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.

BLIMP SUNDAY

BLACK SUNDAY (1977)
dir: John Frankheimer

BLIMP SUNDAY
MAD #195, December 1977
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

Dahlia (Marthe Keller) heads a Palestinian terrorist group called Black September. The goal of her group is to cause a big disturbance at a major event in America to attract attention to their cause.

Her boyfriend is a suicidal vet named Lander (Bruce Dern) who is a blimp pilot.

Fighting with a rival Israeli organization, Dahlia disguises herself as a nurse and poisons Officer Kabakov (Robert Shaw) in the hospital.

Lander and Dahlia test a device he made with the plastic explosives she had smuggled earlier inside some statues, and they plan to use it on a remote farm out in the desert. They convince the owner of the land they are there to take a picture.

Fasil (Bekim Fehmiu), another member of the organization, finds the Americans are on to their plan and calls it off. The authorities corner him and shoot him on the beach.

There's a tip something's going to happen at the Superbowl, which they can't cancel because of the crowd.

Since Lander is a pilot and plans to commit suicide anyway, the plan is to drive the blimp into the Superbowl stadium. He knocks out Farley, the designated pilot, and takes his place. He will detonate the device while they're floating above it. The Americans, with the aid of the Israelis, can't shoot the blimp down above the stadium because it would explode like the Hindenburg. They have to divert it so it's floating above the ocean and they can shoot it down there.

George Kennedy from the Airport series shows up because their Airport '77 parody is on the next page (you can find the post of it by clicking the link to it on the right) and because it has a similar ending to the previous Airport movie.

MAD's ending has the blimp being shot down over the ocean, but unfortunately it explodes over a ship.

BLECCH SUNDAY
Crazy #32, December 1977
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Walter Brogan

AIRPLOT 1975

AIRPORT 1975 (1974)
dir: Jack Smight

Airport inspired another sequel before sequels were all the rage, and by this time the disaster movie with the all-star cast was a full-fledged genre.
AIRPLOT '75
MAD #176, July 1975
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

MAD was obsessed with the barf bag for some reason, devoting at least three covers to one, and many mentions of them in articles. I've seen air sickness bags on planes and have experienced occasional air sickness, but I've never had to use one or seen one being used. Maybe they just thought the concept of a barf bag was funny, or just the word “barf”.

Jerry Stiller, who passed away earlier this year, has a credit lots of actors of higher stature don't. An appearance on the cover of MAD.

Airplot '75 opens with an establishing shot of most of the cast. Many are not named and do not show up later. There's Norman Fell and Jerry Stiller talking to Myrna Loy. Those two guys and Conrad Janis (the obscured bald head) play the comedy relief as three drunks. Gloria Swanson plays herself on board writing her memoirs.

There's an affair alluded to, one between flight instructor Alan Murdock (Charlton Heston) and stewardess Nancy Pryor (Karen Black, whom they missed out on an opportunity to call “Karen Blecch”).

Mrs. Patroni (Susan Clark) wife of Joe Patroni, the character played by George Kennedy, is on the flight. Rounding out the cast is co-pilot Julio (Erik Estrada).

Scotty Freeman (Dana Andrews, who happened to be the lead in Airplane! parody Zero Hour!) is a businessman taking his own flight in the bad weather.

A sick girl, Janice (Linda Blair), is in transit and one of the nuns offers to entertain her with her singing (probably why they cast Helen Reddy as Sister Ruth). I mentioned before Airplane! Was mostly taken from Zero Hour!, but it also borrowed this subplot.

The parodies of it from Airplane! are probably better known, though.

The jet has to land because of the fog and Scott Freeman's private plane, also in the air, also has to land.

The two planes have crashed into each other, killing and injuring the crew of the commercial jet, leaving Nancy the only one who can land it.

On the ground at the airport, reporter Glen Purcell (Larry Storch) is getting a story on this flight.

Now let's see Cracked's version, which they called the same thing...


