Airport: The Complete Collection (Blu-Ray) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

[Dr Griffin]

According to IMDB , The Concorde: Airport '79 had the biggest budget (est. $14M), which may be the final laugh.

 

[Matt Hough]

According to IMDB , The Concorde: Airport '79 had the biggest budget (est. $14M), which may be the final laugh.

That really is a laugh because it looks so cheap, almost like a made-for-TV movie of the era.

 

[Tony Bensley]

According to IMDB , The Concorde: Airport '79 had the biggest budget (est. $14M), which may be the final laugh.

Is it possible that THE CONCORDE: AIRPORT '79 transfer was simply derived from a horrible FUBAR print?

CHEERS!

 

[ahollis]

Is it possible that THE CONCORDE: AIRPORT '79 transfer was simply derived from a horrible FUBAR print?

CHEERS!

It's has always look bad, even in the original theatrical run.

 

[JoHud]

That really is a laugh because it looks so cheap, almost like a made-for-TV movie of the era.

I suspect much of the budget went into being allowed to use the Concorde aircraft and likeness. Like they spent too much trying to get the plane and had to make the rest of the film on a shoestring.

Otherwise it was just wasted one way or another because the film has a serious made-for-TV look to it for the most part.

 

[trevanian]

American Cinematographer did a writeup on the VFX, and from start to finish they had something like 3 months for the modelbuilding, motion control and optical (in fact I think all the optical printing was done in something like 12 days.) That's a recipe for disaster if there ever was one, especially in the pre-digital era.

I remember reading another article about Hartland (the vfx facility), probably focusing on the first Trek feature or maybe about the Phil DeGuerre CHILDHOOD'S END miniseries that was getting developed way back when. In regard to CONC, somebody says words like, "we don't like to think about that one."

 

[Tony Bensley]

I do remember that the faster than the speed of sound Concorde was a massive deal in the late '70s, but you'd think the film makers would have made sure there was enough left over in the budget to ensure the finished product looked good!

If the Canadian pricing drops below $30, I may still get this set. Other priorities forced my hand in cancelling my preorder, unfortunately. It happens!

I'm still steamed that our pricing spiked after the preorder period, while it dipped quite significantly in the U.S. Frankly, I just don't get the logic (Or total lack of?), sometimes!

CHEERS!

 

[Dr Griffin]

That really is a laugh because it looks so cheap, almost like a made-for-TV movie of the era.

The director, David Lowell Rich, was a TV Movie director with a huge resume of TV work.

 

[trevanian]

The director, David Lowell Rich, was a TV Movie director with a huge resume of TV work.

His cheesey but competent SST DEATH FLIGHT and THE HORROR AT 37000 FEET both could knock CONCORDE out of the sky any day of the week, and THE DEFECTION OF SIMON KUDIRKA is actually a really good movie.

 

[KPmusmag]

It's has always look bad, even in the original theatrical run.

Well, if the blu-ray accurately represents what the best available print would look like projected, then I am good with that. I would rather that than have it look digitally touched up and not at all like film, like some blu-rays do.

 

[Dr Griffin]

His cheesey but competent SST DEATH FLIGHT and THE HORROR AT 37000 FEET both could knock CONCORDE out of the sky any day of the week, and THE DEFECTION OF SIMON KUDIRKA is actually a really good movie.

I probably saw these when they aired, I'm pretty sure about The Horror at 37,000 Feet, but dammit, now I've got see them again.
They are both available on DVD: Death Flight as part of a 6 movie Land and Sea Disasters set, and The Horror at 37,000 Feet by itself.

https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Lan...d=1467049607&sr=1-1&keywords=sst+death+flight


https://www.amazon.com/Horror-At-37...245&sr=1-1&keywords=the+horror+at+37,000+feet

 

[KPmusmag]

The Horror at 37,000 Feet scared the #^$% out of me when I was a kid. I recall my Mom saying she was sorry she let me watch it. I bought the DVD and it really brought back memories!

 

[Nelson Au]

One of my favorite William Shatner post Star Trek projects. . Agreed it was pretty creepy. Ought to make it a double feature with Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.

 

[haineshisway]

I do think the release prints on Concorde were probably terrible.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I do think the release prints on Concorde were probably terrible.

