Airport '77 (1977)

Mr. Phillip Stevens (jimmy Stewart) is flying in a load of VIPs to the grand opening of his art collection when a trio of hijackers knock out the passengers with gas and try to steal the priceless cargo of art treasures. But everything goes wrong for the hijackers when the 747 crashes in the Bermuda triangle. While the passengers remain alive in the shallow water a daring rescue operation is planned to bring the plane up without breaking it in two. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: To prepare for his role, Jack Lemmon attended both diving school and flight training school. As Jack Lemmon stated for his flight training, "I wanted to know what all the knobs and dials were for." For full effectiveness, Christopher Lee did the "dead" stunt himself, and as a result was awarded the Stuntmen's Union's belt buckle.

Warning: Spoilers Aplenty: Why is Jimmy Stewart even in this film? I guess it was just to give the film a bigger name, he never even gets on the airplane. Also do you think they were already running out of storis? Gee, let's get an airplane, then plunge it underwater! That way all the tension that would have been created wondering if the plane was going to crash is gone. Yeah, that's it. Ohh, we can put in in the Bermuda Triangle and then casually mention it once near the beginning of the film and then completely forget about it. And where exactly in the Bermuda Triangle is the sea floor like 20 feet down? There was a drop off, like in the cover art above, but the plane wasn't hanging over it...at all, nothing, the nose was barely near it.

Here is the reason nobody can find them, the plane is hijacked and flown just 10s of feet above the waves to avoid radar, so it is off track and not where they are looking. It crashes because there is fog and it hits a offshore oil platform derrek. The question is, why didn't anybody on the oil platform say, "Hey! Somebody just hit us! Maybe we should alert the Navy or something." And another thing, the signal beacons they put into the life rafts on those planes are amazing. Once Jack Lemon reaches the surface hundreds of miles of course, the beacon starts transmitting and the Navy immediately picks it up. I don't know, for some reason, the passengers didn't ever really seem to be in that much danger.

Next Up: The Concorde: Airport '79, and I thought this was bad.