Girl in Trouble (1963)

Girl in Trouble is one of three films included in Something Weird Video’s Teen Turmoil DVD triple-feature. Girl in Trouble is fairly typical of the American sexploitation movie of its era (although it’s better made than most). It presents us with a story that is a stern warning of the dangers faced by young women who are foolish enough to head for the bright lights of the big city. They will find only sin and depravity. Like most movies in this genre the movie gleefully exploits the very dangers it warns us about.

Judy Collins (Tammy Clarke) is a small town girl who dreams of an exciting life in the big city. She’s been dating a nice small town boy who wants to marry her but she wants some excitement first. So she packs her suitcase and sets off for New Orleans. Not having much money she decides to hitchhike, a decision that turns out to be disastrous. Her attempts to defend herself turn out to be more drastic than she’d intended and now she’s convinced she’s a wanted woman and her only option is to run. She runs to New Orleans.

She finds employment difficult to obtain but then her luck seems to change when she lands a job as a model for a lingerie store. Things go well until she is given a “special” assignment - a wealthy male client wants a private showing of the store’s latest lingerie, in his hotel room. Judy Collins is a nice girl but she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer and she agrees to accept the assignment. On the other hand she’s not entirely stupid and she does have a feeling that this might be an awkward situation, to say the least. Especially taking into consideration the fact that some of the store’s lingerie is very revealing indeed. When it comes time to model a very flimsy and very see-through nightie she does start to get rather worried, but apparently not worried enough to keep her bra on (a precaution I would have strongly advised her to take). 

Eventually the inevitable happens. And after that of course there’s only way a girl can go - down. She becomes a strip-tease artiste. Then something even worse happens and she realises that all is lost.

The first thing that will strike the viewer of this movie, especially one with some experience of this genre, is that it’s quite professionally made. It doesn’t have the slapdash quality so common in these types of films. As far as the technical side is concerned director Brandon Chase seems quite comfortable. His shot compositions are mostly conventional but they’re  competent and on occasions he even tries something slightly imaginative and manages to do so quite successfully. He’s prepared to move the camera and there are even a couple of professionally executed tracking shots.

The director of photography was Leo J. Hebert and this appears to be his one and only film credit. This is rather surprising since he seems to be quite competent. Scenes are generally lit in a perfectly professional way, the camera is always in focus even when it’s moving. These are not assumptions that can be made of every American sexploitation movie of this era. Girl in Trouble looks like a low-budget film, but it still looks like a proper feature film.

The acting is usually the big problem in ultra-low budget movies such as this. Tammy Clarke is the star and she’s in just about every scene. This movie marked both the beginning and the end of her film career. To be fair the script (by Anthony Naylor and Brandon Chase) doesn’t give her much to work with. One assumes that she got the part because she was willing to take her clothes off and it has to be admitted that she’s very attractive (both with and without clothing). And given that Judy Collins is supposed to be incredibly naïve and inexperienced and to be nervous and awkward in the situations she finds herself in then it has to be said that Tammy Clarke conveys these qualities quite effectively.

Charles Murphy is effectively creepy in a minor role as a leering hotel clerk. The other supporting players are surprisingly fairly competent.

Tammy Clarke provides the voiceover narration, just in case the viewer misses the lessons of the film.

This was 1963 when producers of films like this were still treading cautiously where nudity was concerned. Topless scenes were considered to be safe. Anything more daring could be risky. This movie opts for safety so we see bare breasts but nothing more. We do certain see plenty of Tammy Clarke’s breasts and we see a great deal of her in some delightful early 1960s-style sexy lingerie, these scenes being actually more sexy than the much more explicit scenes in many later movies. It does help that Tammy Clarke is very pretty and has  a remarkably good body. She also sports some truly wondrous 60s hair styles. I suspect that much of the budget of this movie went on hair spray.

