It’s a 4K-UHD/Blu-ray Airport Extravaganza via Kino Lorber!
Airport – 4K-UHD/Blu-ray – Kino Lorber
The all-star disaster movie came of age in the early ‘70s and by decades end was on a fast collision course towards virtual obscurity until it hybridized with comedy, action adventure and even thriller and lost its necessity for star wattage (Die Hard is an example). The genre reached its zenith with John Guillermin and Irwin Allen’s spectacle, The Towering Inferno (1974). Second best, for this cinephile, is Ronald Neame’s The Poseidon Adventure (1972). These two 20th Century Fox releases (actually, Inferno was the first dual studio release, with Warner Brothers), have yet to see the light of day on 4K, which is a damn shame. I am assuming Disney has rights, so please, Disney, either allow Kino or Criterion or Arrow to produce special editions or release them yourself! These two gems demand the 4K-UHD treatment.
George Seaton’s Airport, released in March 1970, and based on the hugely popular Arthur Hailey novel, ushered in the starry disaster movie genre with its Grand Hotel-style award-winning cast, it’s nail-biting suspense, multi-narrative segments and, now over 50 years later, it’s incredible camp appeal.
I will admit Airport is one of my top guilty pleasure movies. The film was an immense box office hit–Universal’s biggest moneymaker at that time. And, yes, it received mixed critical response but was nominated for a rather astounding 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning Best Supporting Actress for the great Helen Hayes.
In fact, the 1970 Best Picture race could be seen as a mirror of the tumultuous times here in the US, with old-guard-safe, popcorn filmmaking (Airport and Arthur Hiller’s Love Story) battling the new wave of innovators insisting on social and political upheaval (Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H and Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces). The winner, Franklin J. Schaffner’s Patton, landed somewhere in the middle.
Airport follows airport manager Burt Lancaster (who turned down Patton for this), battling bureaucracy and sort of romancing Jean Seberg (with tremendous hair). Married pilot Dean Martin canoodles with stewardess Jacqueline Bisset, pregnant with his child,. Meanwhile former munitions worker Van Heflin boards the flight to Rome, with a bomb he intends to detonate, so he can leave the insurance money to his dejected wife, Maureen Stapleton. On board,Heflin is seated next to the delightfully nutty Helen Hayes, a stowaway wearing a hat with pompoms. Toss in senior mechanic George Kennedy, the only actor who appears in all four Airport movies, as Joe Petroni and you have an absolute BLAST of a ride.
And, for the record, Hayes provides wonderful comic relief as Ada Quonsett (that name!). Stapleton, who was also Oscar-nominated is quite touching and Bisset is imbues her role with tremendous poignancy.
Tech credits are fab including a rousing score by Alfred Newman and great camerawork by Ernest Laszlo. The effects are what you’d expect for a 1970 picture made by a director who came of age in the 1940s.
Kino has done a swell job here, a brand New HDR/Dolby Vision Master from a 4K scan of 35mm inter-positive reduction elements. Having just viewed it last year via the Blu-ray, I see quite an improvement. The sound is also fantastic.
Special features include a new audio commentary by film historian Julie Kirgo and author C. Courtney Joyner. A Blu-ray is also included as is the original theatrical trailer. I only wish there were more goodies.
Of course, it’s almost impossible to take the Airport films seriously thanks to Airplane!(1980) and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982), but no one can argue that the original Airport isn’t terrifically entertaining.
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Airport 1975 — 4K-UHD/Blu-ray – Kino Lorber
Released in October 1974, Airport 1975 delivers more award-winning stars led by Charlton Heston and Karen Black. Really reverse those names because she’s the real star of this crazy flick!
The disaster here involves a 747 colliding with a small plane that blows a hole through the cockpit. Stewardess Black must now navigate flying the plane. And besides one super fake moment where one of the pilots gets sucked out (an obvious dummy) the effects are pretty decent and there is quite a bit of suspense created.
Of course, the pre-requisite camp exists: Helen Reddy as a singing nun–hilariously Golden Globe nominated for Most Promising Newcomer–crooning to Linda Blair (in her Exorcist follow up) who needs a kidney transplant, a boozy Myrna Loy, a nervous and silly Sid Caesar and of course Gloria Swanson playing…Gloria Swanson!
Once again Universal had a huge box office success on their hands (the 7th highest grossing film of 1974) despite mostly pans from critics.
Black, Oscar nominated for Five Easy Pieces, had quite the banner year in 1974 co-starring in Rhinoceros, Law and Disorder and The Great Gatsby, which won her the Golden Globe for Supporting Actress. The following year she’d appear in Dan Curtis’ terrifying Trilogy of Terror, Robert Altman’s masterpiece Nashville and star in John Schlesinger’s extraordinary indictment of Hollywood, The Day of The Locust.
With her harrowing, fully-committed performance in Airport 1975, she was able to solidify her status as a true movie star. It’s a shame Tinseltown had no clue what to do with her unique qualities. By decades end, her short reign was practically over, although she did continue to work consistently until her untimely death from cancer in 2014.
I don’t think this film gets the respect it deserves. I don’t see it as a bad movie. It’s silly for sure, but Black grounds it.
Director Jack Smight’s credits include the Paul Newman films Harper and The Secret War of Harry Frigg. He’d go on to helm Midway, in Sensurround!
Again, Kino does a superlative 4K job here via a brand new HDR/Dolby Vision Master from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. And the sound is top notch.
Both discs feature a new audio commentary by film historians Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson and the trailer.
