1974 - AIRPORT 1975, first in the Airport sequel series.

OK, it is easy to make fun of this bad film but the bottom line is that for all it's badness this is just a very entertaining film. 

Universal studio executive Jennings Lang got the brilliant idea to make a sequel to Airport that had nothing to do with Airport other than it stuck a lot of actors on a plane and put them in danger.  The director Jack Smight was one of those guys who was reasonably decent as a director but never really got the big pictures or the good scripts and there is only so much he could do with this terrible script and incredibly bad but incredibly quotable dialog that runs throughout the film.  However this film is all about the cast.

The amazing air rescue scene.

Charlton Heston on the back end of an impressive film career is our hero who just happens to be the airline's top expert on flying 747's and he'll need to be an expert.   The plane has a big hole in the side caused by Dana Andrew's star of Zero Hour, (the grandaddy of airplane disaster movies) who has a heart attack and flies into the 747, thus the big hole.  Karen Black is the stewardess who is Heston's mistress (she wants to get married of course) who ends up flying the plane.

But really it's the collection of supporting actors that surround the stars that makes this movie.  There's Conrad Janis, Martha Scott, Myrna Loy, Beverly Garland, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Ed Nelson, Nancy Olson, Kip Niven, Bob Hastings, Irene Tsu, Sharon Gless, Laurette Spang honestly the list is endless.  This cast is a bizzaro gold mine of Hollywood working actors.

Airport 1975 usually makes the "bad movies we love" film lists and it is bad, but this film is incredibly entertaining as it wallows in it's deliberate mediocrity.

107 minutes.