This One's Got It All

By the time they successfully lower Charlton Heston down to the crippled 747 on a tether, you know that things will probably work out. The first guy may have been a Major in the United States Air Force, and an expert in rescues of this type, but he was played by Ed Nelson, who may have been a star on TV, but wasn't a big enough star to land that plane. No, once Chuck Heston was on board, it was time to get that baby on the deck and roll the credits.
"Airport 1975" is one of the most amazing and amusing movies I have watched for many months. I remember seeing it the first time, when it came out in 1974 at the Boulder Theater. Most of my disaster-film experiences took place there, including the sensory overload of Sensurround felt in "Earthquake". But "Airport '75" (as the insiders call it) stands as the epitome of that time. The wardrobe alone is worth a second viewing: the wide ties, Heston's canary yellow turtleneck, and all that purple everywhere.
Watching this movie is like taking a beginner's course in parody screenwriting. One can almost see the scribble marks of the Zucker brothers as they lifted entire sequences from "Airport" to "Airplane" without having to change a word. And then there's the trivia. I am sure there is a drinking game associated with this movie, where the object is to name as many of the stars as possible as they flash across the screen. One particular row of seats includes the talents of Conrad Janis (Mindy's father on "Mork and Mindy"), Jerry Stiller (Ben's dad and George's dad on "Seinfeild"), and TV funnyman Norman Fell (God res his soul). I expect that you could probably get good and drunk right along with Myrna Loy with her boilermakers.
And, if all that star power wasn't enough, you can treat yourself to a few minutes of the in-flight movie which is, as it breaks just before Sid Caesar's alleged cameo, "American Graffiti". In the end, the miracle isn't that they got poor sick Linda Blair to the hopital in time, but Karen Black was able to vavigate that 747 through the Wasatch Mountains with those wacky eyes of hers.