The Concorde... Airport '79

In Harry Medved's book, "The 50 Worst Films of All Time", 'Airport '75" made the list. I think this is only because the book came out in 1977...before "The Concord...Airport '79" debuted! Yes, it's THAT bad...well, perhaps not bad but incredibly stupid.

The plot makes it obvious the studio had run out of ideas for air disasters...it's that ludicrous. A multinational arms manufacturing company has been illegally selling arms to various nasty countries. A whistleblower knows about this and is murdered as he's making contact with a reporter. Although he's killed, the woman escapes and the next day, as she's about to get on the Concorde, documents incriminating the head of the arms company are given to her. The CEO (Robert Wagner) is determined to not allow that plane to safely lands and sends a super-missile after the plane. When that doesn't work, a remote controlled fighter plane it sent after the Concorde!! In both cases, this very large airliner is able to deftly avoid the missiles by outmaneuvering and outrunning them...something which is incredibly absurd. After the plane successfully lands in Paris, the movie appears to be over...everyone has survived....or have they??

I can understand why folks back in the day thought this film was intended to be a comedy. Not only is the plot dumb but the dialog and characters are terrible. Jimmy Walker's character walks around the plane with his saxophone and even plays it while the plane is in flight....he also smokes reefer in the lavatory! Martha Raye's character LITERALLY spends the movie in the bathroom peeing due to a bladder condition (I am so shocked she agreed to play such a stupid and embarrassing role). But in particular, George Kennedy's character (who was in all four Airport movies) has somehow been promoted to Concorde pilot and he says some incredibly ludicrous things...especially this gem:

Isabelle: You pilots are such... men.

Capt. Joe Patroni: They don't call it the cockpit for nothing, honey.

For more ridiculous dialog, read through the dialog section for this film....including the banana comment!

Overall, a film that is laughable because of bad writing from start to finish.

It's stupid fun idk why this got all of the hate. Sure it's flawed in many aspects but I enjoyed it a lot. Maybe the flaws made it feel very fresh for me. I think this a hidden gem and I won't care the mid 00s elitist ratings and spread the love for it.

This old-fashioned , disconcerting catastrophe picture contains thriller , suspense , drama , moderate tension and being entertaining but with lots of flaws and gaps . All clichéd , incredibly far-fetched non-sense , the result is a very superior hokum . The movie is another jetliner epic with heroes as Alain Delon and George Kennedy playing two valiant pilots . Plenty of stock roles with regurgitation of all usual stereotypical situations from disaster films , including a fairly moronic screenplay . This is the four of four movies in the "Airport" series adapted from the Arthur Hailey novel . It's embarrassing and amusing as well as full clichés and stereotypes , including the unavoidable accident , with below average acting by all-star-cast . As the Concorde takes off several threads of the plot are already in motion . American based Federation World Airlines has just acquired a Concorde jet , which will make its inaugural commercial flight from Washington D.C to Paris and subsequently Moscow , in the former Soviet Unión . It is captained by Alain Delon who muses : ¨It's still amazing to me , only three and half hours ago we were in Paris ¨ . And another captain , co-pilot Patroni yells ¨I'd love to see what my horoscope said for the morning¨ . The film is detailing hectic flighty piloted by Alain Delon/George Kennedy and the relationship among passengers . As the Concorde is chased by missiles when the nasty Robert Wagner , who runs an arms plant , has been caught selling weapons to the bad guys of the world , and his journalist-mistress -Susan Blakely- is the woman with the evidence . Then , villain Robert launches an attack missile against the Concorde . As the captain pilot Delon banks to avoid two of Wagner's fighter aircrafts . At the end takes places a crashing in the Alps . If you've seen the original ¨Airport¨ by George Seaton based on the Arthur Hailey's novel 'the daddy of them all' , you have seen them all .

It is an insincere , slick attempt to find box-office magic again , but this time didn't achieved hit smash . As the film was a critical and commercial failure at the box-office with the lowest financial take of the four "Airport" movies . Unflagging pace , plastic acting , hilarious dialogue and stock characters recounting a hectic flight in Concorde . Filmed at the height of the disaster genre from the 7os , this entry in the spectacular series is wasted by lousy acting embarrassing special effects and non-sense plot . The screenplay develops into ¨Coyote and The Road Runner¨ stuff and one can visualize Robert Wagner jumping up and down with rage as each new attempt fail .When American audiences greeted the film with derisive laughter, Universal decided to market it as a comedy, with the Tagline : "Fasten your seat belts, the thrills are terrific and so are the laughs!" . The movie was made and released around the time of another Concorde film, Concorde Affaire '79 (1979) , the two films both had French cast and French story elements , even their titles were similar . Look quickly to Eddie Albert , Bibi Andersson , Charo , Andrea Marcovicci , Cicely Tyson , David Warner, Mercedes McCambridge , Jimmie Walker , Sybil Danning , Jon Cedar , Ed Begley Jr , final feature film of actress Martha Raye, among others . In addition , George Kennedy and Monica Lewis are the only returning actors from the "Airport" movie series to appear in the movie ; Kennedy's continuing character of Joe Patroni appeared in all four "Airport" pictures . The motion picture was ridiculously directed by David Lowell Rich , habitual TV director and occasionally for movie theater . It's an inoffensive diversion but is sometimes tediously unspooled . The flick won't appeal to disaster genre enthusiasts .