This is an odd sexploitation movie, not quite a nudie-cutie but not quite a roughie. It just doesn’t have the edge of nastiness that characterises the roughie sub-genre. It also doesn’t have the craziness and the delightful silliness that characterised so many of the non-roughie sexploitation movies of the early 60s.

The transfer is quite reasonable. The picture is quite grainy but that’s not uncommon with this type of movie many of which were shot on 16mm. Contrast is quite good and print damage is minimal. Given the nature of the source material and the fact that most exploitation movies of this vintage are lucky to survive at all it can be said that the presentation here is more than acceptable. It’s letterboxed but at least it’s in its correct aspect ratio. The three movies in this triple-feature are presented on a single DVD and there are the kinds of extras you expect from Something Weird.

Girl in Trouble gives the impression that the people responsible for it thought they were making a real movie. Unfortunately they didn’t have the budget or the script to do so although they did have the technical skills. The result is a movie that doesn’t quite make it but it’s still oddly appealing and oddly entertaining, partly because it’s surprisingly good-natured in a slightly goofy way. If you’re a fan of the genre it’s worth a look.

Airport (1970)

Airport was one of Universal’s biggest ever hits and it certainly played a role in setting off the disaster movie craze of the 70s. Airport though differs from the classic 1970s disaster movies (such as the sequels Airport 1975, Airport '77 and The Concorde...Airport '79) in several important respects which we’ll get to later.

The blockbuster movie (and it does have some claims to being the first bona fide blockbuster of the 70s) was based on Arthur Hailey’s blockbuster novel. The novel is pure melodrama (with definite soap opera tendencies) and it was just the sort of material that would appeal to producer Ross Hunter. The movie follows the same formula as the book, mixing melodrama with a thrilling story of terror in the skies.

Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) is the general manager of Chicago’s Lincoln International Airport and he’s having a bad day. That’s nothing unusual. Bakersfeld has to keep the airport’s budget under control, keep the airlines happy, keep the passengers happy and he has to keep the politicians happy as well. That last bit is the biggest nightmare, especially with constant complaints about airport noise from nearby residents. The only chance of keeping the noise within vaguely acceptable limits is by having as many flights as possible take off from the airport’s main runway. And now Chicago has been hit by its worst snow storm for years and a Trans Global Airlines Boeing 707 has managed to get itself hopelessly bogged right slap bang in the middle of that vital main runway, thus closing the runway. That’s quite enough to wreck Mel Bakersfeld’s day but before the night is out the lives of over a hundred passengers will depend on Bakersfeld’s ability to do the impossible and get the blocked runway back into service.

On top of that there are the usual headaches associated with running an airport, including the activities of serial stowaway Ada Quonsett (Helen Hayes). Mrs Quonsett is a nice old lady but she knows every trick in the book when it comes to stowing away on airliners and she’s utterly shameless about it. Mrs Quonsett is really more a problem for Tanya Livingston (Jean Seberg) to deal with, Mrs Livingston being the local representative of Trans Global Airlines. But since Mrs Livingston is Mel Bakersfeld’s mistress he finds himself having to help her out with the ageing but indefatigable stowaway.

Mel Bakersfeld has problems with his personal life as well and they’re going to come to a head on the very night when he really does not need more things to worry about. He devotes so much time to his job that his marriage has started to crumble and his wife Cindy (Dana Wynter) is fed up.

Trans Global’s chief pilot Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin) has problems as well. He’s been having an affair with beautiful stewardess Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset) and now she’s pregnant. And Vernon has discovered something far more disturbing than that - he’s fallen in love with her.

Another man with problems is Trans Global’s chief engineer Joe Patroni (George Kennedy). He has to find a way to move that 707 blocking the main runway.

It was going to be a difficult night anyway but sad loser D. O. Guerrero (Van Heflin) is about to make it a potentially disastrous night. He’s decided that the only way he can provide for his family is to blow himself (and a hundred or so passengers) to bits on board Trans Global’s evening flight to Rome so that his family can collect his flight insurance.

