MovieChat Forums > Airport 1975 (1974) Discussion > At times, can’t tell this movie from Air...

At times, can’t tell this movie from Airplane!

posted 3 years ago by Tabbycat (878)
6 replies | jump to latest

The nun, the guitar, the sick Linda Blair … the knowing looks and head turns as sister Helen picks up the guitar, belting out THERE IS ONLY ONE RIVER, THERE IS ONLY ONE SEA … and bashing the poor girl in the head, causing her IV to unplug and sending her into violent seizures …

Oh, sorry — that’s Airplane!

“Mommy, the people on this flight are so INTERESTING!”

That’s because the scriptwriters worked tirelessly inventing them, dear.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

Airport 75 remains the most unintentionally funny entry in the Airport franchise. It needs no comparisons to Airplane! It's a laugh riot on its own.

[–] Luis (187) 2 years ago

It has been almost a year... But it is the other way around. This movie came out in 1915, and Airplane! in 1917. Airplane scriptwriters saw that, and built up on it.

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

This movie came out in 1915, and Airplane! in 1917. Airplane scriptwriters saw that, and built up on it.
---

Er...1974 and 1980?

---

Lots of airport movies got referenced in Airplane (including the full food poisoning plot of "Zero Hour" (1957) ) but it seems that "the singing nun and the kidney girl" is THE scene from Airport 1975 fully given its due in Airplane. Helen Reddy had some good radio hits in the 70's -- some of them saucy -- but THIS song and her singing were just atrocious.

I occasionally watch Airport 1975 and when Reddy starts singing to Linda Blair, I am EXPECTING the guitar to knock off the feeding tube and Blair to start crossing her eyes...but then I remember "wrong movie."

There is also a shot in Airport 1975 of a doctor at the "kidney storage" unit talking to someone on the phone. No kidneys are visible. In "Airplane," a kidney is bouncing all around the room, hopping even.

Comedy Gold.

[–] PaladinNJ (21509) a year ago

Probably not a coincidence since Airplane is a spoof on the Airport film series.

[–] Darren (1342) a year ago

Airplane! definitely spoofed the Airport film series, and the guitar-playing nun in Airplane! was a deliberate spoof of a specific, similar scene from this movie.

But the funny thing is, Airplane! is actually a carbon copy, story-wise, of a 1957 movie called Zero Hour. In Zero Hour, the main character is also a former fighter pilot named Ted Stryker, who is guilt-stricken because men under his command were killed following his orders during WWII. Stryker also has to take the controls of an airliner after the flight crew suffers food poisoning after eating bad fish and land the plane before the crew and sick passengers die.

Airplane! was made just a few years after the Airport film series, and it spoofed many specific scenes from that franchise, so that's what everyone associates it with. But it was so exact a copy of the plot of Zero Hour, that Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker bought the rights to remake Zero Hour from Warner Bros. and Paramount in order not to be sued for copyright infringement.

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

Airplane! was made just a few years after the Airport film series, and it spoofed many specific scenes from that franchise, so that's what everyone associates it with. But it was so exact a copy of the plot of Zero Hour, that Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker bought the rights to remake Zero Hour from Warner Bros. and Paramount in order not to be sued for copyright infringement.

---

I saw Airplane on release in 1980 and I did not know about Zero Hour at the time. Now I do, and evidently they indeed had to buy rights to use the overall plot (the food poisoning, the amateur pilot) and some of the dialogue as Zero Hour for their "frame."

But ON that frame, "Airplane" added a lot of spoof scenes from the Airport movies, including the opening shots of a the air terminal and music(from "Airport"), the kidney doctor's office, the kidney girl and the singing nun, the slapping of hysterical passengers, etc.

By the way, this is specific to "Airport 1975":

In "Airport 1975," Efrem Zimbalist Jr is the pilot of a plane that is hit by a small plane piloted by Dana Andrews in mid-air.

In "The Crowded Sky"(1959) Dana Andrews is on a commercial jet that is hit by a Navy jet piloted by Efrem Zimbalist Jr!

These elements didn't make it into "Airplane," but you can see that some 50's airplane-in-peril movies (including John Wayne in "The High and the Mighty") influenced the 70's and 80s movies.