Tag: George Kennedy

Auto Pilot Cinema: The Airport Movies

AUTO PILOT CINEMA: THE AIRPORT MOVIES
When thinking of the worst series in movie history, I am tempted to start with Saw and Fast and the Furious then move back through time with The Omen and Amityville Horror and finally go way way way back to the Dead End Kids, er, Bowery Boys.

In piecing through all this cinematic carnage, I should not leave behind the four Airport movies that were churned out by Universal Pictures from 1970 to 1979. Maybe I should leave them behind.

Airport, based on Arthur Hailey’s 1968 novel of the same name, made a killing at the box office upon its late May release in 1970 and it even received 10, yes, believe it or not, 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and 70-year-old Helen Hayes won Best Supporting Actress.

The three subsequent films — helpfully labeled 1975, ’77, and ’79 — got worse and worse, naturally, and the last film in the series, The Concorde … Airport ’79, is so bad (and so aggressively stupid) in fact that it could kill off any series. That’s despite the fact that it reportedly made $65 million, a much better take than, for example, Irwin Allen productions The Swarm ($7.7 million), Beyond the Poseidon Adventure ($2.1 million), and When Time Ran Out ($3.8 million). Regardless, Universal stopped making Airport movies after The Concorde and I’m almost dumbfounded why there’s not been a remake or a reboot loaded with today’s stars.

Hey, wait, did somebody mention stars? Yes, stars, that’s what these Airport movies were about — speculating which ones would emerge at the end of the picture relatively intact and which ones would die spectacularly. Grand Hotel in the sky, not exactly, since none of the careers in the Airport movies were at their peak like the ones in Grand Hotel, but the idea of stuffing the screen with stars in every scene applies just the same.

Airport: Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy, Hayes, Van Heflin, Maureen Stapleton, Barry Nelson, Dana Wynter, Lloyd Nolan.

Airport 1975: Charlton Heston, Karen Black, Kennedy, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Susan Clark, Helen Reddy, Linda Blair, Dana Andrews, Roy Thinnes, Sid Caesar, Myrna Loy, Gloria Swanson.

Airport ’77: Jack Lemmon, Lee Grant, Branda Vaccaro, Joseph Cotten, Olivia de Havilland, Darren McGavin, Christopher Lee, Robert Foxworth, Kathleen Quinlan, James Stewart.

Airport ’79: Alain Delon, Susan Blakely, Robert Wagner, Sylvia Kristel, Kennedy, Eddie Albert, Bibi Andersson, Charo, John Davidson, Andrea Marcovicci, Martha Raye, Cicely Tyson, Jimmie Walker, David Warner, Mercedes McCambridge.

More like Hollywood Squares in the Sky? Yeah, believe so, especially since Davidson hosted a Hollywood Squares revival in the late ’80s.

Beside Airport in the titles, Kennedy (1925-2016) proved to be the connective tissue between all four pictures, meaning he’s the inverse of the Brody boys (Jaws) and the Griswold children (Vacation). Kennedy played Joe Patroni — first as mechanic, then as vice president of operations (1975), a consultant (’77), and finally an experienced pilot (’79). Regardless of position or rank, the character got worse and worse over the course of the films, not that he or the films started out all that hot. I found even his cigar was guilty of overacting in the original film and Patroni was so odiously obnoxious in the fourth film, especially after he utters the line that articulates the sexism of the entire series, They don’t call it the cockpit for nothing, honey. George Kennedy as sex symbol? Sure, I’ll believe anything, nearly anything except for, oh, the entire plot of The Concorde.

I’ll talk more about The Concorde and the original because they’re fresher in my memory. To be honest, though, I probably won’t even feel like discussing the original because …

Movies rarely come any dumber than The Concorde: Let’s see, this is going to be fun, not really, anyway TV reporter Susan Blakely comes across some highly incriminating evidence against defense contractor (and covert arms dealer) Robert Wagner. Wagner decides that he’s going to attempt to blow up real good the plane she’s on en route from Washington to Paris. Okay, okay, his plot to blow up the Concorde real good fails and they have dinner together in Paris during the middle section of the movie, because, you know, they have a history together and they still love each other. She still has this incriminating evidence, naturally, she’s going to eventually go public with it, of course, and what does he do? Kill her? He lets her walk away safe and unharmed, so he’ll have to go after the plane again. That’s right, she gets back on the Concorde for the final leg of the flight from Paris to Moscow. Guilt stricken, Wagner commits suicide very late in the picture and I believe it’s not because his secret’s been discovered and will be exposed regardless of whether he’s alive or not, but more that he’s one of the worst villains in cinematic history.

The Concorde is so laughable in so many ways, as if that whole plot discussed in the last paragraph wasn’t enough. The Concorde stops over in Paris for a night, and every single passenger gets back on the plane the next morning. They all seem way too calm and collected after the events of the first half of the movie. I would love to have just heard one character say ‘Hell no, I’m not getting back on that damn plane!’ They all deserved to die, but we know that’s not happening.

At one critical point during the first attack on the Concorde, the Übermensch George Kennedy proves that he’s truly The Übermensch by sticking his hand out the window of the Concorde and throwing a flare. Unbelievable, utterly unbelievable even in this preposterous movie. If only the first Airport had been the in-flight movie on The Concorde, especially that scene where Patroni discusses the effects of a bomb on a 707 and concludes, When I was a mechanic in the Air Force, I was being transferred on a MATS plane. At 20,000 feet, one of the windows shattered. The guy sitting next to it was about 170 pounds. He went through that little space like a hunk of hamburger going down a disposal, and right after him coats, pillows, blankets, cups, saucers. That was just a MATS plane, not the fastest plane in the universe.

I’m done, I can’t take it anymore, and I’m bailing out on the Airport movies.

