Review of The Concorde... Airport '79 (1979) by Philip W — 12 Jul 2008

This movie is so stupid and corny it's a blast! In the last(one presumes) in the AIRPORT series, a Concorde flight carrying American and Russian Olympic athletes and gymnasts is shot at with a TV-guided missile, almost blown up by an Airfix F4 Phantom and lands into nets at PAris, then the cargo door blows off, jettisoning the luggage(your bags are much safer in Terminal 5 then, hee hee) and casuing the plane to rip into pieces . . . on board are the usual nuts, the woman with a live heart for her dying boy's transplant(actress Cicely Tyson must have been desperate for the money to do this role), a Russian gymnast in love with an Amrican reporter called, wait for it, Robert Palmer!!!(he's Addicted to Love one assumes) - an incontinent old woman who runs to the loo when the Concorde does evasive action against heatseeking missiles and flies upside down(honestly)- NOT a good idea! And junkie saxophonist Jimmie Walker, a singer who's character name is Gretchen Carter . . . inspired! Who's flying the plane? None other than George Kennedy as Joe PAtroni, Alain Delon as the copilot who is in love with air hostess Sylvia ('Emannuelle')Kristel(who keeps her clothes on in this movie, but she was still fit in her prime) and flight engineer David Warner - who got decapitated in THE OMEN! An all star cast who needed the money!! But the film's best features, especially on a 42 inch plasma TV, are the shots of the Concorde at PAris Charles De Gaulle taxiing, landing and taking off, and some nice aerial footage which does make up for the Airfix model scenes!!! Interestingly, the plane used in the movie, F-BTSC, is the one which crashed in Paris in 2000.

One wonders with all the remakes about in the cinema these days we will see an AIRPORT 2009 - yes, you're on a flight from London to LA, someone's smuggled snakes on board, there's no Samuel L Jackson to yell he's had enough of them, there's an annoying kid in the next seat, a couple having a lovers tiff, a kidney patient, a nun with a guitar, then hijackers threaten to crash you into Washington with a nuke on board, Bruce Willis tries to save the day in his vest, the pilots are dead or immobilized, the plane's going into the ocean, but guess what . . .

YOUR BAGGAGE IS STILL IN TERMINAL 5 AND WE RAN OUT OF COFFEE!

AAAAARRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!(entire plane screams in terror!!!) . . . ominous music!!