The Concorde... Airport '79

The Concorde… Airport ’79 (yes, 1979)

Runtime: 114 minutes

Directed by: David Lowell Rich

Starring: Alain Delon, Susan Blakely, Robert Wagner, George Kennedy, and many others

From: Universal

On this day where my review has to be posted earlier than usual due to my schedule, this will likely be one of the longer reviews of this schlocky movie you’ll ever read about. If you’re wondering “why?”, the two reasons are “this is really weird” and “it’s a motion picture I actually saw on TV when I was like 6 years old… and it was a longer version created for television broadcasts. At the time some big-budget movies did this: most famous was Superman: The Movie although unlike that most of these (including Earthquake and Airport ’77) are lost to the sands of time instead of being available on Blu-ray. Not even the bowels of the Internet have those available for streaming; if I really wanted to, I could pay more than 20 bucks for a bootleg on DVD but I know it wouldn’t be worth the cost. Thus, what I viewed was the 114 minutes theatrical version. After all, ’79 was only watched by me that one time, and that was approximately 35 years ago so my memories are incredibly hazy so this was in essence a first time watch.

Clearly, this was designed with the European market in mind; that is why Alain Delon and Sylvia Kristel have big roles, w/ Bibi Andersson appearing for a few minutes. The latter’s role did amuse me considering everyone knows her for all those Bergman movies but who knows how well those pay… some of the others in the cast made me wonder if I wandered into an episode of The Love Boat! Charo, Martha Raye, Eddie Albert, Sybil Danning (the last two are husband and wife in the film!), and Jimmie Walker sounds like the guest stars for that cheesy show. The tone also reminded me of such but more on that later. What I'll say then will make people astonished that one of the writers was Eric Roth; yes, the guy who won an Oscar for Forrest Gump and has also contributed to the likes of the Dune remake, the newest A Star is Born & The Insider!

What personally interested me was seeing a Concorde plane in action.
As there are plenty of “the youth” on Letterboxd I better explain what that was. Concorde was a supersonic plane created in a joint effort between the UK and France; only 14 were built for commercial use as it was expensive as Hades to operate so it was never a success. Shame, as it’s awesome that a plane could go more than 1,300 miles an hour and someone could fly from New York to London in just a few hours. It’s fascinating technology for the time, nevertheless. In a tragic post-script, a big reason why the Concorde went out of service was a tragic accident in 2000 where one of the planes crashed and killed everyone on board; that plane was… the same one you see in this movie. No kidding.

Anyhow, the plot is that Robert Wagner is an arms dealer who wants to blow the Concorde the F up… because otherwise his TV anchor girlfriend-who is on the plane-will expose that he sold weapons to those damn Commies and she just acquired the documents which confirmed it. There are several attempts and it seems to become more ludicrous the longer it goes; call me cynical but I don’t believe that the Concorde could do several barrel rolls in a row or fly upside down! Yet it somehow becomes more laughable after that. Charo only appears for like 90 seconds and unsuccessfully tries to sneak her little dog on the plane, Martha Raye has a bladder problem but can’t use the bathroom because Jimmie Walker is tokin’ up while playing a saxophone… what is this movie?

Yet I can laugh at such things as George Kennedy allegedly playing the same character he did in the other franchise entries yet suddenly he’s a tenured pilot who’s also a horndog, a character named ROBERT PALMER when already by this point the singer had already started to become popular, or how many of the effects haven’t aged that well, or appreciate a nice Lalo Schifrin score. I’m not sure if I would even want to watch a longer version except for curiosity’s sake: from Google I know the changes are more substantial than expected: some scenes are in a different order, other stuff is cut out along with all the moments added in, and there are even new characters played by Jessica Walter & Mel Ferrer. All that said, it was at least interesting to watch something for the first time since I was a little kid.