The one I saw and ran certainly was. The "Big Screen Universal TV-movie look" never looked worse, IMO.

 

[Tony Bensley]

The one I saw and ran certainly was. The "Big Screen Universal TV-movie look" never looked worse, IMO.

Perhaps it would have helped if THE CONCORDE wasn't filmed above the speed of sound?

CHEERS!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I finished watching all of the movies - it was a nice four night project. I had never seen any of them before. I'm glad that I didn't even read the blurbs on the back of the box, because while I knew something bad was going to happen each time, I didn't know exactly what it would be. I imagine that probably made it more fun than people who saw the original trailers and already knew what kind of disaster the plane would encounter.

I really enjoyed the first Airport movie. You have to kinda put on your time travelers hat to watch it, because so many things that happen in the movie just wouldn't be possible today, particularly the man walking onto the plan with the bomb having passed through no security. There's no way in 2016 that a security or customs officer would say that a potential passenger made him uneasy, and then not investigate further. The attitudes around flying and atmosphere at the airport has changed so much since then - nowadays it's almost like you have to prove you're not carrying a bomb before they'll let you in. The movie worked great on that level as a window into a time that no longer exists. And as a drama and a thriller, I loved it. I'll definitely watch this again.

Airport 1975 wasn't as good, but I enjoyed it. I wasn't expecting the front of the cockpit to basically get blown off in a collision, and it was cool to see how the ground crew talked the stewardess through navigating the plane until they were able to drop in a rescue pilot. It seemed a little more implausible than the first movie, but I liked it.

I'd put Airport '77 on par with Airport 1975 - not as good as the original, but still quite entertaining. The only thing I didn't quite understand is why everyone didn't just do what Jack Lemmon did, and swim to the surface. At least once Lemmon went out, and the rescue crews showed up, I don't understand why they'd go to all of that trouble to try to lift the plane back up instead of sending a few scuba crews down with extra air tanks. Even the guy with the broken leg probably could have been gently brought up to the surface. It seemed like a waste of time they didn't have, as well as an engineering nightmare, to get that plane back up and for no good reason, since it obviously wasn't going to take off again.

The Concorde: Airport '79 was a disaster. I don't know what happened in the two years from the last one, but this movie didn't work at all for me. It seemed like a complete parody of everything that followed, with a story so outlandish that even after the first three movies, I still couldn't buy it. I got the same feeling I get watching "Superman III" - I just had no idea how any of this seemed like a good idea. That the plane was fending off missile attacks might have worked for me with a different setup, but the Robert Wagner villain was so laughable, and not in a good way.

Following all of those, I decided to watch "Airplane!" (another movie I had long heard about but never seen), and much to my surprise, I just didn't really find it funny. I have seen (and own) The Naked Gun movies which are by the same guys, and while I find those amusing, Airplane! just did nothing for me. I chuckled at a few jokes here and there, but I didn't get a single big laugh from it. Maybe the style of humor has become dated, and maybe what was once outrageous has become so common that it takes more to shock. Or maybe it's because I had just seen the Airport movies, actually liked them for what they were, and had no trouble taking 3 of the 4 of them seriously. When Airplane! first came out, there probably weren't a lot of movies like it, but nowadays, I can see that it's become the template for every genre satire out there, and because of that, I could see each joke coming a mile away.

Anyhow, I'd give a thumbs up to the Airport set (for $18, I'm satisfied), I loved one of the movies and liked two of them, and that's not bad. But I got more genuine laughs out of "The Concorde: Airport '79" than I did from "Airplane!"

 

[Matt Hough]

I remember having to see Airplane! in the theater three or four times because the laughter of the huge audiences was so raucous that you simply couldn't hear everything that was being said. You'd miss a couple of jokes after the one that was cracking everyone up because the results were so overwhelmingly loud. This is definitely a movie that needs to be seen with an audience.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Josh, cool write up. It's I there's ting to read your perspective as someone whose never seen the four films and never went to the airport when there was no security like we have now.

You have to watch Zero Hour! next to see how it matches Airplane! As you know, I just watched this and I really liked it, and as we discussed, I wasn't into the Airplane humor either. Plus you have to Skyjacked if you're still in a airplane disaster movie mood.

 

[TonyD]

$16.99 on Amazon now if you don't have the set yet.