In the beginning, there was darkness. Then someone flipped a switch, the projectors came on, and the first "Airport" movie filled the screen...many, many times, all over the world. They made it for $10 million and it earned $100 million. And the people wanted MORE! Fortunately, the producers still had more to give so they released Airport 1975. It wasn't as good as the first one, but it was still a decent-enough movie. And the people wanted MORE! The producers still had an adventure left in them so they release Airport 77...which wasn't quite as good as the first two, but it was still decent enough...And the people wanted MORE! The producers had nothing left to give - no more grand gestures or heroic feats lived within them, at least when it came to movies about ill-fated airliners - but you have to give the people what they want..so they gave us this. This...ridiculous...thing. It had the desired effect: we didn't want any more Airport movies after that. This movie is terrible. There's no getting around it. This thing is full of intentionally bad acting - it has to be intentional because the cast is full of very good actors. The premise is ridiculous. The "special effects" are something you'd see in a high-school play. It is obvious they intended to make the worst movie in history, and nearly succeeded. "Manos, the Hands of Fate" is still worse but not by much.Fortunately for us all, the sequels "Airplane!" and "Snakes on a Plane" are of much higher quality.

Just a year before the comedy classic "Airplane!" came out, the last of the four airport movies was released to universal pans and a dreadful box office. There is good reason behind what the reactions were, but something tells me that the producers knew that they would soon be getting spoofed and decided to toss in some truly lame comedy in an attempt to sabotage the classic parody. It didn't work.In this one, George Kennedy is finally the pilot, actually the lead even though he gets "also starring" billing. I should warn you up from that the recently deceased Mr. Kennedy also gets a love scene. I could laugh with him in the "Naked Gun" movies, but here, I truly felt sorry for him. The film surrounds the flight of the Concorde from the United States to Paris, and then from there to Moscow for the 1980 Olympics. Universal world intrigue has the Concorde being the intended target of missile attacks, and the usual all- star cast of veterans and newcomers is placed in the predicament of going down with the fastest plane in world history. Some stars come off better than others, but poor Martha Raye is relegated to bathroom jokes thanks to a weakened bladder that makes me wonder why she wasn't offered the Depends commercials instead of June Allyson. I guess we have to settle for her for Poligrip. Her scenes are truly embarrassing, and you can only feel sorry for her when she comes out after a particularly violent attempted strike on the plane to announce that the toilet is broken.Cicely Tyson fares a lot better as a concerned mother of a seven-year-old who needs to go through a heart transplant. This actually comes off as two separate things that could have been much shorter, the flight from the states to Paris being over in just over an hour and the second flight from Paris to Moscow giving Charro the opportunity to take over where Raye left off even though Raye, obnoxious saxophone player Jimmy Walker, plane owner Eddie Albert (among others) are still going on. It just gets worse and worse and the convoluted storyline involving corporate Intrigue through corrupt Robert Wagner just gets more confusing as it goes on. Oscar-winning actress Mercedes McCambridge is wasted in a tiny role as the domineering companion to a Russian Olympic star, and to make matters worse isn't even listed in the main cast.I managed to make it through this a second time, having seen it years ago, and found it even worse then I had remembered. The comedy is corny, not at all intelligent like the comedy utilized in "Airplane!" and at times I found myself just rolling my eyes rather than laughing. It is still with the same elaborate quality as the other three in the series, but had it not been for the "Airplane!" release of the following year, this definitely would have been it for the series anyway.

Fourth and final film in this series is truly a crash and burn disaster in itself. Ridiculous plot has the Concorde being threatened by an irate businessman trying to stop his newscaster girlfriend( a passenger on the Concorde) from going on air with irrefutable proof that he was illegally selling weapons to enemy regimes, making him a traitor. Naturally, he decides that destroying the very high-profile Concorde plane undertaking an international flight before the Olympic Games in Russia is the perfectly logical course of action to take...(sure!) Not even the presence of George Kennedy as familiar character Joe Patroni(now a pilot on the Concorde) can save it. Just awful.

Ordered the complete AIRPORT movie set recently. Always been a fan of the Airport series. First three, Airport (70), '75, '77, I've seen numerous times and always liked all three. For some reason I've never seen Airport '79 though. Ladies and gentleman, this has to be the all time hokeyest movie I have ever seen in my 50 years of life! Bad acting. Bad writing. Bad plot. Stupid plot. Bad special affects, even for 1979. Just bad everything. Honestly, after the first 15-20 minutes I was ready to turn it off. I was like, when is this movie going to get going. I cannot believe all the well known actors in this movie actually consented to being apart of this joke of a movie. I don't think there is one movie I have ever not said you have to see at least once until I viewed this one. I would NEVER recommend this movie to anyone even as a joke and I will never watch it again.