The main difference between this and later disaster movies is that the melodrama is as important as the disaster subplot. This means that the film is quite lengthy and it takes a long time for that disaster subplot to kick in. This could have been a major flaw but fortunately the very strong cast means that the characters are well fleshed out and become a bit more than just disaster movie stereotypes.

If Burt Lancaster had a fault as an actor it was a tendency to be overly intense but he keep that tendency in check here. He knows that he has to make Bakersfeld a sympathetic character and he succeeds in doing so. Mel Bakersfeld is a difficult man whose devotion to his job has wrecked his marriage but he is aware of this flaw in his character, and he’d like to do something bout it. He just can’t figure out what he can do.

For the most part Dean Martin regarded his acting career as an amusing hobby and he loved nothing better than to ham it up as outrageously as possible (as he did in the delightful Matt Helm spy spoof movies such as The Wrecking Crew). That does not however mean that he couldn’t act. When serious acting was required he could turn in a remarkably effective performance, as he did so memorably in the brilliant Howard Hawks western Rio Bravo. Martin takes his role in Airport quite seriously and he makes Vernon Demerest an interestingly complex character. He can be quite an abrasive character and he has an ego as big as all outdoors. Underneath this not entirely attractive exterior he is however a man of genuine substance. He’s a dedicated professional and as the movie progresses he finds (somewhat to his own surprise) that he’s a man of substance when it comes to his emotional life. Whatever the cost he is determined not to let Gwen down. It’s a nicely judged performance by Martin.

The fateful Trans Global flight to Rome has not just one senior pilot but two. Demerest is doing a routine evaluation of Captain Anson Harris (Barry Nelson), a pilot with as much experience as Demerest. The relationship between the two men is played quite cleverly. The temptation either to make the two pilots buddies, or to make them antagonists, is resisted. The two men know each other reasonably well professionally but being polar opposites in temperament they have never become close friends nor are they ever likely to. Nonetheless they get on quite well and have no difficulty working together in a crisis.

Ada Quonsett is the sort of character who could have been extremely irritating but Helen Hayes avoids the twin temptations of making her merely ridiculous or sentimentalising her performance. She’s there to provide some comic relief and she does it very effectively. Jean Seberg is equally impressive and is able to make Tanya Livingston a three-dimensional character. Jacqueline Bisset proves to be perfectly competent as Gwen. Dana Wynter is also good as Bakersfeld’s shrewish wife.

This movie has producer Ross Hunter’s fingerprints all over it. Hunter liked big glossy glamorous movies with plenty of star power, very high production values and packed with entertainment. His philosophy was simple - people go to the movies for entertainment so that’s what you give them. Hunter had used the split-screen technique in his 1959 hit Pillow Talk and that technique is used also in Airport. And it’s used in exactly the same way - whenever two characters are talking by telephone (or radio or whatever) the split-screen is used. It’s used very extensively indeed in Airport but it works. If this movie has a theme it’s the importance of effective communication and this technique conveys that quite nicely.

Airport is in some ways an old-fashioned movies, even by the standards of 1970. All Ross Hunter’s movies are rather old-fashioned, but old-fashioned in a good way. It really is pure entertainment and it delivers the goods. It has melodrama but it’s done extremely well and when the disaster subplot kicks in it’s handled with consummate skill. The special effects are in general exceptionally good.

