THE STEWARDESS IS FLYING THE AIRPLANE!

Pure heaven.

Pure heaven is finding out that Netflix is shipping you "Airport 1975" just in time for the weekend...

Now THIS is a trash classic. First off, it's the first sequel to the Arthur Heller inspired potboiler "Airport" and is easily one of the greatest of the 70s Disaster Movies - "Towering Inferno" and "Poisedon Adventure" are probably the other two.

"1975" however has what I feel is the best cast of all these films - yes, better than even Shelley Winters in "Poisedon." and it's mostly due to "Plucky Stewardess" KAREN BLACK, doing her damnedest through crossed eyes to overact and FLY THAT PLANE!

The brief run down is that Dana Andrews (character names don't matter in these flicks, the actors do) crashes his little plane into the cockpit of a 747 --- and, instead of bringing it down just leaves a big honkin' hole in the plane... and conveniently kills the crew. This requires our "plucky stewardess" to fly the plane the best she can while emoting through her crossed eyes. She gets help, though, from Charlton Heston! His "Alan Murdock" (a camp name if there ever was one) is an overly butch pilot who is also also, of course, Karen's Stewardess Plucker.

Anyhow, at one point he's being lowered into a hole in a flying airplane - thanks to George Kennedy (the only person to appear in all 4 "Airport" movies)- to save passengers like Linda Blair, Larry Storch, Sid Ceasar, Gloria Swanson, Norman Fell, Erik Estrada, Jerry Stiller, Helen Reddy, Myrna Loy, Efram Zimbalist Jr, and (the woman who ALWAYS seemed to be the killer whenever she appeared on "Murder, She Wrote") Susan Clark.

I guess the corallary on TV would've been "The Love Boat" beaching up on "Fantasy Island."

You can't make this shit up. Well, someone did. I think they were on some shit when they did. From what I understand it started out as a TV Movie script that caught a lucky break and got inflated up to "Airport" status. Both Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo passed on it. Well, Garbo supposedly passed. I kinda doubt she really considered it. Helen Reddy is a fucking SINGING NUN.

It's also frequently included on any list of "The Worst Films of All Time."

So come over and enjoy, there will be beer for this screening.
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I was hoping to find a nice clip on YouTube of Karen Black and her wild eyes, but wound up encountering something even better. A montage of the film set to the Maxwell cover of Kate Bush's "This Woman's Work." Surprisingly, it works, too.

When Maxwell's at his most falsetto, Karen's shaking pilots and screwing up her Plucky courage to FLY THAT PLANE!





I mean, seriously, come over. There'll be beer.