AIRPLOT '77

AIRPORT '77 (1977)
dir: Jerry Jameson

Jack Lemmon- Captain Gallagher
Brenda Vaccaro- Eve Clayton
Lee Grant- Karen Wallace
Christopher Lee- Martin Wallace
Joseph Cotten- Nicholas St. Downes
Olivia DeHavilland- Emily Livingston
Darren McGavin- Stan Buchek
George Kennedy- Joe Patroni
Anthony Battaglia- Benjy
AIRPLOT '77
MAD #195, Dec. 1977
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

Third in the fourth of this franchise.

This was paired with a parody of Black Sunday under the department “TERRORFLYING EXPRIENCES” Philip Stevens (James Stewart) is a millionaire entrepreneur who owns a luxury airliner and is using a flight to transport his priceless art collection. Once the plane takes off, it disappears in the Bermuda Triangle (a hot topic of discussion at the time), crashes and goes underwater.

This is one of MAD's shorter movie parodies at only three pages, so a lot of plot elements are missing. Though at least most of the stars are caricatured.


AIRPLOT '77
Cracked #145, October 1977
a: Howard Nostrand

Being more pages, Cracked's version had room to do the multiple plotlines.

No, Radar from M*A*S*H wasn't in this. Stewart's assistant was just someone nondescript with a similar personality and they thought it would be funny to use him.

George Kennedy's character of Joe Patroni was the only one tying all four movies together. He's in a policeman's uniform as a reference to his series The Blue Knight.

Howard Nostrand was normally more cartoony, sort a cross between Jack Davis and Wally Wood. His first work was horror comics in the 50s but when faced with caricatures reverted to a straighter style.