Murder on Flight 502

MURDER ON FLIGHT 502 shows just how dangerous it was to fly on a jumbo jet in the 1970's. Within 90 minutes, two people are strangled to death, another is shot, and one poor schmuck is attacked by a maniac wielding a meat fork!

This should come as no surprise, since the passenger list includes: A bank robber, a fake priest, an alcoholic crime novelist, and Danny Bonaduce!

The "stewardesses" (Farrah Fawcett and Brooke Adams) are far too busy smiling to notice the mayhem! Thank God that Robert Stack is at the helm or this plane would go straight into the Atlantic ocean!

Adding to the madness, what sort of airline allows Sonny Bono on board one of its aircraft? With a guitar!

On a personal note, the next time the TSA has me spread eagled next to the baggage carousel I'll be thanking my lucky stars that I'm not back in those dark days of air travel chaos!...

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.

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.

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.

This is well worth watching for its all star cast. It's like "Airport" and other 70s disaster films but on a tight budget. Aaron Spelling was one of the executive producers, and he once again proved that he knew how to give the public what it wanted. No one will confuse this film with art, but it's good for what it is - an entertaining, fun TV movie.