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Airport ’77 — 4K-UHD/Blu-ray – Kino Lorber
This one improves on the star power of the second installment and raises the lunatic stakes by crashing a 747 jumbo into…wait for it…the Bermuda Triangle!
Oscar-winners Jack Lemmon, Lee Grant, George Kennedy (of course), James Stewart, Olivia de Havilland join Oscar nominee Brenda Vaccaro, future nominee Kathleen Quinlan and movie vet Joseph Cotten (strangely never nominated) for one heck of a nerve-wracking journey—especially in the second half, and not without its camp, of course.
Grant provides comic relief this time as the bitter and selfish wife of professional diver Christopher Lee. In one scene Vaccaro gets to knock Grant’s lights out (funny because they’re besties in real life–still).
Lemmon is ferociously good in a role that could have been a throwaway.
And it’s a treat to see Cotten and de Havilland reunited after acting together in Hush…Hush…Sweet Charlotte in 1965 and in the TV film, The Screaming Woman in 1972.
During the intense rescue sequence, hot, young Navy men give the film a homoerotic boost. It’s as if someone shouted, ‘Bring in the yummy boys!’
Airport ’77 was nominated for two Oscars for its Art Direction and Costume Design and did fairly well at the box office and better with critics than the previous film.
Director Jerry Jameson had a slew of TV credits and would go on to helm the flop Raise the Titanic, in 1980.
Kudos to Kino for another fab 4K. Included is a new audio commentary with film historian Julie Kirgo and writer Peter Hankoff and the trailer.
The major disappointment here is the exclusion of the 70 minutes of outtakes and footage shot especially for the NBC-TV broadcast premiere. So now fans need another 4K edition!
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The Concorde… Airport ’79 — 4K-UHD/Blu-ray — Kino Lorber
By far the worst of all the Airport films and disaster movies (along with When Time Ran Out), The Concorde… Airport ’79 landed with a big thud critically and commercially and signaled the death knell for the series. Now, on 4K, its endless flaws are glaring. But there is some fun to be had.
The basic and imbecilic plot involves Susan Blakely as a TV reported who discovers damaging dirt on mogul Robert Wagner, who spends the rest of the running time devising new ways to shoot down or blow up the Concorde, which at the time was a big deal. The rest of the plot is negligible with little blips of laughable subplots—intentionally and not—involving the poor cast.
Producer Jennings Lang, who gets story credit and should have given it back, spent years getting permission from Air France to actually use the rocket-like supersonic airliner—“retired” in 2003 after a fatal crash and dwindling paying passengers.
This debacle boasts the cheesiest special effects, terrible dialogue (incredibly, written by later Oscar-winner Eric Roth), a most ludicrous narrative and a host of really bad performances led by Wagner, Jimmie JJ Walker, Avery Schreiber and Martha Raye.
In addition, Blakely cries a lot and, unbelievably, never realizes she’s basically the cause of the attacks on the plane.
George Kennedy’s Petroni was incredulously rewritten as a misogynistic pig—even for 1979! “They don’t call it the cockpit for nothing, honey!,” He responds to a stewardess
Charo has one scene, that lasts about two minutes, that just defies logic.
Only star Alain Delon escapes pretty much unscathed as if he knew he was in a flop and decided to underplay and let everyone else embarrass themselves including Sylvia Kristel, Eddie Albert, Bibi Andersson, John Davidson, Andrea Marcovicci, Cicely Tyson, David Warner and Mercedes McCambridge.
This mess showcases the worst video game effects and super grainy camerawork. Kino did their best, but the results are a visual mess. And the trailer is hilariously awful.
Best I can say is it was nice seeing a kind of Towering Inferno reunion between Blakely and Wagner—shame they went from the best to the worst in the process.
Pick it up to see just how truly bad bad can be.
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Airplane II: The Sequel — 4K-UHD/Blu-ray — Kino Lorber
Airplane II: The Sequel continued the sheer lunacy of Airplane!, a bonkers comedy it took me a while to warm to. I still don’t find the now famous Automatic Pilot all that funny. But then, comedy is subjective. I do recall appreciating this sequel more than the original. Once again proving that what we enjoy in our youth definitely changes with maturity.
Ken Finkleman took over writing/directing chores from the madcap team of Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker. His only film credit was the screenplay to Grease 2. That should tell you all you need to know.
This sequel is chock full of gags, jokes, skits. Some land; most do not—especially today. What is cool here is that while Airplane! was heavy on spoofing Airport 1975, The Sequel pokes fun at the original a lot more. There’s a crazed bomber on board (Sonny Bono), a sweet little old lady and a priest —with a penchant for young boys–not really funny, anymore—but why was it back then?
It’s the future and the moon has been colonized. The Mayflower One, an XR-2300 lunar shuttle, is launching its inaugural commercial flight. Returning from the original are star Robert Hayes (continuously hilarious), Julie Hagerty, Lloyd Bridges (zany), Peter Graves, with his penchant for young boys, and Stephen Stucker, who’s campy jokes haven’t aged well.
But when the two funniest bits involve Jack Jones singing The Love Boat theme and the flight crew devastated when they realize there’s no more coffee, perhaps there was a good reason there was no Airplane 3.
Kino’s impresses with a brand new HDR/Dolby Vision Master transfer from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. And the audio is tops as well.
Special features include two new audio commentaries by Mike White of The Projection Booth Podcast and by TV writer Patrick Walsh.
As wacky as both Airplane! and Airplane II: The Sequel were, they don’t hold a candle to The Concorde when it comes to spoofs, as unintentional as it may have been.
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