If old-fashioned entertainment appeals to you then there’s no reason not to love Airport. Highly recommended.

best cult movies of 2014

The ten best cult movies I saw in 2014:

Münchhausen, Josef von Báky, 1943

Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Don Siegel, 1956

The Ipcress File, Sidney J. Furie, 1965

Kill, Baby . . . Kill!, Mario Bava, 1966

Seconds, John Frankenheimer, 1966

The Devil Rides Out, Terence Fisher, 1968

Dark of the Sun, Jack Cardiff, 1968

Lisa and the Devil, Mario Bava, 1972

The Eagle Has Landed, John Sturges, 1976

Fascination, Jean Rollin, 1979

Other notable cult movies I watched in the past year:

The War of the Worlds, Byron Haskin, 1953

Battle in Outer Space, Ishirô Honda, 1959

The Curse of the Werewolf, Terence Fisher, 1961

Crack in the World, Andrew Marton, 1965

The Satan Bug, John Sturges, 1965

Colossus: The Forbin Project, Joseph Sargent, 1970

The Sea Wolves, Andrew V. McLaglen, 1980

getting into the festive spirit

It's Christmas once again and I'm sure that Elvira has something under her tree to get you into the festive spirit. So Merry Christmas everyone!

Bandolero! (1968)

In 1968 the western was a genre in a state of transition. In Hollywood the classic western was about to give way to the revisionist western (a tedious sub-genre and ultimately rather pointless since John Ford had been making revisionist westerns like Fort Apache since the late 1940s). The spaghetti western seemed like it might breathe new life into the genre although the spaghetti western itself would quickly become an overly politicised dead end. 

Bandolero! shows a certain degree of spaghetti western influence and also in some ways anticipates the revisionist western but without the pretentiousness.

Bandolero! belongs to a different sub-genre, the quirky offbeat western. It’s never quite sure how seriously it wants to take itself. It would make rather a good double feature with a movie like Shalako.

Bandolero! was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, arguably the best action movie  director of his era (with terrific movies like The Wild Geese and ffolkes to his credit), and it boasts an interesting cast headlined by James Stewart, Dean Martin and Raquel Welch.

The movie hits the ground running with a bank robbery that goes spectacularly wrong. Dee Bishop (Dean Martin) and his gang are soon behind bars and are awaiting the arrival of a traveling hangman. The hangman arrives but he’s not what he seems to be and Dee and his cronies have cheated death, not for the first time.

Sheriff July Johnson (George Kennedy) does not take kindly to seeing outlaws escaping from under his nose and he vows to pursue them even if his pursuit takes him into neighbouring Mexico. In fact he is determined to continue the pursuit indefinitely. This might sound like the sheriff is a dedicated if somewhat obsessed lawman but that’s only part of the truth. The main reason for his relentless pursuit is that Dee Bishop has taken wealthy Mexican widow Maria Stoner (Raquel Welch) as a hostage. And the sheriff is suffering from a severe case on unrequited love as far as the Widow Stoner is concerned.

Playing a rather ambiguous part in these events is Dee Bishop’s brother Mace (James Stewart). Mace is the sensible, law-abiding older brother. At least that’s what everyone always assumed. It turns out Mace is a bit more complicated than people thought.

The chase into Mexico takes both pursuers and pursued deep into bandit country. And these are bandits who enjoy killing gringos even more than they enjoy killing the locals. Both Dee’s gang and Sheriff Johnson and his posse will soon have their hands full.

Dean Martin spent of his film career either just going through the motions or gleefully sending himself up (as he does in the wonderful Matt Helm movies like The Wrecking Crew). On the rare occasions when he actually took a rôle seriously he delivered some unexpectedly fine performances, none finer than his turn as the reformed alcoholic sheriff’s deputy in Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo. He takes his rôle in Bandolero fairly seriously. It offers him the opportunity to display some emotional depth while at the same time having some tongue-in-cheek fun.

James Stewart made something of a specialty of complicated western heroes and Bandolero! allows him to be complicated whilst also indulging himself in a bit of fun. The movie does not make too many demands on Raquel Welch’s acting abilities and she does a more than competent job. 

Andrew V. McLaglen was an exceptionally good action director and he pulls off some fairly impressive visual set-pieces. McLaglen always understood the importance of pacing and he keeps things moving in a very satisfactory manner.