This sagas belongs the following films : the first was ¨Airport¨ (1970) , unanimously deemed the best , it paved the way for many lesser flicks including its many sequels , being directed by George Seaton with Burt Lancaster , Jean Seberg , Dean Martin , Van Heflin ; ¨Airport 75¨ (1974) by Jack Smight with Charlton Heston , Karen Black and Gloria Swanson , ¨Airport 77¨ (1977) considered one of the best of the series , being directed by Jerry Jameson with Jack Lemmon , Christopher Lee , James Stewart , Lee Grant , Robert Hooks , Monte Markham , Kathleen Quinlan , Darren McGavin ,Gil Gerard , M. Emmet Walsh , Pamela Bellwood , Michael Pataki , James Booth , leading to the last of the tired ones , this ¨Airport 79¨ (1979) by David Lowell Rich with . This picture was nominated for Worst Picture at the Hastings Bad Cinema Society's 2nd Stinkers Bad Movie Awards in 1979 and listed among The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made in "The Official Razzie Movie Guide" . Furthermore , ¨ Skyjacked (1972) ¨ by John Guillermin with Charlton Heston , James Brolin and this film was parodied heavily in Airplane! (1980) by Jim Abrahams and David Zucker

Fourth and final entry in the series that began in 1970. That first film helped kickstart the all-star big budget disaster trend in 70's cinema, and this final outing helps just as much at putting the final nails in the genre's coffin. Of course "Airplane" the following year would make fun of the entire previous decade's worth of disaster films.

Alain Delon gets top billing as the captain of the title craft. With Susan Blakely and John Davidson as reporters, Robert Wagner as a crooked arms dealer, Sylvia Kristel as the head stewardess, Eddie Albert as the airline owner, Sybil Danning as his trophy wife, Avery Schreiber as a Soviet Olympic coach with a deaf daughter, Andrea Marcovicci as the oldest Russian Olympic gymnast ever, Mercedes McCambridge as her busybody chaperone, Cicely Tyson as a mother to a child desperately in need of a heart transplant, Nicolas Coaster as the doctor to perform it, David Warner as the dieting flight engineer, Bibi Andersson as a prostitute, Jimmie Walker as a pot-smoking sax player, Charo as Margarita and Martha Raye as the woman who can't stay out of the bathroom (no, really).

George Kennedy costars as Patroni, the only character to appear in all four films. This time he has a larger part as co-pilot of the title passenger jet, on route from the US to Paris, as Wagner's evil arms dealer hatches numerous inept plans to bring down the craft and destroy incriminating evidence. The dialogue is trite and banal as usual, and the various relationships and mini-dramas amongst the bloated cast never rise above the mundane.

Keep your eyes open for an early appearance by Ed Begley Jr as Rescuer #1. Like many films of the era, the studio also cut together an extended version for TV broadcasts that added even more subplots and characters, played by the likes of Jose Ferrer, J.D. Cannon and Alan Fudge, but the version I watched was the original.

All the entries in the 70's disaster movie franchise "Airport" – a total of four movies spread over one decade – have been chastised by critics as well as regular action movie fanatics for being too grotesque and ludicrous. Me, personally, I liked the three previous installments a lot, but I can't but admit that the swan song in the series is a completely laughable effort. The supposedly adrenalin-rushing script is absurd, the stereotypical characters are cartoonish, the acting performances are wooden and the action sequences are downright hilarious. The set-up and plot of "The Concorde" is faithful to the previous movies. We have a cast full of acclaimed names, often in inferior little roles, and a screenplay that brings together pretty much everything that can go wrong on an intercontinental flight. The prestigious Concorde aircraft is ready to fly from New York to Paris and then onwards towards Moscow in celebration of the 1980 Olympics. One of the passengers is the female journalist Maggie Whelan, who's in possession of some important evidence that will unmask her ex-fiancée Kevin Harrison as an illegal weapon dealer. It's most vital for him that Maggie never reaches Moscow and thus he tries to kill her, as well as the rest of the Concorde passengers and crew, subsequently through nuclear missiles and sabotage. Luckily for the passengers, the Concorde has two of the world's biggest macho men behind the steering wheel with the French Captain Paul Metrand and the American veteran pilot Joe Patroni. "The Concorde: Airport 79" is a dumb and fairly pathetic film, but fortunately enough it remains amusing and never bores for one second. The sight of an hi-tech advanced airplane making loops in order to evade missiles is definitely bad in an entertaining way and the hammy performances of A-list stars are fun to observe as well. Particularly Robert Wagner is tremendous as the villain. With his straight face and eloquent monologues, he represents the prototype of Bond-movie villains and I strongly suspect that Mike Myers hired him to play Number Two in the Austin Powers' movie solely based on his performance here. Alain Delon looks quite bored and soft-erotica star Sylvia "Emmanuelle" Kristel is rather unnoticeable when she keeps her clothes on. Fun bloke George Kennedy is the only actor who appeared in all four of the "Airport" movies, so it's truly a shame that he plays his biggest role in the worst of the series. The dialogs are lame and some of the clichéd sub plots are horrendous (does there really have to be an emergency donor organ transport in every disaster movie?), but I certainly didn't regret the two hours of my life that I wasted on watching this film.