Sunday 2 October 2022

Airport '77 (1977 Jerry Jameson)

Jameson mainly a TV director.

We enjoyed this nonsense - what a cast. Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, Lee Grant (who Q kept calling a 'drunken slut'), Brenda Voccaro, Joseph Cotten (who looks rather lost, bless him; by no means his last film), Olivia de Havilland (by no means her last film), Christopher Lee, Darren McGavin (A Christmas Story), M. Emmett Walsh, James Booth, George Kennedy. Lemmon is as credible as ever.

Lemmon's rescue dinghy is amusingly small - they were running out of budget at that point - cued cries of 'More boats! It looks like a TV movie!' Underwater rescue scenes badly needed cutting - a little bit of Baz Lurmann required here - a little bit. The fact that Great Movies Action screened a cropped version of the Panavision original made it funnier, as Lee or Stewart occasionally disappear out of frame.

They had appeared together before, in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte

The plot - airliner is hijacked with gas then lands in the sea - is somewhat pinched from Thunderball. Written by Michael Scheff and David Spector from a story by H.A.L Craig and Charles Kuenstle.

Photographed by Philip Lathrop. Universal.

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