SST: Death Flight (1977)

the audience applauded

Memorable, crazy movie

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Of course this is maybe the one hundred and first AIRPORT rip off, in the line of the disaster movies fashion which proliferated in the seventies. And Dave Lowell Rich was a specialist for this kind of topic. Of course, you find here so many clichés already seen dozens of times before...of course nothing new, but that remains rather pleasant to watch, and I have seen far far worse in that disaster movies field.

All the hoopla and pomp and circumstances for this maiden flight. BIG DEAL! Just get me to Europe on time Mr. Brady.Actor Robert Reed is the Pilot of the plane. Of course the plane is sabotaged and Our Dear Doctor brings a rare strain of virus aboard which makes for a frustrating finish to a frustrated viewer. The cavalcade of 70's personalities the likes of Bert Convy and Chrystie Jenner who was married to Bruce Jenner and we all know how that turned out! Other actors of interest Peter Graves, Lorne Green who looks more natural in a cowboy suit. Barbara Anderson, George Maharis and Burgess Meredith plus Brock Peters, Doug McClure and Susan Strasberg who probably received an ear full from her Dad for excepting work to complete this disaster film in more ways than one.This movie was doomed from the beginning with the Regis Philbin seal of approval! I was waiting for Capt Stubing Of the Love Boat to come aboard.

Here's a an idea – let's round-up a bunch of Hollywood has-beens, second rate TV actors, and a bunch of no-names and put them all on board a cross Atlantic flight. And let's add a crazed mechanic with a grudge. Oh, and how about adding a deadly virus that fills the plane? You've got the recipe for a 1970s TV movie-of-the-week! How many of these doomed airplane movies did they make? If you believed what you saw at the movies and on television, planes were dropping out of the skies like flies in the 70s. These kinds of movies were all the rage and SST: Death Flight was meant to grab onto the disaster-cycle coattails. I'll give the movie credit, though – it's actually not much worse than most of the rest of its ilk. The acting is what you would expect from the likes of Lorne Greene, Tina Louise, and Bert Convy. The manufactured tension comes across 30 years later as more humorous than anything else. The characters are cardboard cutouts with overly dramatized problems that can miraculously be solved in an hour or so. The one thing SST: Death Flight has going for it is a slightly unusual twist at the end where the characters the choice of life or death. Other than that, it's cookie-cutter 70s disaster film-making at it's best (or worst, depending on how you look at this stuff.)

Let me say straight away that this movie is toxic waste for the mind. This movie is not watchable because it has a good story; it doesn't. It's not watchable because there's good acting; there is none. It's watchable because of the cast. This will take you down TV memory lane...how many former TV stars can you pick out?As with any TV "Movie of the Week", the drawing power is in the stars. The story involves the inaugural flight of "Maiden One" the first supersonic transport plane. (The movie ignores the fact that it was a British-French conglomerate that first built the Concorde, and had to sue for the right to land in America during this time.) In this movie, we have a disgruntled worker who sabotages the flight by putting detergent in the hydraulic lines in order to get revenge on his boss (Burgess Meredith).We also have Doug McClure trying to get back into Tina Louise's pants, Billy Crystal playing a rather fey steward, John Delancie in training for his future role as Q, and Peter Graves as one half of a former May-December romance. Did I mention that there also happens to be a plot line about the airplane carrying the Senegal flu, which is now spreading among the crew? If you don't have sabotage, you've got the untamed strain of flu floating around.There are two references that date this movie. One is a reference to the "Swine flu". The other is the way that Burt Convy discusses abortion with his bimbo girlfriend -- the concept is mentioned, but she won't let him say the word.The movie does have a reverse natural selection -- the megastars like Meredith & Graves die, but losers like Convy, McClure, etc. live to make another bad TV movie. Check out the cameo of Regis Philbin (and his hair) as an annoying TV reporter.Sterno says SST Death Flight is a guilty pleasure.