AIRPORT 79 THE CONCORDE: a decade-long franchise crashes and burns

No guns are ever shown and the word is never spoken but there's definitely a hijacking taking place in AIRPORT 79 THE CONCORDE.
And this act of air piracy is committed by a most unlikely character.
Joe Patroni had served this 70s disaster franchise faithfully since it's original departure in 1970 with

the star-studded 'Airport.' As played by George Kennedy, Patroni was the only original character to re-appear in the subsequent three installments, although by 'Airport 77' he had been reduced to little more than a walk-on for old times' sake.
So when producer Jennings Lang came knocking at Mr Kennedy's door asking him to reprise Patroni for a fourth time in AIRPORT 79 THE CONCORDE I get the impression that old George played hardball. I've no documentary evidence to back-up this assertion, but Patroni's part is so grotesquely enlarged compared to his role in the previous 3 films that it just makes sense that Kennedy demanded and got a whole lot more airtime in return for chomping down on that soggy cigar for a fourth time.
He hijacked the story.
And, like most hijackings, it's not a very pleasant experience for anyone involved - fellow cast members or viewers.
Patroni was originally a subsidiary character, played by an actor whose name very properly remained below the title, especially when rubbing shoulders with stars of the calibre of Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin and Helen Hayes. In 'Airport 75' he got a boost, but still played second fiddle to Charlton Heston, Karen Black and Myrna Loy. His 'Airport 77' role was, as I've already mentioned, little more than an obligatory nod to the episodes that had come before. So it makes no sense, other than my hijacking theory, to then cast him in such a central role in what turned out to be the final 'Airport' outing 2 years later.
Patroni's aviation skills had always been tied to the Boeing aircraft company. He was never explicitly described as a Boeing employee but his intimate knowledge of the inner workings and handling characteristics of the 707 ('Airport') and 747 ('Airport 75' and 'Airport 77') had been essential in averting disaster. Suddenly in 1979 he's promoted to Captain and fully qualified to pilot the supersonic Concorde, which was a joint venture by British and French aerospace companies.
So now he's front and centre of the airborne action that unfolds as the Concorde comes under attack from a sophisticated missile launched by a rich and unscrupulous arms dealer who's determined to destroy some incriminating evidence in the possession of one of the passengers. And - by George! - if

Patroni is not more than equal to the task of swerving Concorde through the skies like a jet fighter while shouting out the handling characteristics of the pursuing missile (which he's successfully identified while traveling in excess of Mach 1 with the missile positioned behind the plane) to his bemused co-pilot, Alain Delon, who clearly thought he was the star of this film.
But fighter pilot heroics are not enough for Patroni. He also wants the lions' share of the action on the ground, and that means the infliction of some disturbingly inappropriate scenes with Kennedy making love to a high class Parisian hooker on a bearskin in front of a roaring fire. Once again, Delon can only look on helplessly as his own romance with a resolutely clothed Sylvia Kristel (the original 'Emmanuelle') is effectively extinguished by the competition.
The insistence on putting Patroni at the forefront of the action merely serves to highlight how far the franchise had fallen by 1979. Kennedy was not leading man material and Patroni is a coarse and unlikeable character. But he's not the only element weighing down proceedings. Sure, it's got the sleek and sexy Concorde, but the ridiculous plot, comic book characters, inane dialogue, half-assed special effects, B/C-list cast, even the font used in the opening titles, all contribute to the sense of a shoddily-constructed tv movie trying unsuccessfully to punch above its weight.

