Airport 1975 | | Cast : | Charlton Heston, Karen Black, George Kennedy | | Director : | Jack Smight | | Studio : | Goodtimes Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | October 18, 1974 | | DVD Released Date : | May 05, 1998 | | Language : | French (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 08, 2005 | | Summary | Who is flying the plane? | Content
 | If you are interested in this film, I would suggest looking into the AIRPORT TERMINAL PACK which includes AIRPORT, AIRPORT 75, AIRPORT 77 and THE CONCORDE AIRPORT 79. There have been some gripes about the cropping of one of these films in that set, but if you're just looking for a quick AIRPORT fix, it clearly fits the bill.
The decade of the seventies gave us many `disaster' films. None of them spawned a film and 3 sequels with the exception of AIRPORT. All along, the filmmakers had to consider "How do we make the next one bigger and better?" Having blown up a bomb on the first plane the filmmakers decided a head on crash with a small plane would recapture the magic. Well, it doesn't totally work, but all the AIRPORT films still retain a bit of charm that makes viewing painless and on occasion fun.
There are moments in the dramatic Airport 75 that are difficult to discern from the broad parody AIRPLANE. From Krishnas boarding the plane to an entire plane full of smiling passengers leaning in to hear a song sung to a transplant patient en route to her operation, it all looks familiar. In part, seeing the material that inspired that wacky comedy presented dramatically is a lot of fun.
Of course, AIRPORT '75 has an All-Star Cast! Well, nowadays, that all-star cast is really just a collection of familiar looking people. Charlton Heston and Karen Black are on board. Jerry Stiller, Norman Fell, Sid Caesar and Erik Estrada are there for laughs. Even Gloria Swanson is ready for her close-up, adding to the camp qualities. And of course, George Kennedy returns as Petroni, an AIRPORT staple. Most amazing is the aforementioned appearance by Helen Reddy as a nun charming the passengers with a guitar. It is one of the unintentional moments of hilarity parodied so well in the comedy AIRPLANE.
One of the only elements that actually works very well in this sequel is the footage used of the troubled plane flying through the mountains. It is not a special effect, rather actual plane footage that sells the situation as real.
Finally, Airport '75 retains some of the Soap Opera elements that propelled the first film in the series.
Airport '75 is in no way a great film. Hardly even a good one. But it can sure be fun; especially on those late Saturday nights went you can't get to sleep... this'll do the trick! |
| Rating | | | Date | May 04, 2005 | | Summary | Unintentionally Funny Disaster Drama | Content
| After the smashing success of "Airport," it was inevitable that a sequel would follow and what a piece of work this film is ! Like so many other 1970's disaster films, "Airport 1975" holds up as a camp classic. The closeups of the damaged 747 as it flies perilously close to the mountains are great but before then there are too many scenes of the plane gliding along on its way to a collision with Dana Andrews' Piper. The acting and writing is so bad that it's hard to pick out the worst offender in this Cast of near-greats and has-beens. My personal favorite is poor dumb blonde Christopher Norris as flight attendant Bette who screams hysterically until she snaps to it and helps Karen Black fly the 747 on her own ("Climb baby climb..") Manly Charlton Heston is about 20 years too old for his part and you can't help but notice his yellow teeth and haggard appearance and Linda Blair should have stuck with playing demonic children. And Helen Reddy as a nun- give me a break ! This all adds up to such a mess that you can't help but enjoy the camp ! |
| Rating | | | Date | May 04, 2004 | | Summary | Buy this version unless they remaster the Terminal Pack... | Content
| I won't comment on the film or the acting; it's hard to take any Airport film seriously after Airplane! skewered the genre. However, if you appreciate the film for what it is, fun entertainment, this is certainly one of the better in the 70's disaster film genre and the special effects have held up well over the years. If you're interested in this film, I strongly urge you to buy this copy instead of or in addition to the Airport Terminal Pack; there is a mastering error that does not fully expand the film horizontally in that collection, with the result that objects are somewhat compressed horizontally from their true proportions. Another reviewer's references to "tire ovals" and "stick people" is a bit of an exaggeration, but you'll wonder why the plane is so short and stubby and why the airport's pickup trucks look as if they have 4' beds. :-) In short, another mastering error on Universal's part and, frankly, a somewhat better transfer on GoodTimes' part make THIS the better transfer of Airport 1975... |
| Rating | | | Date | March 21, 2004 | | Summary | A Disaster Film Classic but bad acting | Content
| I recently bought the Airport Terminal pack for myself because I always had a passion for disaster films. Before I bought the terminal pack, I wanted to see if I could rent the Airport sequels at the VHS store, they didn't have them, when I finally bought the terminal and when I saw Airport 75, I thought it was a classic for a disaster film, but for acting i though it was a joke, in the entire film, from the beginning and to the end, Karen Black who plays the Head Stewdess on a Boeing 747 that collides with a small private plane during flight looks like she has her eyes crossed, now that was hiliarious! Her acting was just as bad, it became even worse when she had to take instructins for Al Murdock ( Charlston Heston) to fly the plane, that scene was really painful to watch, and one other thing to, the man who was flying the small private who eventually crashed into Flight #409 looked like he was having a heart attack when he lost control, before that happened, if he did have a heart attack then why didn't the movie tell anything about heart problems, I guess that was just to add excitment to the movie. All in All the movie was good, the acting was a joke, esepically Karen Black's acting! |
| Rating | | | Date | March 20, 2004 | | Summary | Superfluous from Beginning to End | Content
| I first watched this movie on NBC back in April 1977. Though edited to make it fit its two hour timeslot and allow room for commercials, I later purchased the video from Goodtimes Video to watch the parts not shown by NBC. From the beginning of the movie shot at Dulles Airport in northern Virginia, the cast who star as the crew and passengers aboard Columbia Airlines flight 409, board a Boeing 747-123 (on loan from American Airlines) and it is typical Hollywood overacting, particularly the passengers. Some of the crew, especially Erik Estrada, who plays flight engineer Julio, does quite a bit of womanizing with one of the stewardesses. I've flown a lot during my lifetime, even aboard 747s, and have never heard so much redundancy as depicted in this movie. The sound effects were a little primitive from the Boeing 747 sounding like a Boeing 707 on take-off down to the telephone gongs that are the same ones used on the beginning of the "Rockford Files". This was in the days before George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic came into the vogue. By the way, his film "American Graffiti" was the inflight movie. Some faults are present in the film. The private pilot (Dana Andrews) identifies his plane as "two-three-two-zulu" instead of the correct identitication: N9750Y. Another fault was at the time the stricken 747 lands at Salt Lake City and runs out of runway before Charlton Heston has to turn the nose tiller to make the plane go left at a high rate of speed. Here, we see the passengers get thrown to the left instead of to the right. Another fault we see is that the passengers are catching a glimpse of the daring midair transfer. In reality it would be difficult for anyone to see such an operation. If you were to watch the movie more than once, you could see all these errors. |
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