1976 - MIDWAY, epic retelling of the navel battle via lots of stock footage

When I saw this film in the theater 47 years ago (yikes), I was fairly appalled by it.  The all star cast was for the most part doing it as a favor for producer Walter Mirsch or was filled out with the usual bunch of middle aged Universal stock players.  The film had to work in an interracial love story between a navy pilot and his Japanese girlfriend which seemed completely unnecessary.  Most if not all of the battle scenes were stock footage from various Japanese and American films about the World War II battle in the Pacific.  But most annoyingly Universal studios decided to add their technological marvel Sensurround to the soundtrack so you had to put up with your eardrums almost exploding at times.  You could barely hear the John Williams score towards the end of the film with all the Sensurround noise.

The cast were mostly people Walter Mirsch had worked with in the past, James Coburn, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Cliff 'Robertson, the list goes on.  Mirsch called in a lot of favors to pass this film off as an all star spectacular instead of some overblown TV movie of the week which it basically was.  The production even got Toshiro Mifune to appear yet again as Admiral Yamamoto.

As with all these navel films, there is a lot of pushing little model ships around on big table top maps which after a while gets completely confusing since all the little model ships look alike.  The director was Jack Smight a reliable guy that the studio could keep under their control.  But the real creators of this film were the editors, veterans Robert Swink and Frank Urioste.  They had to paste a movie together from films like Tora Tora Tora, Storm Over the Pacific, Away All Boats, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, The Battle of Britain and John Ford's documentary The Battle of Midway of all things.  It's actually kind of amazing the film is as coherent as it is.

For all my kvetching about this story,  the damn movie actually didn't play that badly.  The Battle of Midway is an important historical event during World War II and a very interesting piece of history.  As much as planning and the role that navel intelligence played in the battle on the United States side,  there is no question that the United States Navy was very lucky that day.

 The film was written by  Donald S. Sanford, the running time is 131 minutes.

1977 - DAMNATION ALLEY or cheesy science fiction film time

A quick 90 minutes for a silly end of the world science fiction film.  Damnation Alley has a low rent cast consisting of George Peppard, Jan Michael Vincent and Dominique Sanda.  Sanda was a French actor who had worked with Vittorio de Sica and Bernardo Bertolucci.  Seven years later she was stuck in crap like this working for studio hack Jack Smight, I wonder what happened to her career?

The real star of the film was the armored personnel carrier the "Landmaster."  It's kind of amazing this goofy thing even ran at all since it looks like it was made out of leftover corrugated boxes.  The plot of this film has the three actors driving down some corridor of the United States that doesn't have high levels of radiation in search of other people after the end of World War III.  They pick up a kid on their journey because in films like this there is always a kid that tags along.

The film definitely has a late 70's vibe to it with it's optical printer special effects of the sky on fire and the large fake scorpions that wander around the desert.  The film is also known for Peppard's famous line, "This whole town is infested with killer cockroaches." 

But perhaps I am being a little two hard on this film.  Damnation Alley does meet the 10 year old boy requirement when it comes to movie viewing.  It has a cool car gizmo, monsters and enough action to keep their interest.  The film does move along and it doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is, a "B" movie.

91 minutes.

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 granddaddy 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 past their prime supporting actors surrounding 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 1975usually 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.