This is one of several movies that surely inspired the 1980 Jim Abrahams-David Zucker-directed disaster movie spoof Airplane!. But being a cheap made-for-TV affair this has to be the worst, although boasts an impressive cast.
It's all here: the cheap sets, the phony dialogue, the over-applied make-up (too much eye-liner and tinted hair and thats just the guys) and the stereotypical characters all with their own personal demons to deal with. The gin-swigging, hard-bitten crime writer, the grief stricken parents, the old guy with months to live, the jive-talking pop star (Sonny Bono sporting a hideous shirt and massive flares), the rugged, no-nonsense Captain (Robert Stack - amazingly also in Airplane!), the glamorous stewardess (a pre-Charlie Angels Farah Fawcett-Majors), the guy who has a heart attack but refuses to be treated by the only doctor on board because he blames him for his wife's death, the practical joke-playing precocious kid (Danny Bonaduce from The Partridge family) and the harassed ground staff including the airport manager with an air disaster AND toothache to deal with, and the psychologist bought in to give a profile of the passengers who gets more and more unconvincingly disheveled as the movie proceeds (see Lloyd Bridges in Airplane!).
Without giving too much away the most jaw-dropping moments are the corny dialogue between the Captain and the cabin staff (all two of 'em), the sequence where it's revealed that the priest is an imposter because he's wearing nail polish (nail polish?) and the bit where Robert Stack promises to show Danny Bonaduce round his cockpit a few minutes after threatening to spank him. But the most memorable scene is where a bomb-disposal officer (Pepper Martin) arrives in the airport departure lounge to diffuse a bomb which turns out to be a hoax. He sports some rather unwieldy protective clothing which he clearly didn't wear during rehearsals (assuming they did any) as he bumps into a pot plant when he exits. He also has some of the worst lines in the movie: "I was in a motel room when I got this call. I thought it was my wife!". Watch it at your peril!
It's all here: the cheap sets, the phony dialogue, the over-applied make-up (too much eye-liner and tinted hair and thats just the guys) and the stereotypical characters all with their own personal demons to deal with. The gin-swigging, hard-bitten crime writer, the grief stricken parents, the old guy with months to live, the jive-talking pop star (Sonny Bono sporting a hideous shirt and massive flares), the rugged, no-nonsense Captain (Robert Stack - amazingly also in Airplane!), the glamorous stewardess (a pre-Charlie Angels Farah Fawcett-Majors), the guy who has a heart attack but refuses to be treated by the only doctor on board because he blames him for his wife's death, the practical joke-playing precocious kid (Danny Bonaduce from The Partridge family) and the harassed ground staff including the airport manager with an air disaster AND toothache to deal with, and the psychologist bought in to give a profile of the passengers who gets more and more unconvincingly disheveled as the movie proceeds (see Lloyd Bridges in Airplane!).
Without giving too much away the most jaw-dropping moments are the corny dialogue between the Captain and the cabin staff (all two of 'em), the sequence where it's revealed that the priest is an imposter because he's wearing nail polish (nail polish?) and the bit where Robert Stack promises to show Danny Bonaduce round his cockpit a few minutes after threatening to spank him. But the most memorable scene is where a bomb-disposal officer (Pepper Martin) arrives in the airport departure lounge to diffuse a bomb which turns out to be a hoax. He sports some rather unwieldy protective clothing which he clearly didn't wear during rehearsals (assuming they did any) as he bumps into a pot plant when he exits. He also has some of the worst lines in the movie: "I was in a motel room when I got this call. I thought it was my wife!". Watch it at your peril!