardner get wolf whistles from sailors in 1959's "On The Beach" and you could hear the twang when she called Lorne Green "Dad" in 1974's "Earthquake".
Then there was Walter Matthau in the pimp hat and Tom Baker wig as a drunk in a bar as things got shakin.
A sailor will jump the bones of any skirt, 8 to 80, blind, crippled, dumb, or crazy, so the "On The Beach" scene is very accurate and true to life.
Not a stretch at all. Ava Gardner was frickin' gorgeous in 1959.
Ava Gardner back in her day was the epitome of HOT. I've always really dug her as "Maxine" in THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA. My kind of gal. Ol' Blue Eyes didn't realize how lucky he truly was---well, at least for awhile anyway.
The Concord was attacked twice crossing the Atlantic ,and yet the Passengers still get on the plane after they barely survive the first flight?
What other films feel like their own spoof? Every 70s Bond film.
Yup.
If you're referring to all the Bond films starring Roger Moore as 007---I have to agree that you're pretty much on the mark. Roger Moore was so wonderfully suited to portraying Simon "The Saint" Templar in the great Sixties TV series; he was certainly far vastly better than Val Kilmer in the ghastly movie namesake that really had little to do with the original Leslie Charteris character. But as Bond I'm afraid he was quite a ways out of his depth; for one thing he was to much in Sean Connery's huge shadow. Sorry Rog'.
@@ashleys9397 While I agree that Roger Moore's sarcastic eyebrow has a lot to answer for I will not ignore that the tendency to crank up the camp was already in full motion with Diamonds Are Forever. So I don't think we can let Bond Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli and director Guy Hamilton of the hook.
You missed the most unintentionally funny part of the whole film: The news reports on RJ's private plane were an actor in a hole in the wall with a fake TV in front of him.
I feel there should be some sick joke about Robert Wagner and murder in here.
Watched this the other day. Laughed so hard at the flare gun bit. I doubled over in laughter.
Robert Wagner as a rich guy in a film, what a stretch. I remember Jay Leno describing the difference in "Hart to Hart" and "Lime Street" and the best he could come up with is "this time Wagner has a green Rolls Royce, last time it was blue"
At least Jonathan Hart was a little different from Al Mundy. Pete on Switch was basically Mundy as a private detective specializing in cons.
haha thought the same Jonathan Hart literally just stumbled into this movie about a concorde!
Absolutely fabulous video! Well done!
Watched it last night for the first time in ages. This film is so bad it's a masterpiece. George Kennedy as Patroni in the series and this film in particular is a goddam hero!
No 70's ensemble cast would be complete without the Dorritos Guy himself, Avery Schreiber
Co-pilot George Kennedy: "That's why it's called a 'cockpit', honey". Oh Jeeeeeeezzzzz....
3:43 how da ya like that? The exhaust from the missile is static in the air… 🙄
Gosh, I remember watching this with friends when it first came out on video, and we had a ball making fun of it (even though (brcause?) as an airplane enthusiast I LOVED the Concorde!).
Oh, how time flies. Gott get me another congregation to watch it again and have a laugh.
Yeah, the visual effects were uneven to say the least! There's a demo of the guided missile early on that hits a drone with more static explosions/smoke. VFX by Universal Hartland who also did the effects for the second half of Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rodgers in the 25th century.
The way it SHOULD have ended is: After crashing in the Alps, the passengers saw off one wing, drag it across the fuselage and weld it to the remaining good engine, all hang onto the wings, take off and arrive in Moscow ON SCHEDULE.
I went to see this when I was eight ,and it was, and is brilliant .It had some truly menacing moments .Susan Blackly holding onto the glass roof .After being menaced by an assassin .The moment Robert Wagner follows her along through the windows of the airport .The weird comedy it has through it .The Cold War angle ,George Kennedy and the smoking hot Alain Delon .What is not to love ..This film is not a classic ,but it is a lot of silly fun .Thank you for reviewing it .
"The Alps, dead ahead."
The Lord 'Alps those that 'Alp themselves David.
When I was a kid, this must have aired about 15 times a day on HBO. I loved every minute of it.
Wait!! This was two disasters in one?? Niiiiice
What's bizarre is that somebody actually wrote down this story
'Your hair is my french fries' & 'The bathroom is broken' : )
1:14 "Your hair is my french fries" How could she resist? I mean he has her pinned down and everything.
1:26 is that Connie Seleca, from *The Greatest American Hero?*
2:32 now I'm having visions of *Deal of the Century* "Hey buddy! Your car has a nice flame job.. .but I think it needs a little touch up!"
3:41 anyone want to place a comment about how there is *no one in the plane?* Because I won't!
7:22 what a lot of you _don't_ know is that Robert Wagner's agent was sitting behind him.
7:42 give the stunt man credit. That was a real plane, a real person rolling out of the way and _almost_ a real lawsuit for wrongful death.
DEAL OF THE CENTURY? Why, that's uber-director William Friedkin's finest hour! And it's got Chevy Chase hogging the top credits! How could it ever possibly go wrong?
@@ashleys9397 it's a decent little movie for what it is. It's no *Exorcist* or *Sorcerer,* but at least it's insured.
Let me share with you the 'Dark Corners Review' game...
The rules:
Select a film that had been reviewed by DCR, but don't watch the review.... yet!
Watch the movie and guess what quotes from the movie will be used in the review.
Watch the DCR of the film and take a shot of alcohol every time you guessed a quote.
Do it over again until you get pissed.
Movies that parodies themselves:
Showgirls
Baby Boy
Oro Plata Mata
But SHOWGIRLS (especially in the unrated version) is one of the most enjoyable and hence one of the "best" BAD movies ever to (dis)grace the movie screen.
I was 5 when this came out and saw it shortly thereafter. Even I called BS on the flare gun out the window. And pretty much everything after that.
You remarked that at the age of 5? Well heck & damn! You must've been a genuine child prodigy.
@@ashleys9397 Ok ok.. In all fairness I was 7. My apologies. I saw it when it was aired on TV, which was in May, 1982.
@@doozydoge1053 Yeah? Well, but still....
@@ashleys9397 I was (and still am) HUGE into airplanes. My father bought me books on passenger and military aircraft. I of course mostly looked at pictures but my father ran down basics as we went along. First flight simulator was in 85 or 86. It was called "Jet". Played it on my Apple IIc. Now, DCS world is the way to go.
I am surprised William Shatner wasn't in this Seriously, this could have been like an episode of the Love Boat, basically the same actors.
He did his own airplane disaster movie called "The Horror at 37,000 Feet" (1973)
It's a weird one but Shatner makes it watchable.
Wait, so opening a cockpit window doesn’t cause decompression 🤔
OMG, I need to see this movie 🥸
Roger Ebert's review of this movie is hilarious.
"You would not believe the journey I've had, but I'm sure the drone strike and fighter attack had nothing to do with your drone and fighter company that I'm trying to destroy." 😂 Brilliant 👏
"I still love you." Said Natalie Wood as Wagner threw her off a boat
drunkenly
And Christopher Walken watched.
Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner both did disastrous Disaster Movies in 1979- Wood in "Meteor"& Wagner in "Airport '79".
I was having that creepy feeling watching this review knowing what was going to happen a couple for years later.
@@zerpblerd5966 You mean Wagner's? I kind of doubt it.
What a time to be alive... 4! Airport disaster movies!
Indeed...this movie @ best is shaky, a true hot mess all the way thru. it was made @ the end of the 70s "Airport" / disaster era. It's all over the place & way over the top. WOW!
I thought a bungee with Chuck Heston was the height of camp but I was wrong!