# Airport Movie Series (1970-1979)



## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Anyone remember watching the _Airport_ movie series? I will admit that the original 1970 _Airport _movie to be one of those satisfying watches, and even when I was younger and didn't know about widescreen version vs pan&scan when I watched it on TV (including those awkward "cut to widescreen for that insert shot"), it was an enjoyable two hours with some requotable lines.

The sequels, however, are another story, Each sequel got more convoluted than the previous film to where the final film was more comedy than anything else. One of the appeals of the original film was the interaction between the airport and the troubled airplane, and plenty of stuff at the airport level. The sequels, however, seem to forget the airport part and concentrate on the disaster part.

I have also viewed pre-_Airport _movies that were pretty good, including _Zero Hour!_ (which formed the base story for the Airplane! movie) and John Wayne's _The High and the Mighty_. Too bad both of these films are only available on DVD.


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## trh (Nov 3, 2007)

Zero Hour! is available on Apple TV and Amazon prime for $1.99 each (rent).
The High and the Mighty is available free on Pluto TV and kanopy TV (I've never heard of kanopy) and Amazon Prime for $2.99 and Apple TV for $3.99.


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## MysteryMan (May 17, 2010)

Mark Holtz said:


> Too bad both of these films are only available on DVD.


A high end 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray/DVD Player will upscale DVDs to near 1080p quality. Garbage in/Garbage out rule applies.


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## CraigerM (Apr 15, 2014)

I watched Airport ‘75 and The Concorde Airport ‘79.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

I remember Airplane! and sequels better that the Airport series. There is so much to love.


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## Eva (Nov 8, 2013)

James Long said:


> I remember Airplane! and sequels better that the Airport series. There is so much to love.


I love those movies! Some in our family has been known to quote parts of the dialogue.... My favourite is "Rumack  : Can you fly this plane, and land it? Ted Striker  : Surely you can't be serious. Rumack  : I am serious... and don't call me Shirley."


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Too many jokes to quote them all. Lining up to slap the hysterical passenger (some with weapons). The "Red Zone/White Zone" PA announcers getting personal. "Give me Hamm on five and hold the Mayo." The captain names. Actually showing "poop" hitting a fan. The reporters running to the telephone booths to phone in updates and knocking the entire row of booths over (younger generation will need that one explained). The security walk through showing x-rays of people in their underwear (predictive of current x-ray screening technology?). Police Squad and Naked Gun were also seriously silly movies. I miss the days of human cartoon movies (jokes that would have been buried in a Warner Brothers cartoon). Most current slapstick movies either go for the "R" rating or as close as they can get with their bawdiness. (Inflating the auto pilot and the discussions with Timmy were probably the most bawdy in Airplane!)

I could go on - but this is an Airport thread, not Airplane!

Even though Airport was derivative of 1950s films (wait 15-20 years and do a rewrite pattern that still exists) it is credited with starting a series of similar disaster films in the 1970s - as well as the parodies of such disaster films. I don't remember the Concorde Airport movie - but that probably applies to a lot of people since it was such a flop. They ended up running the series into the ground. It seems a shame that a series that started with a 10 million investment making 100 million box office ended with a movie costing 14 million making less than it cost.

In part the failure of the Concorde movie probably helped the Airplane! movie. After a decade of disaster films with convoluted scripts taking the parody approach was appropriate.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

James Long said:


> In part the failure of the Concorde movie probably helped the Airplane! movie. After a decade of disaster films with convoluted scripts taking the parody approach was appropriate.


The first _Airplane!_ film used the _Zero Hour!_ film as the foundation for the script (the ZAZ team has stated it as such, having caught it on a late night movie), but plenty of jokes were mined from the _Airport 75_ film also.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Mark Holtz said:


> The first _Airplane!_ film used the _Zero Hour!_ film as the foundation for the script (the ZAZ team has stated it as such, having caught it on a late night movie), but plenty of jokes were mined from the _Airport 75_ film also.


Makes sense since Airport was based (in part) on Zero Hour.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

James Long said:


> Makes sense since Airport was based (in part) on Zero Hour.


Arthur Hailey was one of the screenwriters for _Zero Hour!_ and wrote the novel for the first _Airport _movie. For the other three, the only thing he did was collect a check as those films were based upon that novel.


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## glrush (Jun 29, 2002)

A friend of mine from work loves to tell the story of taking his date to go see Airplane thinking that it was a sequel to Airport because his date like the series so much. 

I know I am dating myself, but when we got Airplane on the submarine I served on, no one knew anything about it. For a bunch of dudes stuck on a nuclear submarine in the North Atlantic, it was absolutely perfect. Leslie Neilson deserved an Oscar for his role in that movie.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

MysteryMan said:


> A high end 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray/DVD Player will upscale DVDs to near 1080p quality. Garbage in/Garbage out rule applies.


It is all dependent on the source material and what aspect ratio it is in. If the original DVD material was 4:3 (closely matching 1.37:1 films) or 16:9 (closely matching 1.85:1), then it really isn't a problem. Beyond that, and there isn't much to work with. One title that comes to mind is State Fair (1962) with Pat Boone which just happens to be included with my State Fair SE DVD set. It's a pretty good transfer, but once I pulled the digital copy, the video resolution was 720 pixels wide × 364 pixels high, so when upscales, it's a bit of a smeary mess despite the great quality of the print. Twilight Time did license and release a BluRay version, but it's out of print.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> Too many jokes to quote them all. Lining up to slap the hysterical passenger (some with weapons). The "Red Zone/White Zone" PA announcers getting personal. "Give me Hamm on five and hold the Mayo." The captain names. Actually showing "poop" hitting a fan. The reporters running to the telephone booths to phone in updates and knocking the entire row of booths over (younger generation will need that one explained). The security walk through showing x-rays of people in their underwear (predictive of current x-ray screening technology?). Police Squad and Naked Gun were also seriously silly movies. I miss the days of human cartoon movies (jokes that would have been buried in a Warner Brothers cartoon). Most current slapstick movies either go for the "R" rating or as close as they can get with their bawdiness. (Inflating the auto pilot and the discussions with Timmy were probably the most bawdy in Airplane!)
> 
> I could go on - but this is an Airport thread, not Airplane!
> 
> ...


Only the first 2 Airports were good. There was a 3rd one about art thieves and the Concorde one was the 4th one. Seems like most movie series fall off a cliff after #2:

* Terminator 1 was good, T2 was awesome, T3 was watchable, but everything after that was complete garbage, although I did like The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but they dragged out the story too long.
* Die Hard 1 & 2 were awesome. 3 is when Willis started phoning it in.
* Jurassic Park, I think only the first one was really good. The second one was watchable, then they just went off the rails into the ridiculous like trained dinosaurs, etc.
* Fast & Furious - at this point, you've watched 8 of them, so might as well put in the work to finish the last 2. Remember when they were normal people street racing? When did they become immortal super heroes?
* OG Superman 1 & 2, 3+ went off the rails

But yeah, the Disaster Movie was born off of Airport much like Die Hard set off a bunch of "die hard in a..." movies. I still say Under Siege is Segals only good movie. US2 was alright, but he had started, well, I can't really say "phoning it in"... what would be a step down from that? telegraphing it in? smoke signaling it in?


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

So, what about the "Man With No Name" trilogy? _The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly_ was the third film, and many say it's the best.


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## Jimmy 440 (Nov 17, 2007)

I loved the first one and the 2nd one was okay. Afterwards I lost interest in 77 & 79.
Joe Petroni was the man !


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