ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Sam Panico A small airplane crashes into a 747, taking out nearly the entire crew of flight 409, and only the stewardess can land the plane! Such is the plot of Airplane 1975, but that thin story doesn't matter. You're coming here for starpower and you're gonna get it, baby!Charlton Heston (the undisputed 1960's and 1970's king of the post-apocalyptic film, between Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and The Omega Man) is Captain Alan Murdock and he's the only person who can save the day, with heroics that include being dropped into a plane that's actually in flight! Karen Black (Trilogy of Terror, Burnt Offerings) is his girlfriend and the air hostess charged with keeping the plane aloft.The doomed flight crew is played by Efram Zimbalist, Jr., Roy Thinnes from TV's The Invaders and Erik Estrada. It's shocking just how sexist they are with the rest of the in-flight crew and even more shocking just how much the ladies like it. The 1970's were a doomed time when women just had to take the sexual harassment and like it, or return it back in kind.Then there's Gloria Swanson playing herself (Greta Garbo was the original plan) with Linda Harrison from Planet of the Apes as her assistant. Strangely, Harrison renamed herself Augusta Summerland for this movie.And then there's Myrna Loy as an alcoholic actress in the role originally meant for Joan Crawford! Three drunk guys (Jerry Stiller, Norman Fell and Conrad Janis) who would go on to be dads in sitcoms! Sid Caesar as a guy who can't keep his mouth shut! Linda Blair as a sick girl who just wants to listen to Helen Reddy perform as a singing nun! And Patroni's wife (Susan Clark from TV's Webster, who was spotted by the eagle eyed Becca) and son are on the flight, too!Airport 1975 is big, bombastic and stupid. And it's also awesome. It's pure escapism and is devoted to entertaining you. It's also a film packed with men patronizing women, calling them honey and yelling at them when they can't get their stuff together.

virek213 The enormous success of the 1970 film version of Arthur Hailey's novel Airport was in no small part responsible for having given birth to the first wave of disaster films which scared their way through movie screens for much of the 1970s. All of them were trying to one-up the competition to see how much peril they could put their casts of all-stars through; and audiences ate it up, while the critics usually threw it back up. Lasting until the box office busts of BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE in 1979, and WHEN TIME RAN OUT in 1980, the disaster film reached its peak of popularity near the end of 1974, with three films that were the apotheosis of the genre. Two of them were THE TOWERING INFERNO and EARTHQUAKE. The third (from Universal, the same studio behind AIRPORT and EARTHQUAKE) was AIRPORT 1975.Since Hailey never repeated himself as a novelist, the subsequent three sequels to AIRPORT hewed only to the formula of people caught up in a mid-air crisis that had been inherent in both the book and the original 1970 film. In the case of AIRPORT 1975 (or AIRPORT '75, for short), this involves a 747 jumbo jet flying from Washington to Los Angeles that, because of heavy fog along the California coastline, is forced to divert to Salt Lake City to allow conditions in L.A. to clear up. But on final approach, the jet is hit at 12,000 feet by an out-of-control Baron whose pilot (Dana Andrews) has suffered a fatal heart attack. The chief pilot (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) is badly injured, and his two crewmen (Roy Thinnes, Erik Estrada) are killed, and thus it is up to the chief stewardess (Karen Black) to somehow keep the plane in flight, despite the extensive damage to the jet's skin and operating systems, until a rescue mission can be coordinated. This is instigated by Charlton Heston, who also happens to be the man Black has been estranged from for some time), and professional troubleshooter Joe Patroni (George Kennedy, reprising his role from the original film, with help from Utah's Hill Air Force Base. One of their pilots (Ed Nelson) attempts to lower himself through the hold in the flight deck torn by the collision, but he gets a belt latch hooked onto a loose piece of metal, and the force of it tears him away and to his death. As a result it is up to Heston, who was a chief instructor of 747-jet pilots, to lower himself in and take charge. With Black's help, he manages to get the plane in line for a landing in Salt Lake City, going through steep mountainous terrain at 400 miles per hour, while the usual gaggle of all-star passengers (including Sid Caesar, Linda Blair, Jerry Stiller, Normal Fell, Myrna Loy, Helen Reddy, Gloria Swanson, and others) watches and waits.As with its predecessor and the two Airport films still to come, AIRPORT '75 has a lot of clichés that would nauseate a whole lot of critics. It is when it is focused on the basic physics of the mid-air collision, Black's ability to keep the plane in flight until rescue arrives, and the rescue and landing itself that AIRPORT '75 is at its most intense. Heston, not surprisingly, does his usual good heroic turn in his role, as does Black in hers, though there seem not to be enough sparks at the beginning of the film to keep their relationship from drifting towards standard disaster film melodrama. Kennedy, as always, does his usual tough thing well in reprising his role as Patroni; and Susan Clark is good in a significant supporting role as his wife, who just happens to be on the plane in peril.Given that any kind of mid-air collision, even with just a small plane, would be enough to bring any other jet down to the ground, both Jack Smight (who directed the 1966 crime classic HARPER) and screenwriter Don Ingalls have to somehow cause the old suspension of disbelief stimuli to kick in with respect to this film's plot line. Although they are not always successful at doing this, and the clichés do at times get in the way, they are successful enough to at least make AIRPORT '75 no worse than any others of its kind. Given this, it is no surprise that the critics should have ratted on this plane-in-peril piece, nor should it have been a surprise that AIRPORT '75's success should have as big as it indeed was.

StuOz While in flight, a passenger plane collides with another plane.I rather corny but pleasing line in this film has been forever locked in my memory for the last 40 years. After the disaster is over and the passengers leave the plane, one young passenger looks up at the sky as says something like "what a wonderful day" to which another more mature aged passenger responds with something like "every day is wonderful, you are just too young to know". Yes, Airport 1975 is far from perfect, but if a line from a film can have that sort of an impact on me, well, who am I to complain about it.But anyway, forgetting all this for a second, as other posters have noted, disaster-satire film Airplane! (1980) has done serious damage to the entertainment value of Airport 1975 when seen today, but if you have not seen Airplane! (1980)...you will get a blast out of Airport 1975.

makiprettywoman3 I'm watching Aiport 75 and wondering where the action is. Part way through the movie you have person in small plane suffer a heart attack. His plane crashes into a 747. Now the 747 has a small hole in the plane and it's pilotless. Now who is going to land plane? For some reason they decided they were going to use a helicopter and try to land a pilot in the cockpit of the plane. It doesn't seem believable. If this did happen in real life I don't think that's how they would do it. They had a bunch of different passengers on the plane such as Gloria Swanson playing herself, Nun's that can even play guitar and a kid who needs a kidney transplant. I guess there was reason they needed all these different characters in this movie. It wasn't like it helped the movie much.I didn't realize this movie was the basis for the movie Airplane! Airplane is a lot like this movie but much funnier. They took Airport 75 and made another movie which is much better. I like these Airplane movies and would rather watch Airplane!. I have seen that movie many times and really liked it. I wouldn't say Airport 75 was that bad of a movie. It had it's moments where it was good.