Murder on Flight 502

When watching this movie, don't watch it for suspense, or character development, or even for the mystery. This is a "make your own fun" movie. You can watch it in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 style, making fun of it as you go. You can watch it to spot all of the stars (at the time). Or you could watch it to find out what Airplane! was making fun of so much; this movie seems to have provided most of it. The pure dated-ness of this film makes it so easy to make fun of. Can you remember a time when a smoking box in an airport lounge was treated fairly lightly?

But don't hate this movie because it's, well, bad; praise it for its badness. This is one of those movies that is good to watch because it's horribly done. The acting is horrible, the script is horrible, the story is horrible. The only thing that was done right was the casting, but, as we're seeing so much these days, a good cast can't save a movie. But a good sense of humor can. Which is why I give this movie a fairly high grade: if you enjoy pretending to be a sillouette in front of a giant movie screen, you'll like this movie.

... I am referring to something Sonny Bono's agent says as they head towards his flight to board. And he says it very loud. And nobody even stops and stares. What a time capsule this is.

If you are under 40 I'm not sure you will really appreciate this. But if you remember the 1970s at all this is terrific and hilarious for reasons never intended. It is about an international flight headed for London. After take-off a smoke bomb goes off in the first class lounge. As a result of this, an airline executive gets a note a day earlier than he normally would have, and it apologizes for the murders on flight 502, the flight that just took off. So now it is a race to figure out who is the murderer before he can kill.

There are all kinds of furtive glances and obvious grudges between the first class passengers to stir the pot. There are some married couples on the flight, but there are also lots of people flying alone, and they strike up conversations with whoever is sitting next to them. It reminded me of Love Boat, and that should be no surprise since Aaron Spelling, who produced Love Boat, also produced this film. Of course, today, bothering a stranger next to you with conversation would get you rebuffed because you would be interrupting their game of Candy Crush on their phone. But in 1975 people were OK with casual conversation and were accustomed to occasionally being bored.

What's funny about it? Robert Stack as the pilot five years before Airplane, playing it straight. That setting a smoke bomb off in an airport doesn't get you shackled by the TSA upon arrival and sentenced to 40 years in the basement of a federal prison. That the killer on the plane just ASSUMES certain movements of passengers whom he targets. Farrah Fawcett as a stewardess (that is what they called flight attendents then) who at this point in her career has very limited acting talent. That changes a lot over time.

What's great for classic film buffs? Larraine Day, Dane Clarke, Walter Pidgeon, and Ralph Bellamy making appearances as passengers.

I had a hard time rating this film. I'm rating it as a time capsule that is certainly not boring. Thus my rating will probably be higher than those of other folks.

What a cast that has been assembled as only Aaron Spelling can do! the dialogue is so corny and played so seriously, you'll be howling. The best exchanges are between a drunk Polly Bergen and a very sober Fernando Lamas. The sets are really almost "Plan 9 From Outer Space" level. The "VIP lounge" at the airport was probably a baggage office at LAX and the plane, well, the budget was only enough to show the first class section, so all you see are big blankets/curtains covering the entrances to the rest of the plane and several references by Captain Stack to the "hundreds of people back there."

The upstairs lounge of the plane is decorated in what appears to be outdoor patio furniture and during the course of the film, the scariest looking cheese and crackers fester along the back of the wall uneaten by these high-falutin' jet-setters who spout inane dialogue as the viewer tries to wade through the red herrings and Farrah's cocktail service.

The whodunnit wraps up quickly, of course. Suprises? No. Laughs? Yes!

The $5.00 DVD I got of this in the Best Buy junk pile is covered in Farrah's photos and the DVD even includes a "Farrah Quiz" at the end that even your mother could not flunk. Thanks to Barry Diller and Spelling/Goldberg for making these tacky ABC "Movies of the Week" in the 70's and for someone actually mastering these DVD coasters that provide some of us with a hilarious flashback to our youth.

An ensemble cast of familiar Hollywood faces act, and attempt to act, in this low-budget whodunit, about a New York to London flight that has a psychopath on board. Polly Bergen hams it up as an alcoholic writer, and is fun to watch. Robert Stack plays the pilot, consistent with his serious, take-charge persona. Danny Bonaduce plays himself, more or less. Laraine Day's acting is fine but she needs more makeup. And hip looking Sonny Bono shows why he was wise to earn his living as a singer.

The film's sets look cheap, and the stereotyped characters are too perfunctory to spark much interest. The film's visuals look dated.

Given the suspects and the obvious red herrings, the whodunit puzzle is not that hard to solve. However, the plot twist at the end I did not see coming.

Even with a couple of obvious plot holes, "Murder On Flight 502" held my interest as a whodunit puzzle. But it has a "Producer Aaron Spelling" look and feel to it, with those cheap sets, bland dialogue, cardboard characters, and nondescript elevator music, all rather typical of assembly-line 1970's made-for-TV movies.

My husband bought a copy of this movie from a bargain bin for $2.00 so I wasn't expecting much. Actually, it was so campy it was fun. And in today's world, very naive. Danny Bonaduce, one of the passengers, leaves a package in the boarding area and after he gets on the flight the package starts to smoke. Security rushes in, takes a casual look, and pronounces it a practical joke. Times sure have changed ! Bonaduce is in a number of scenes at the beginning of the movie, but although he is in the same section as the rest of the passengers on the plane, he is not seen anymore during the second half of the film. I guess they had to cut the budget.

This film is not about a "terrorist" as we think of them today. It was about one man, planning to kill another man, just a vendetta thing. The acting was awful, for the most part, but like I said, if you don't mind that-- the movie was worth $2.00. Obviously made for TV-- every twenty minutes there was a blackout for commercial insertion. And it was strange that the plane was carrying hundreds of passengers (according to the pilot), but we only saw about a dozen. From scene to scene, the number of extras would change. The cabin would be almost empty in one scene, then the next scene, there would be someone in every seat. Oh, well. It was fun. Not funny--- just fun.