Look , up in the sky, its a bird...

[Flangepart]

Its a plane...Actualy,...it is a plane! Ringnecks Review got me to thinking ...rear occourance...about the Avation movies of my youth..a moment of silence for said youth...and so i wonder, what are the best and worst movies you can think of that involve flying. One of the best, and a Chopper flick at that, was Birds of Prey, a TV movies starring David Jannsen as a Traffic report who witnesses a bank robbery, and when the bad guys haul ass in an Allouite 3, he hauls ass in his Hughes 500 and sets out after them! i loved that flick. As for the worst avation movie...the original Airport springs to mind, but the Airport 3, the Concord, has got to be the worst heap of tangled cinema wreckage i've ever hauled to the boneyard. Aghhhhh! I've only seen the Mag Magazine version, and a review about the plot...and my brain still hurts! As for real life....i love flying even though my body says, "We're gonna die" while my mind and heart say, "Ah,shut up, ya meat sack, this is too cool!"...anyone else feel that way?

[Flangepart]

Uh...sorry about the spelling...i went to public school...chalk dust will do that to ya.

[Squishy]

Actually, "The Concorde--Airport '79" was the fourth in the series.

"Airport" featured Dean Martin as a pilot (!!!), Van Heflin as a suicidal bomber, and got Helen Hayes an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

"Airport 1975" featured Charlton Heston, and Karen Black as the cross-eyed stewie who flies the jet after a smaller plane smacks the cockpit. (Eric Estrada is one of the doomed flight crew.) Directed by Jack Smight ("Damnation Alley").

"Airport '77" had Jack Lemmon, Christopher Lee, and Olivia DeHavilland in Jimmy Stewart's special jet which winds up in one piece on the ocean floor (ha ha ha ha haaaaaaa). Directed by Jerry Jameson ("Bat People/It Lives By Night," "Raise The Titanic!," "A Fire In The Sky (TV '78)" and "Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land"). Can you believe he still finds work?

"Airport '79" actually put aged "Airport" veteran George Kennedy in the pilot's seat of a supersonic aircraft, starring alongside Charo and Jimmy "J.J." Walker. Written by Eric Roth ("Forrest Gump") and directed by David Lowell Rich ("SST: DeathFlight,"  "Have Rocket Will Travel," "Horror at 37,000 Feet," and "Satan's School For Girls (original)").

Honorable mention: "Turbulence," in which a lunatic flies a 747 upside-down, and shears cars and billboards off of buildings with its wings and landing gear, shows the same disregard for reality as any "Airport" movie.

[Flangepart]

Oh, lord. 4 airport movies. airport 79...did you know you can open a window on a concord, and fire a flare gun, and Not be sucked out the window? Who'da thunk It! And after the first attack, and they land,...the passangers get on agine to continue the flight! Disbelief...what sense of disbelief?

[Squishy]

What freaks me out is, you can open the window of the cockpit while flying upside down at mach two, and everything's okay--but if you crack open the pit door (cargo hatch) at mach two, it will tear the aircraft apart.

You can also roll a passenger aircraft several times and pull it out of a vertical, spinning dive without anyone having a heart attack or even blowing their cookies.

Speaking of heats, was I supposed to be in suspense about the organ? Or was the heart transplant subplot just there to fill in time? I'm betting my money on "fill in time."

DID ANYONE NEED TO SEE GEORGE KENNEDY GETTING LAID?!?

[Andrew]

Squishy said:
"DID ANYONE NEED TO SEE GEORGE KENNEDY GETTING LAID?!?"

No.  I will answer with much emotion.  No.

Andrew

[mark]

CONDORMAN!!

i don't know if this counts as an aviation movie
but for some reason i can't get Condorman
out of my head.

i haven't seen it since i saw it at a
bring-a-can-of-food for charity matinee
a long long time ago.

i remember the wings he wore...and something
about a car with a ramp on the front that would
send oncoming bad guy cars into the air.

so it's kind of an aviation movie on two counts.

for strictly aviation, i am strangely fascinated by
the iron eagle series. where to start...

[The Waffle Man]

Of course, the ultimate flying movie would have to be Coleman Francis's incredible Skydivers. Not to mention Red Zone Cuba. I love how the planes never even take off in that one.