AIRPLOT 1975
Cracked #127, September 1975
a: Sururi Gumen

Captain Stacy (Efram Zimbalist Jr.) is used on the first page here.

Linda Blair's previous film is referenced here too. They tried to put her in other things all throughout the 70s and 80s but she could never shed the image of her debut character.

Helen Reddy was best known for “I Am Woman”, so they had to reference that as well.

Two of the drunks played by Norman Fell and Jerry Stiller are used here.

Cracked also ended with a cliffhanger “coming soon” ending. There was no installment in 1976 but there was a later one the year after that with a completely different location and cast. The fact that George Kennedy existed in all Airport movies put them in the same universe.

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.

AIRPLOT

AIRPORT (1970)
dir: George Seaton

AIRPLOT
MAD #139, December 1970
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

Airport was considered sort of a return to normal at the time. Most of Hollywood's product then was aimed toward youth and full of sex and violence and this was only suspense. It was also the start of the disaster movie trend, spawning several sequels and other movies with the theme of man-made or natural disasters, almost all of which were parodied by MAD and its imitators (and which we'll get to in due time). Before heroic fantasy became the predominant “event” movie, disaster movies were it.

The angle of this parody is how the movie is presented with an all-star cast and has several plots at once. This type of thing is now typical of a season of any series on pay-cable or streaming TV but was considered novel when the difference between movies and television was so huge.

It is a common misnomer that Airplane! is a parody of Airport. It's actually a remake of a 50s B-movie called Zero Hour!, using its plot and most of the same dialogue. And while Airplane! is promoted as a parody of the disaster genre as a whole, uses many of the same conventions, (and owes the rapid-fire joke formula to MAD), that's where the similarities end.

But back to the MAD parody.

Mel Bakersfield (Burt Lancaster) is manager at an airport in Lincoln, IL and is having marital problems because he spends too much time at work, where he's having an affair with his assistant Tanya Livingston (Jean Seberg).

Then there's the pilot Vernon Demarest (Dean Martin).

Residents nearby are complaining about the noise of the planes and he's proposing a new model that will cut down on the noise.

There is a stowaway on one of the flights, Ada Quonsett (Helen Hayes).

There is a bomber (Van Helfin) boarding one of the planes.

Meanwhile, pilot Vermin Swinger is also having an affair with his stewardess Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset) and has knocked her up.

On the plane, we have many of the archetypes common to all disaster movies. The plane is piloted by Anson Harris (Barry Nelson)

Now we get to the bomb, the “disaster” of the movie.

Given MAD's penchant for using Yiddish words (I'm sure that's how most of us goyim know them), wouldn't it make more sense to call the parody Air-PLOTZ?

The MAD imitations often instructed their artists to draw just like the MAD artists. This caricature of Dean Martin from the article When People Moonlight in Different Jobs from Crazy #38 (May 1978) is taken from the Dean Martin caricature from this parody, right down to the captain's hat. I think the passenger is supposed to be Helena Kallianiotes taken from their Five Easy Pieces parody.


AIRPOT
Cracked #91, March 1971
a: John Severin

Cracked's parody also played up the multiple story arc angle.

Missing from MAD's parody is the plotline of snow on the tarmac and the George Kennedy character. I'm not sure who these other cameos are.

Also played up here is Dean Martin's persona as an alcoholic, since that was his schtick as an entertainer in real life. The Edsel was a Ford model that was a big flop when it came out.

Airport was originally a novel written by Arthur Hailey, who coincidentally wrote the screenplay for Zero Hour! in the above video clip.

One of the passengers is Spiro Agnew.


SQUAREPORT
Sick #80, November 1970
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Jack Sparling

This version begins with the Dean Martin character being like his real-life persona and already on the plane.

And the characters are called by the actors' names.

On the ground Burt Lancaster divorces his wife, who I don't think you see in the movie.

Somehow Dean Martin is on the ground now even though he was just up in the air.

The bomber's wife (Maureen Stapleton) wonders what his motive is.

This parody doesn't mention the many other subplots.