THE CORNCORDE: AIRPLOT '79

THE CONCORDE... AIRPORT '79 (1979)
dir: David Lowell Rich

THE CORNCORDE: AIRPLOT '79
MAD #214, April 1980
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

This was the last of the Airport series, with the disaster movie no longer the big-budget event genre. Horror and heroic fantasy, once a low-budget staple in drive-ins, were starting to be the main studio fare as movie theaters were becoming multiplexes and being built into shopping malls. Star Wars had replaced Gone with the Wind as the standard. This was the last of the disaster movies, and the last of theatrical all-star cast movies, which were now event TV over the span of a few nights.

A Concorde jet is making two flights, first from Washington, DC to Paris, and then from there to Moscow. Patroni (George Kennedy), the only sole character in the Airport universe, will be its captain. There are protests against the danger of the new plane as there were in real life, since it is a new plane that was the first to break the speed of sound. Newscaster Maggie Wheelan (Susan Blakely) is giving a report about the Concorde's maiden flight, as well as a story about Harrison Industries testing its new rocket.

Maggie is visited that night by an employee at Harrison Industries who has information about how the company has been selling arms to other countries but an assassin breaks in and kills him before he can spill the beans. She is about to be killed too, but someone passing the building sees a commotion and pulls a fire alarm, causing the assassin to run away. The next morning, she tells her boyfriend, who happens to be Kevin Harrison (Robert Wagner), the head of Harrison Industries, that she's getting documents with inside information, he tells her it's nothing. She's boarding for Paris, and the second she gets into the elevator, she's handed the documents before Kevin, who's seeing her off, can do anything about it. (He later has to go to Paris on business and takes a private plane. She takes the commercial jet there. They never explain why the two of them take two different planes).

We meet the crew and passengers, most of whom aren't used here or are only briefly hinted at. Co-pilot Paul Metrand (Alain Delon) is having an on-and-off romance with stewardess Isabelle (Sylvia Kristel). Cicely Tyson is bringing an organ for her son. Charo is kicked off for smuggling a chihuahua. Jimmie Walker is a saxophone player who likes to get stoned. Martha Raye is a passenger that has to keep using the bathroom. Eddie Albert is the owner of the airline flying with his fourth wife (Sybil Danning). Jon Davidson is a sportscaster dating an Russian olympic gymnast, while they're keeping it a secret from her mother who's sitting next to them. MAD does give time to Coach Markov (Avery Schreiber), head of that gym team, boarding with his deaf daughter.

(Mr. Schreiber's bag of Doritos is a reference to a bunch of commercials he did for them at this time).

Dr. Harrison requests that the missiles they're testing be redirected so they'll shoot down the plane where Maggie has the documents that could bring him down. On the plane they see in the cockpit that the missiles, which they think are just missiles that have gone rogue, are coming at them, and they have to fly out of the way to avoid them.

More missiles come at them, which they divert using flare guns, before coming close to going into the ocean.With aid of Paris police, they eventually land in Paris somewhat safely. The movie's only half-finished, though.

There's a whole part not adapted of everyone in Paris overnight. In order to forget his dead wife, Patroni is fixed up with someone his age (Bibi Andersson) by his co-pilot, who he hits it off with immediately but finds out the next morning is a “pro”. He's happy about it though. Maggie has a rendezvous with Kevin, who plays innocent after failing his plan. She says she's planning to go on the air with the documents about the company and they break up. The passengers board the next day on the next leg to Moscow. They don't explain why everybody would go back as if what they went through never happened, or why there has to be a second leg of the trip with a second disaster.

In the second part of the movie, a bomb has been placed on the plane by one of the mechanics, splitting the plane in half, and they have to make an emergency landing in the Alps. Corruption at Harrison Industries is exposed on the news and Kevin shoots himself.

The SST Concorde was used for transatlantic flights in the last quarter of the twentieth century, beneficial for the airlines because they could go twice the speed of sound, and also very controversial for that same reason. They were eventually discontinued because they were too expensive to maintain.

Look what I found. The whole movie in its entirety on YouTube. You don't need to track it down through some kind of streaming service or torrent because it's right here if you desire to see it before the copyright holders or YT member takes it down and you just see a gray screen below.