Camp, Chaos, and a Surprisingly Tense Descent

Read Time:5 Minute, 39 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Airport 1975 (4KUHD)
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Genre: Drama, Adventure, Action, Thriller
Year Released: 1974
Runtime: 1h 47m
Director(s): Jack Smight
Writer(s): Arthur Hailey, Don Ingalls
Cast: Charlton Heston, Karen Black, George Kennedy, Susan Clark, Linda Blair, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Gloria Swanson, Helen Reddy, Roy Thinnes, Sid Caesar
Where to Watch: available September 30, 2025, pre-order your copy here: www.kinolorber.com or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: AIRPORT 1975 is the rare sequel that wastes no time. A midair collision destroys the cockpit, but the 747 continues flying on its own, and a flight attendant suddenly becomes the difference between panic and catastrophe. It’s a straightforward hook executed with old-school studio confidence—more emphasis on the crisis machine than on the people trapped inside it. That choice gives the film agility and momentum, even as it sacrifices depth.

The series’ signature flex remains the cast list, and this entry doubles down. Charlton Heston brings hard-nosed competence; it’s a performance designed to steady the room rather than dominate it. Karen Black has the trickier assignment, being asked to play a civilian shoved into a cockpit where the buttons resemble a foreign alphabet. She locates the right unease—tremor without hysteria—and the movie relies on that to sell the stakes. George Kennedy returns as Patroni, the franchise’s walking memory, and around them swirls a gallery of personalities that could fill a studio backlot tour: Gloria Swanson, Myrna Loy, Helen Reddy, Linda Blair, Dana Andrews, Norman Fell, and Sid Caesar. The charm and the problem are the same: you’re never bored, but you’re rarely immersed.

Where AIRPORT 1975 sharpens its edge is in the mechanics of the predicament. The midair transfer sequence is the film’s calling card, and it still works because it’s staged like an engineering problem. You understand the constraints—altitude, fuel, weather, a compromised cockpit—and the solution arrives as a series of small wins that could fail at any step. The production relies on large-format photography and practical staging that is clear and well-executed. Even without technical jargon, the film knows how to turn procedure into suspense: hold course, hold speed, match approach, get a live pilot through a hole that shouldn’t exist. The clarity of that process is what keeps the movie humming.

It’s also a snapshot of 1970s disaster storytelling at its most unabashed. The film is big—singing nuns, celebrity cameos, and passengers who exist to serve one defining trait. That approach courts camp, and AIRPORT 1975 knows it; several moments invite more humor than intended. The line between levity and unintentional comedy blurs, but the movie rarely loses control of tone. When it matters, it plays it straight: the headset instructions, the cockpit checklist recitations, the “talk me through it” rhythm that keeps the plane aloft long enough for a plausible rescue attempt.

The franchise has always treated arcs as side dishes; this one often treats them as garnish. Relationships are hollow rather than built: professional friction disguised as banter, romantic tension that’s mostly logistics, and background stories introduced only to give the ensemble a moment before the next hurdle. Black’s character gets the closest thing to a through line—fear learned into function—but even that is framed by the crisis rather than by anything. The passengers are personality types—optimist, cynic, anxious parent, celebrity survivor—useful in the way a control panel light is useful: they tell you what mood the cabin is in.

That tradeoff isn’t fatal, because the film understands its central promise. The pacing is brisk: collision, triage, improvisation, transfer, descent. It’s a simple curve, but a satisfying one, and Jack Smight keeps the camera where comprehension lives—on faces trying to solve problems and on machines doing exactly what they’re told, until they don’t.

One aspect that ages interestingly is the film’s snapshot of gender and authority. The idea of a stewardess being coached to keep a plane aloft is played for both drama and novelty. At times, the script can’t resist the pat on the head; at others, it lets competence be its own reward. The moments that land best treat Black’s character not as an inspirational exception but as a person in a chair doing an impossible job as well as anyone could. In those beats, the movie brushes against something: the value of distributed mastery rather than a single savior.

As part of the franchise, AIRPORT 1975 is the “spectacle-first” entry. It’s less elegant than the ocean-floor survival puzzle that will follow, but it’s also leaner and more kinetic. The urgency kicks in early and seldom relents. The film cashes its checks with a clear understanding of what an audience shows up for: an improbable situation treated like a solvable problem, punctuated by people we recognize behaving like themselves under pressure. That structure has limits, yet it offers a sturdy chassis for suspense.

AIRPORT 1975 is a time capsule and a thrill machine, sometimes silly, often efficient, and sporadically gripping. It doesn’t ask to be decoded; it asks to be ridden like a procedural from crisis to resolution. On those terms, it delivers. The landing isn’t poetic, but it’s confident—and in this franchise, confident is exactly the altitude you want to hold.

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