Crash Landing

By JAY COCKS

AIRPORT 1975

Directed by JACK SMIGHT Screenplay by DON INGALLS

Since Airport 1975 is a sequel to Airport, with its patented formula--panic in the skies, dither on the ground--it is reasonable to assume that the passengers on this Columbia Airlines 747 are going to find themselves in grave peril.

They do indeed, specifically, when Dana Andrews suffers a heart attack while piloting his light plane over Salt Lake and crashes into the 747, killing or injuring the entire flight crew and blowing a large hole in the cockpit.

Among the menaced: Stewardess Karen Black, who squawks through the pilot's radio to Airline Biggie--and her lover of six years--Charlton Heston, as he tries to effect a mid-air rescue; Medical Problem Linda Blair, who is supposed to have a kidney in need of a transplant but seems to suffer more acutely from an Ipana smile and a crinkly nose; and Singing Nun Helen Reddy, who croons a tune that goes "I'm a best friend to myself." To know who finally saves the day you have only to check who gets top billing in the cast list.

Movies like Airport 1975, with their furious mediocrity and their manifest cynicism about their own mediocrity, represent American film making at its shabbiest, most unimaginative, most exploitative. Nothing about Airport 1975 is good; no actor in the cast of dubious luminaries even tries to be. (Besides those already mentioned, Gloria Swanson,

George Kennedy, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Susan Clark, Sid Caesar and Myrna Loy can also be found in the vicinity.) It is to be wished that everyone in the film would go away -- violently -- and that catastrophe movies would molder with them. Unfortunately, they are not going to. In addition to such current examples as The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (see below) and Juggernaut (TIME, Oct. 21), Earthquake and The Towering Inferno will be unleashed in the next couple of months. Somehow, the knowledge that the genre is not yet played out makes Airport 1975 seem even worse.

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