This movie’s biggest problem is its tone. At times it seems to want to be dark and edgy and at other times it want to be light-hearted and witty and tongue-in-cheek. It’s at its best when it’s being gently amusing. Sadly the nihilism and cynicism that were eating away at the vitals of American cinema like a cancer manage to push this movie too much into pointless despair territory.

Notwithstanding this unfortunate circumstance Bandolero! still has much to recommend it. It’s fast-paced and stylish, it boasts some impressive location shooting, it’s well-acted and the action sequences work well.  

Bandolero! is included in the Raquel Welch Collection DVD boxed set. The set also includes Fathom (a fun caper movie), The Lady in Cement (a noirish crime thriller in which he co-stars with Frank Sinatra) and the 1966 science fiction classic Fantastic Voyage. 

The set illustrates rather well the surprising diversity of her career and all four movies are worth seeing. I highly recommend the boxed set. And despite some minor reservations Bandolero! is also recommended.

The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)

Considering the immense popularity of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu novels it’s a bit surprising that the character made so few appearances on the screen after the very successful 1940 Republic serial Drums of Fu Manchu. There was an unsuccessful TV series during the mid-50s and that was pretty much it. That is until producer Harry Alan Towers got hold of the rights in the 1960s and saw the potential in relaunching the Devil Doctor on his career of crime and attempted world domination.

The result was The Face of Fu Manchu, released in 1965. Towers was known mostly as a low-budget producer but for this production he obtained German financing and enough of it to give the film reasonably high production values.

Towers wrote the screenplay himself and it provides all the plot elements required for such a movie. It has a diabolical conspiracy by Fu Manchu involving mass murder and world political control and it has the right plot twists. Most crucially it captures the feel of Sax Rohmer’s books pretty effectively.

Dr Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee) has been trying to discover the secret of a rare poppy grown only in Tibet, a poppy that can produce a poison of unimaginable horror. He intends to use this as a threat to gain political power. He does however lack one essential piece of information, known only to the High Lama. A British expedition to Tibet some years earlier had discovered this secret and the information is contained in the papers from the expedition, now under lock and key in a museum in London.

Naturally Fu Manchu has kidnapped a scientist, Professor Muller (Wolf Rilla), who will be forced to assist him. And naturally Fu Manchu will also kidnap the professor’s daughter Maria (Karin Dor) and threaten her with all kinds of torture in order to persuade her father to cooperate. 

To convince the British government of the seriousness of his threats Fu Manchu plans to wipe out an entire town in Essex, an event portrayed with surprising (and effective) grimness. 

Towers managed here to assemble the perfect cast for a Fu Manchu movie. Without taking anything away from Henry Brandon’s fine performance in Drums of Fu Manchu or Boris Karloff’s deliriously over-the-top interpretation of the role in MGM’s wonderful 1932 The Mask of Fu Manchu there’s no question that Christopher Lee would turn out to be the finest of all screen Fu Manchus. Lee’s performance works because he takes the character seriously (which was always Lee’s instinctive approach to any role). He gives Dr Fu Manchu some real substance and more importantly he imparts some genuine menace to the role.

Nigel Green was by far the best Nayland Smith. He makes Nayland Smith actually seem like the sort of man who would present a real threat to Fu Manchu. There’s nothing bumbling about Green’s Nayland Smith. He’s a bit pompous but he has the steely determination that the character has in the books.

Howard-Marion Crawford is (as always) a delight as Dr Petrie. And Tsai Chin is just right as the daughter of Fu Manchu - sexy and glamorous and evil with a dash of sadism. Her obvious joy at the prospect of flogging one of her women is a definite highlight of the movie, adding the touch of perversity that it needs.

