MovieChat Forums > The Concorde... Airport '79 (1979) Discussion > I can't say that this is the worst movie...

I can't say that this is the worst movie ever made but....


It is by far the worst aviation based movie ever made and has to be included in one of the say...30 worst movies ever made.

Or course a cast that includes Charo AND Jimmy Walker should be a major red flag.

And this movies contains one of the most absurd scenes I've ever witnessed, it is so bad that whenever I come across this movie and it's anywhere near the scene I have to wait until I see it; two bimbos "dancing" in the galley of the Concorde which can't be more than four feet wide, while Jimmy Walker plays the saxophone in accompaniment. You have to see it to appreciate the shear awfulness of it.

And there is of course the standard motely collection of passengers; someone transporting an organ for transplant, a deaf girl, an aging performer, on and on, the clichés are endless. A another great scene is when George Kennedy gets fixed up with a hooker without knowing it, really bonds with her, and sleeps with her, and when he finds out later she was on the clock thinks it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. He should have gotten an Oscar for best fake laugh in a movie that year.

Forget the complete foolishness of the flight scenes and the plot itself, some of the high points are priceless though;

The plane is going Mach 2 over the ocean and George Kennedy OPENS a cockpit window to fire a flare gun.

The two pilots fling the Concorde around the sky like a fighter plane without so much as popping a rivet.

The passengers, after suffering through two episodes of these acrobatics not only shake it off as if it were nothing but they get BACK on the damn plane the next day!

Crash landing the Concorde in the snow like a toboggan and it stays together!

Last but not least; just the awful acting throughout, has to be seen to be believed.

On the up side;

Susan Blakely who was still drop dead gorgeous when this movie was made. It she had a few scenes in a bikini I would have given the thing at least one star! And that's about it for the up side...

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Allow me to point out that IF you'd declared this the "worst movie ever made" you probably would have been flamed by numerous people. That's kind of a pet peeve of many of us regulars. NOBODY is qualified to make that call about ANY movie unless they've seen every single movie ever made. As for the worst aviation film ever, I guess it's possible. There are many I haven't seen.

That said....

Does this film have a C-17 Cargo Plane full of flaws? YES. Does that keep me from loving it? NO. I saw it in a theater when it first came out. The thing that draws me back to it is the camaraderie among the cockpit crew. George Kennedy, Alain Delon and David Warner are excellent, IMHO. One of my favorite "nothing" scenes is after the F4 incident. As the engineer announces he is going to call his wife and moves to de-plane, Paul says "Mr. O'Neill,". Peter turns and they make eye contact. He simply says "Thank you.". In my view he summed up what they'd just been through with a simple, heart felt statement. If all three of these men hadn't been damned good at their jobs, they would have crashed. (in the context of this bad but fun film) Then, right after, Joe kisses Concorde's yoke and says "Thank you, too, sugar". The two pilots look at each other and simply nod and say "Captain". Call me a simpleton, but I really love this part. I enjoy the hooker revelation as well. "You G-d-a-ned son of a bitch! SHE WAS GREAT!!!" is one of my favorite George Kennedy lines.
The main plot is silly crap, the SFX are bad even for the time, and the various peripheral characters are stereotypical and one-dimensional. Then, there are the numerous times that the laws of physics and aerodynamics are ignored. But I don't care. I love this film.
Now, as for cringe moments.....The whole thing with Paul and Isabel was obviously going to turn out "sweet". I knew Palmer dude was going to propose to the Russian girl and get her coach's blessing JUST before they hit the snow field. As soon as Joe grabbed the flare gun I KNEW what was going to happen. They telegraphed it. Can you say "Predictability"?
When the F4 goes down, it is already in a crash dive when we hear the French pilots shoot at it. It doesn't explode until it hits the water. No indication of bullet hits at all. I'm not sure if a failed FX shot is called a "blown take", but they screwed up the sequence and obviously had to use it because model work (even that bad) is expensive.

That object you're tracking isn't a large asteroid. It's a very large spacecraft.

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