Approaching middle age and still looking for another hit film Charlton Heston accepted an offer to star in Universal Pictures's rather unimaginatively entitled sequel Airport 1975. As was his practice, Heston intensely researched the role of an airline pilot who has to instruct his airline stewardess girlfriend (Karen Black) on how to land a 747 airplane by herself when most of the cabin crew have been killed after colliding with a small aircraft. In order to bolster the technical credibility of this seemingly preposterous plot, Heston, utilizing the only jumbo jet simulator in America, tested the veracity of the story-line by simulating the exact circumstances of the film, successfully talking down a real-life air hostess to a safe landing. Apart from Black who has the meatiest of the main roles, Heston gets little support from a largely boring cast of TV faces (Roy Thinnes, Sid Caesar, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), a trendy pop singer (Helen Reddy), and faded film stars of the golden era (Myrna Loy, Gloria Swanson, Dana Andrews). Shining like a beacon of good will, only George Kennedy, reprising his memorably gregarious Airport character Joe Patroni, brings any genuine vitality to the drab dialogue. Lazily directed by Jack Smight (Harper), Airport 1975 looks and feels like a typical TV movie of the week from that era, no doubt due to the influence of its producer Jennings Lang, a man credited with inventing the made-for-tv movie format in the 1960s. Not surprisingly, the crew consisted largely of veterans from episodic television including cinematographer Philip Lathrop (Peter Gunn), composer John Cacavas (Kojak), writer Don Ingalls (Have Gun-Will Travel), producer William Frye (Thriller) and even Smight himself (McCloud). Yet I can't help but acknowledge that Airport 1975 still works as trashy, vicarious cinematic junkfood. Even after being mercilessly spoofed by the film Airplane (1980), the situation of a passenger aircraft in jeopardy is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser and the entire production would have to be a complete unprofessional mess in order to suppress the concept's sheer entertainment value. Audiences lapped it up, becoming one of the year's top money earners and establishing Heston's reputation as a disaster film talisman. However, the big one was just around corner.
BLU-RAY & DVD
For film-goers of my generation Charlton Heston wasn't Moses, or Ben Hur, or even Michelangelo. For children of the Seventies, he was the stalwart hero of a series of five "disaster" movies that defined the people-in-jeopardy genre. Heston's cinematic fame falls into three cycles of big screen success. His initial stardom began in 1956 with The Ten Commandments, and flourished in the late 1950s and 1960s with such grandiose epics as: The Buccaneer (1958), Ben Hur (1959), El Cid (1961), 55 Days at Peking (1963), The War Lord (1965), Khartoum (1966), Heston then helped rejuvenate the Science Fiction genre withthe box-office blockbuster The Planet of the Apes (1968). He followed this with a popular trio of dystopian tales; a shockingly nihilist sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), the progressively biracial The OmegaMan (1971) and a prescient forewarning of ecological devastation in Soylent Green (1973). Between these years Heston had a run of films that he produced, starred in, and/or directed that were notable flops including: Counterpoint (1967), Number One (1969), Julius Caesar (1970), The Hawaiians (1970) and Antony and Cleopatra (1972). The exception during this period was Skyjacked, a thriller inspired by the mega-success of the film Airport (1970). As producer and developer of the project, Heston helped to fine tune the disaster genre as a trendy Seventies vehicle for both up and coming young performers, and old time stars alike. According to historical statistics between the years 1961 and 1973 nearly 160 airplane hijackings occurred on American soil. Universal Pictures keen to exploit this deadly epidemic, bought the rights to Arthur Hailey's bestselling novel Airport, which featured a disturbed unemployed airline passenger trying to blow himself for the insurance money. Audiences loved it and after grossing ten times its budget, the Academy nominated it for a Best Picture Oscar- it didn't win. Heston and his producing partner Walter Seltzer, mindful of this potential box office bonanza, hired television writer Stanley R. Greenberg to adapt David Harper's 1970 novel Hijacked for the big screen, with MGM securing distribution. To realize the film visually, British director John Guillerman was hired on account of the technical craftsmanship he brought to The Blue Max (1966), where he had vividly recreated the perilous existence of WWI aviation aces. In Skyjacked, Guillerman made masterful use of an actual Boeing 707, filming all of the scenes on a real interior flight deck and passenger compartment, matched by authentic exterior in-flight footage. This dedication to realism forced cinematographer Harry Stradling Jr. (Little Big Man) to employ an inventive shooting style, one that communicates the claustrophobia of the passengers while providing the audience with a kinetic atmosphere where the action can unfold. Another ace-in-the-hole was editor Robert Swink who had previously cut two other famous single location films The Narrow Margin (1952) and The Desperate Hours (1955). Swink's lean editing ratchets up the tension as the mystery of the hijacker's identity is methodically teased to a tense viewer. As the plagued pilot Heston anchors the film with his inimitable commanding presence. Although deprived of any strong character moments, he does share one emotional flashback with stewardess Yvette Mimieux, who had played his little sister a decade earlier in Diamond Head (1962). The most memorable portrayal in the film is from James Brolin as the psychotic soldier who demands to be flown to the U.S.S.R.. Totally convincing in a challenging role of emotional extremes, he embodies the duality of a damaged veteran, the eager to please enlisted man and the frustrated fury of someone who has witnessed the senseless brutality of war. Other notable performances are provided by teen star Susan Dey in her feature debut, mountainous football player Rosie Grier as a jazz cellist (?!), Canadian Walter Pidgeon believably cast as a U.S. Senator, and the always elegant Jeanne Crain in her farewell film role. The care with which Heston and Seltzer lavished on the production certainly paid off, Skyjacked was MGM's second higher grosser of the year and Heston's bankability was again assured. He and Seltzer would collaborate on two further projects, one a hit, the other a miss: Soylent Green, also written by Greenberg, and a violent western The Last Hard Men (1976) adapted from the novel by Brian Garfield (Death Wish). When it was finally issued on DVD, Skyjacked was marketed as a "Camp Classic". Dated fashions notwithstanding, nothing could be further from the truth. In an age where terrorism is a near daily occurrence, stories such as these are a valuable reminder of the selfless courage individuals in danger demonstrate toward each other. Charlton Heston would take this message to heart as he embarked on a series of films exploring this theme in various contexts. DVD REGION 1