The movie also benefits from a fine German supporting cast. Joachim Fuchsberger was a veteran performer in the wildly popular German Edgar Wallace krimis of the 60s like Zimmer 13 and Der Hexer and he knows how to provide the kind of acting this type of movie needs. He can do the action hero stuff and he plays his role fairly straight but with just a suggestion of tongue-in-cheek playfulness. Karin Dor had made several krimis as well and she makes an admirable heroine. Wolf Rilla was another veteran of both krimis and the wonderful early 60s Dr Mabuse movies (such as The Invisible Dr Mabuse).

The movie benefits also from having Don Sharp as director. Sharp had directed a couple of movies for Hammer (including The Devil-Ship Pirates) and had demonstrated his ability to handle both gothic horror and action adventure films. He was the perfect choice for this movie and he keeps the pacing pleasingly brisk.

The sets are quite effective. Fu Manchu’s secret hideout beneath the Thames was clearly inspired by Sax Rohmer’s The Trail of Fu Manchu and it adds something of a gothic touch. The water chamber linked to the Thames is a nice perverse touch. The decision to set the movie in the 1920s rather than the 1960s was a very wise one and the period look is achieved quite successfully.

The Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD offers a generally good anamorphic transfer. 

The Face of Fu Manchu was followed by four sequels, although with increasingly limited budgets.

The Face of Fu Manchu is enormous fun and it’s at least reasonably faithful to the spirit of Rohmer’s novels. Fans of old-fashioned action adventure thrillers with a dash of outrageousness should get plenty of enjoyment out of this one. The performances of Christopher Lee and Nigel Green are major bonuses. Highly recommended.

The Concorde... Airport '79

Airport had kicked off the disaster movie movie boom in 1970 and had been a huge hit for Universal. In fact it was successful enough to spawn no less than three sequels. The last of these was The Concorde... Airport '79, generally considered to be the weakest of the four. That’s a fairly accurate assessment but the movie can still offer a great deal of fun if you’re in the right mood.

Setting this movie on board Concorde rather than on a boring old 747 seemed likely to add a bit more excitement, and in some ways this turns out to be the case.

The movie begins with the delivery of the first Concorde to Federation World Airlines. Concorde’s arrival in the US almost ends in disaster when it narrowly misses a collision with a hot air ballon manned by militant greenies. This is one of many subplots in this movie that end up going nowhere at all.

The Concorde’s first scheduled passenger service for Federation World Airlines is to be a flight to Moscow via Paris. One of the passengers will be newscaster Maggie Whelan (Susan Blakely). Her boyfriend is billionaire industrialist and arms manufacturer Kevin Harrison (Robert Wagner). Maggie has just discovered that Harrison has been illegally selling arms to various rogue states and she’s told him that she’s going to expose the scandal. Harrison decides that his best option is to take out a contract on Maggie. Now you might think this would be fairly straightforward. Surely any competent hitman could arrange a little accident for her, possibly have her hit by a car. But no, that’s not good enough for Harrison. He decides that the easiest way to have her killed would be by destroying the Concorde. The fact that destroying the Concorde would undoubtedly set off an incredibly exhaustive investigation, the sort of exhaustive investigation he desperately wants to avoid at this point in time, apparently does not occur to him.

Trying to shoot down the Concorde is crazy enough but Harrison compounds his lunacy to deciding that this will be accomplished by an experimental missile system built by his own company, thus ensuring that the exhaustive investigation will be directly focussed on his own company.

Concorde takes off for Paris, piloted by the airline’s chief pilot Joe Patroni (George Kennedy) and French pilot Paul Metrand (Alain Delon). The Concorde will end up facing not just one deadly threat but two - as a backup plan Harrison has an F-4 Phantom armed with air-to-air missiles in case his new missile system fails to do the trick.

Now the Concorde was, even by today’s standards, an awesome technological achievement. It was a remarkable aircraft. But it was a passenger jet, albeit one designed to fly at twice the speed of sound. It was not an air superiority fighter optimised for dogfighting. It was hardly likely to be able to out-manoeuvre a purpose-built fighter aircraft. But in this movie that’s exactly what Concorde can do!