Airport (1970) **; Airport 1975 (1974) **1/2; Airport ’77 (1977) *; The Concorde: Airport ’79 (1979) 1/2*

The Delta Force (1986)

THE DELTA FORCE

THE DELTA FORCE (1986) Three stars

Watching THE DELTA FORCE for the first time in 30 years, it surprised me in three ways.

First, it accumulates a running time of 2 hours, 5 minutes.

Second, the heavy action does not kick in until about 1 hour, 15 minutes in.

Third, it’s more thoughtful than expected, given that it is a Golan-Globus production starring Chuck Norris and featuring a cast of many highlighted by hostages Martin Balsam, Joey Bishop, Lainie Kazan, George Kennedy, and Shelley Winters, actors who initially suggest the movie would quickly become AIRPORT ‘86.

About that running time, let’s see here, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II and COMMANDO, both from 1985, clock in at approximately 96 and 92 minutes, respectively. Then again, Norris’ previous cinematic crusade against terrorism, INVASION U.S.A., lasts 110 minutes.

Once the action does kick in, it kicks in real good in THE DELTA FORCE and it especially delivers the goods with shit blown up real good just like an old school action movie should. Of course, I hope the demolition experts were paid real good.

The action truly begins with a chase: Major Scott McCoy (Norris) and his Delta Force colleague are pursued by Lebanese terrorists through Beirut and one terrorist vehicle crashes into a poor defenseless fruit cart and melons fly everywhere. Ah, yes, this is one of the better fruit cart scenes in history because they used both slow motion and big melons. I say the bigger the melons, the better the fruit cart scene.

I have argued the best Chuck Norris movies are the ones with the best supporting casts and THE DELTA FORCE definitely upholds that argument. Other cast members include Robert Forster, Hanna Schygulla (it’s a long way from Rainer Werner Fassbinder melodramas to Chuck Norris action spectaculars), Susan Strasberg, Bo Svenson, and Robert Vaughn. The great Lee Marvin (1924-87) also plays a key role in his final movie performance. Of course, Marvin brings his association with THE DIRTY DOZEN.

This is Norris’ best supporting cast, though I still rate THE DELTA FORCE slightly below LONE WOLF MCQUADE and CODE OF SILENCE overall.

Palestine born Menahem Golan (1929-2014) wrote, produced, and directed the film, which takes an undeniable pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish position. Golan served in the Israeli Air Force as a young man, long before he and his younger cousin and business partner Yoram Globus attempted to conquer the international film market.

Call me a fool and slap me silly, but it seems that Golan paid a lot more attention and dedicated more craft to THE DELTA FORCE than the average run-of-the-mill Cannon production, like, for example, Norris’ other 1986 film, FIREWALKER. Granted, J. Lee Thompson directed that one, but it’s doubtful that Golan would have evinced any passion in a watered down third-rate Indiana Jones retread like he did for THE DELTA FORCE.

THE DELTA FORCE ripped its plot from the real-life hijacking of Trans World Airlines Flight 847 on June 14, 1985. There’s a real-life Delta Force who have engaged in Operation Eagle Claw, Operation Enduring Freedom, the Iraq War, Operation Inherent Resolve, and Operation Kayla Mueller, among many other specialized missions incorporating counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, and direct action.

THE DELTA FORCE began production in July 1985 and filming in September 1985. The shoot lasted until early November. The filming took place in predominantly Israel. THE DELTA FORCE opened February 14, 1986, 245 days after the hijacking.

We have about the same number of passengers and crew members in the movie as in real life, the same number of terrorists behind the hijacking, a purser based on flight service manager Uli Derickson, the singling out of the Jewish passengers and the Navy divers and the eventual murder of one of them, and a similar flight pattern.

In real life, though, diplomats brought about the release of the hostages, not the Delta Force. Of course, that’s not what anybody wants to see in an action movie. I mean, you don’t cast Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin for that.

THE DELTA FORCE can be a wish fulfillment fantasy particularly for those who feel the United States perpetually takes a soft position on international terrorism and that we should go right into the heart of the Middle East and “Kill all the A-rabs” once and forever. Never mind that all our prior and ongoing efforts in the Middle East have seemingly only compounded matters and created more terrorists. One just might be left to conclude the War on Terrorism will never end, just like the War on Drugs.

The Arab characters in THE DELTA FORCE, terrorists one and all, earned their place in Jack G. Shaheen’s book “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.” Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote, “[DELTA FORCE] will be the 1986 film all others will have to beat for sheer, unashamed, hilariously vulgar vaingloriousness.”

Subaru customized a motorcycle just for Norris’ late picture heroics. Gene Siskel wrote in his one-star review for the Chicago Tribune, “The action in Beirut is more appropriate for a bad James Bond film than for a subject that has been all too real lately. Norris gets off shooting rocket launchers from his specially built motorcycle, and we sit there stunned at the movie industry’s ability to make money off of any tragedy.”

Israeli filmmaker Rafi Bukai said that he hated films like THE DELTA FORCE because they do not show Arabs as human beings.

Veteran character actor Robert Forster (1941-2019) plays the main terrorist Abdul Rafai. Forster was born in Rochester, New York, to parents of Italian, English, and Irish descent. His father trained elephants for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. File this casting alongside John Wayne as Genghis Khan in the 1956 THE CONQUEROR. Along this same line, how many ethnicities and nationalities have character actors like Alfred Molina and Armand Assante played over the years?

I give THE DELTA FORCE a positive review because I enjoy it as a big, dumb, and even stupid action movie and it is an effective time capsule piece with Golan-Globus, Cannon Films, Chuck Norris, Lee Marvin, and all those older character actors. Not because it is a sobering, thoughtful, and balanced consideration of Middle East politics and international terrorism. Thankfully, I have read several books just like that on those subjects.