SST: Death Flight

The success of "Airport", "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno" proved there was a big appetite for disaster movies so naturally television felt they had to get into the act by offering their own lower budget knockoffs of the Irwin Allen disaster movie formula. "SST: Disaster In The Sky" is the ultimate example of this, since not only do we see a gaggle of 70s TV stars (all of whom it should be noted had one thing in common at the time. Their once popular series had all been cancelled by then!) like Robert Reed, Martin Milner, Peter Graves etc. we even see two future 80s TV stars Billy Crystal and John DeLancie in smaller roles (I hope David Letterman some day springs a clip of this on Crystal the next time he appears on the show). That alone is enough to make you keep watching despite the bad dialogue (characters have to engage in a lot of implausible exposition at various points in order for certain things to make sense), cheap FX and silly plot resolutions at the climax. Heck, "SST" is even better than some of the worst theatrical disaster movies coming out by then like the dreadful "Concorde: Airport 1979" so if you loved the quality disaster movies of the time like "Airport" and "Towering Inferno" settle back and enjoy this intriguing TV knockoff of the genre.

I am surprised that the score is so low. Okay, I admit the movie is technically bad but at least we got to see a lot of familiar faces here. You rarely see that in a TV movie. This is the only time I've seen Regis Philban in a movie of any kind. It was hard to recognize Billy Crystal. Probably the coolest part of this movie was when it showed that explosion. A pity it was just that one scene. I know that this movie is really clichéd. It probably helps that "Airplane!" is my favorite comedy too. They mocked stuff like this perfectly.

The version I saw was 92 minutes (on "Mystery Science Theater 3000"). This says it's only 89 minutes. Wow, that is the first time I have ever heard of a movie having a longer version being shown like that. It was certainly an interesting episode as it was their longest ever. Yeah, it's not worth watching on its own, but I think there have been many worse disaster films. I guess it probably did go on too long and there's still nothing unique about it. **

Plane disaster movie about a deadly flu and sabotage.

Directed by David Lowell Rich who worked on a few 70s disaster movies (see Runaway Train, Adventures of the Queen, Horror at 30, 000 Feet, The Concorde...Airport '79).

I am guessing Rich was asked to direct Airport '79 because this TV movie, SST: Death Flight, could almost pass as a very low budget cinema release.

"SST" is now more interesting than ever because everybody watching it now knows all about the dangers of a deadly flu (thanks to Covid).

The flick is loaded with well known TV faces from the 60s and 70s - one from the 80s as "Q" from Star Trek The Next Generation is here!

If you don't expect anything too original, you should get a blast from this movie I have nicknamed - The Long Lost Airport Movie.

This is a very enjoyable disaster movie, about yet another one of those star-filled planes heading for trouble. This time, a Concorde is sabotaged, and if that wasn´t enough, there is also a virus spreading inside the plane. The film has everything an airplane-disaster movie buff could ask for: tacky effects, lots of stars and fun dialogue. Pretty good stuff.

At a certain point during "SST: Death Flight", one of the passengers calms the others by saying that it's more dangerous to cross the street in a big city like New York, than to fly over the Atlantic in an airplane. He's probably correct, statistically speaking, but that most definitely wasn't the impression you got during the 70s, what with all the disaster movies with airplanes around that time! You could easily lose track of all the aviation disaster movies that were made during these two decades. There's the legendary "Airplane" series, of course, but also other random classics ("Skyjacked", "The Doomsday Flight", "The Crowded Sky", ...) and a whole lot of TV-movies-of-the-week. "SST: Death Flight" is a very formulaic, and by the looks of it also a rather unpopular movie, but I still found it enjoyable.

The problem with this film, and with practically every other made-for-TV disaster movie from the same period, is that it too much feels like a "light-version" of the aforementioned "Airport" series. It's always about a wide range of characters, struggling with their own banal private problems, gathering aboard an aircraft - usually for its maiden voyage - that will crash if it weren't for a handful of heroic people sacrificing themselves. "SST: Death Flight" at least tries to go the extra mile, with not one but TWO deadly issues. The supersonic jetliner's hydraulic system gets sabotaged by a frustrated company employee (who is stupid enough to be on board of the plane he sabotaged) and a doctor from the WHO brought a deadly African flu-virus in his suitcase.

You perfectly know what else to expect. Lots of familiar faces from the TV and cinema industry, usually long after their glory days, and you can generally predict straight away whether they'll be survivors or martyrs at the end. "SST: Death Flight" honestly isn't that bad if you embrace all the clichés and stereotypes. The performances, as well as David Lowell Rich's direction, are competent. Besides, Billy Crystal had to start his career somewhere, right?