But Harrison is determined, and he has more schemes up his sleeve to doom the Concorde!

There are of course a couple of romantic subplots, most notably between a Russian Olympic gymnast and an American TV reporter, and between Captain Metrand and stewardess Isabelle (Sylvia Kristel). Joe Patroni will also have a romantic interlude in Paris, although he doesn’t get quite what he thinks he’s getting.

Now as you’ve probably gathered the plot is pretty silly. Even just the outline of the plot is silly, but when we get to the details it becomes very much sillier. That’s not really a problem however - generally speaking the sillier the disaster movie the more fun it is. This movie does however have a couple of major problems.

The first problem is with the special effects. They’re truly awful. I don’t mind special effects that are not entirely convincing - once I get into a movie I can allow my willing suspension of disbelief to gloss over slightly iffy special effects. In this movie however the effects are just too crude, too obviously fake and too obviously cheap. They jar you out of the movie. In fact virtually all the action scenes fall a little flat and are sometimes badly paced (the final climactic scenes seem much too rushed).

The second problem is with the cast. You expect a disaster movie to have at least a couple of big names, plus the usual array of second-stringers and superannuated former stars. This movie really doesn’t have much in the way of star power. Robert Wagner was at best a moderately big star, Alain Delon was a huge star in Europe but much less so in English-speaking markets, and while Sylvia Kristel was possibly the most famous porn star in the world (having featured in the most successful soft-core porn movie of all time, Emmanuelle) she was not exactly a mainstream star.

Even worse are the wide divergences between the performances. Robert Wagner and Susan Blakely seem to think they’re making a serious thriller. George Kennedy thinks it’s broad comedy. Alain Delon is renowned as a minimalist kind of actor and is clearly uncomfortable trying to play an extroverted heroic role.

Disaster movies require a particular kind of acting. It has to be over-the-top and larger-than-life but it has to stop short of outright self-parody. In Airport 1975 Charlton Heston and Karen Black (two of the best scenery-chewers in the business) showed how it should be done. Their performances were wildly extravagant but they still managed to convey the impression that their characters believed in the reality of the situations they faced - they were not overtly comic or tongue-in-cheek performances. Unfortunately George Kennedy not only crosses the line into self-parody but does so in a somewhat embarrassing way, as do some of the supporting players (notably Martha Raye who must have been very very desperate for money to take this role).

And what exactly were the producers thinking of when they cast Sylvia Kristel? It’s not that her performance is any worse than anyone else’s, but let’s face it what Sylvia Kristel was known for was her ability to portray uninhibited sexuality (which she did superbly). I’m not suggesting that she should have been cavorting about naked but surely it would have been sensible to make her character at least a little bit sexy? There are only two sexy scenes in the movie and she’s not in either. With all due respect to Andrea Marcovicci one can’t help thinking that Sylvia Kristel could have made the hot-run romp scene really sizzle.

There’s also one truly cringe-inducing moment. Joe Patroni has confided to Metrand that he lost his wife a year earlier and he’s still really broken up about it. So Metrand sets him up with an expensive French hooker (played rather improbably by Bibi Andersson), but he doesn’t tell Patroni she’s a hooker. He lets Patroni think this woman has fallen in love with him and that maybe he has found True Love again, then the next morning tells him the woman was a prostitute. It’s a pretty cruel thing to do but Patroni think it’s a great joke. It comes cross as rather creepy.

Having made these criticisms it has to be admitted that The Concorde... Airport '79 still has enough loopiness and sheer outrageousness to satisfy hard-core disaster movie fans. The plot, despite its extreme implausibility, has some inspired lunacy to it that makes one wish the producers had tried just a little harder with this movie.

The Region 4 boasts an adequate transfer without extras.

The Concorde... Airport '79 cannot be taken seriously even for a second but it’s rather enjoyable silliness. Recommended for fans of the genre, although certainly not as good as Airport 1975 or Airport ’77.