Airport '77 Reviews

Here we go again--it's time for a 747 to meet disaster once more with a host of colorful characters to worry about as they go down--and this time they go down 50 feet into the ocean. Billionaire Stewart is transporting his vast and priceless art collection to Florida from Washington, DC, when thieves skyjack the plane and fly at water's edge to avoid radar detection. The plane sails through fog and strikes an oil derrick, sinking beneath the waves to rest on an underwater shelf along the edge of a fathomless trench. The thieves are killed, but it becomes a race to save those on board in the watertight compartments while they slowly use up their air supply. The usual panic grips the transparent stereotypes who pass for passengers--Lee as a famous oceanographer, Grant as his boozy wife, de Havilland as a wealthy art collector, Cotten as her one-time lover, and plane designer McGavin who admits he has a fear of flying (and drowning, no doubt). Lemmon stars as the pilot, and Kennedy again puffs and huffs as Patroni, this time from a massive rescue ship that manages to refloat the plane long enough to enable survivors to swim to safety. This proved tough on some--Vaccaro caught pneumonia while thrashing through the 2,000 gallons of water dumped onto the fast-sinking plane in the studio tank. Universal cleaned up again with a gross of more than $16 million, which put in order yet another sequel, AIRPORT '79. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.