The Saturday Movie Group watched this last night.
It is not a good movie.
It is, however, an enjoyably good bad movie.
I think I will put a jump here to avoid any inadvertent spoilers, though frankly this movie arrived already spoiled…
* I am slighly annoyed that I can’t find Roger Ebert’s review of “The Concorde… Airport ’79” anywhere on the Internet, including RogerEbert.com. I wonder if this is because the review is reprinted in I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie and Andrews McMeel claims copyright over everything that’s in the book. If that’s so, Roger, you made a lousy deal.
* This feels like one of the last gasps of the 1970s. Charo? Jimmie ‘JJ’ Walker? Martha Raye? Avery Schreiber? Not just smoking on a commercial aircraft, but smoking jazz cabbage? (Yes, someone does point out the “No Smoking” sign to Mr. Walker’s character, but that’s all. I guess there are no smoke detectors in the lavatory on the Concorde.)
* There are quite a few excellent action shots of the Concorde, which almost make the movie worth sitting through.
* There is also some really good miniature work with Concorde models.
* There is also some really really bad miniature work with other aircraft. It almost seems like there were two miniature teams at work: the “A” team, which did the Concorde stuff, and the “C” team, which did all the other aircraft, and had a budget of $1.98.
* Interesting note #1 from IMDB: the Concorde in this movie is the one that crashed.
* Interesting note #2 from IMDB: this is the third aircraft featured in an “Airport” movie to have a fatal crash.
* Susan Blakely is a very nice looking woman. Her character in this movie is written as an idiot. Why not broadcast the documents that would expose “Dr. Kevin Harrison” immediately on arrival in Paris?
* There is not an Internet Movie Firearms Database entry for this. There is one however for the contemporaneous “Concorde Affaire ’79“.
* This is a surprisingly vulgar movie. I don’t mean “adult”, I mean “vulgar”. Yes, in “Airport”, Dean Martin and Jacqueline Bisset’s characters have a honest discussion about abortion, which was pretty daring for 1970. But they talk like adults, and when they are flying, the two pilots act like professionals. I can’t recall anything in “Airport 1975” or “Airport ’77” that would make even your maiden aunt blush.
Here, though, “Joe Patroni” and “Paul Metrand” talk like frat boys. Really. (“They don’t call it the cockpit for nothing, honey.” And that’s mild.)
* Speaking of frat boys, it looks like you can get historical data from 1979 to convert French francs to US dollars, but I have not done the math yet to convert 2000 francs to USD, or to adjust the USD conversion for inflation. I think perhaps I will leave that as an exercise for one of my readers, should anyone wish to take that up…
* How much would a Concorde pilot have made in 1979, that he could afford to spend 2000 francs? Or did he charge it to his expense account as “goodwill”?
* Come to think of it, is “Captain Metrand” an Air France pilot, or an Aérospatiale-BAC manufacturer’s rep?
* How does a Very pistol “jam”?
* As previously noted, Joe Patroni’s career trajectory was interesting.
Okay, so that wasn’t as short as I thought it was going to be. Don’t worry, something else will be coming along soon. I hope.