ICE FOLLIES OF 1939: frozen in horror

Good God! What were they thinking?
And, more pertinently, was anybody actually thinking?
It's almost beyond belief that the Hollywood studio renowned for its taste and style and lustrous reputation could countenance the creation of such of cinematic monstrosity. 
But that is exactly what MGM did in 1939 and, more than 70 years later ICE FOLLIES OF 1939 still stinks worse than a cow that's been lying dead in the African sun for three days.
The film is so bad my first thought was that its stars, Joan Crawford and James Stewart, had been forced to appear in it as punishment for some offence they must have caused to MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer. The story is so stupid, so cliche-riddled and generally implausible that it seems equally implausible that a huge star like Crawford would voluntarily agree to demean herself by appearing in such tripe. Stewart was still on his way up so I can understand he probably had little choice but to do what he was told, and co-star Lew Ayres was on the slide so he too had little choice in the matter. A job is a job and "we all like to work" as Timothy Dalton once snippily told me after I had the effrontery to asked him what had induced him to play the love interest to an 87 year-old Mae West in 'Sextette.'
The plot for ICE FOLLIES could have been constructed by a 10 year-old who'd overdosed on Norma Shearer movies. Stewart and Crawford are Larry and Mary, an ice-skating couple performing dance-routines on ice-rinks during intermissions in shows. What kind of shows is never indicated, but since an ice rink is not the kind of thing you can set up and tear down in 5 minutes, presumably these are ice skating shows, which begs the question why aren't Larry and Mary appearing in the main show especially since he is described at one point as 'Gable on ice' ?
Anyway business ain't so good and by a contrived set of circumstances and the most ridiculously unlikely audition ever Mary becomes a film star in the space of a month leaving Larry at home to fret and feel emasculated. Unable to cope with the notion of his wife as the breadwinner he vows not to see her again until he's made a success of himself which - surprise surprise - he succeeds in doing within the space of a couple of months with his own Ice Follies spectacular.
At this point the hackneyed plot grinds to a halt to allow director Reinhold Schunzel to present several lengthy ice-dancing routines shot in an impressively unimaginative style and completely devoid of audience reaction even though it's a live show. The absence of gasps of admiration or even a ripple of light applause makes more sense once you realise that the bulk of the audience have actually been very inexpertly painted onto the scenery in an effort to save money on live extras.
But all this is only the half of the awfulness.
The real kicker is that neither Stewart, Ayres nor Crawford actually skate at any point in the film.

This is a story about three professional ice-skaters - one of whom, don't forget, is acclaimed as 'Gable on ice' - yet none of them ever sets a skate on the ice! For all the talk about Stewart and Ayres' brilliance as a team (before Stewart was sidetracked by Crawford) they never once perform in the Follies, even though the show is founded on their reputation. Stewart spends all his time barking directions from the control box, while Ayres is perpetually in the process of getting into his costume without ever quite finishing getting dressed.
It's just rubbish.
The one small glimmer of light is the final 10 - 15 minutes of the film which is shot in sumptuous Technicolor and gave audiences the first chance to see Crawford in colour. However the novelty is not enough to sustain interest in the sequence which features yet more ice-skating routines, this time in a film directed by Larry and starring his wife.
MGM may have displayed stunningly poor judgment in greenlighting ICE FOLLIES OF 1939 but at they were consistent. They maintained the same high level of implausibility all the way through to the bitter, boring end.

SNAKES ON A PLANE: silly fun

Imagine “Anaconda” meets “Airport 75” with Samuel L. Jackson and “ER’s” Julianna Marguiles replacing the cast of old time movie stars and you’ll have a good idea what to expect from SNAKES ON A PLANE.

This is a product that does exactly what it says on the tin - “it is what it is” says director David Ellis on the DVD commentary track. The story opens in Hawaii with surfer dude Sean Jones, played by Nathan Phillips, witnessing the murder of an LA based prosecutor by notorious gang boss Eddie Kim. Jackson is Neville Flynn, the FBI agent tasked with getting Jones safely back to Los Angeles aboard South Pacific Airways flight 121 so he can testify against Kim. But Kim has an ingenious plan to prevent that happening. He fills the hold of the jumbo jet with boxes of poisonous snakes. The boxes will open at thirty five thousand feet, filling the plane with angry snakes that will kill everyone on board, leaving the plane to crash into the Pacific. The only thing Kim hasn’t factored into his plan is Agent Flynn.

Even if you didn’t catch this movie at the cinema (and many didn’t) the plot may well sound familiar, and that’s because SNAKES ON A PLANE became an internet phenomenon which generated an enormous amount of media hype months before it ever hit the big screen.

The silly but simple concept hit a nerve with movie geeks, and spawned a myriad of websites dedicated to production gossip, parodies, tributes, and even suggestions for scenes and dialogue that should be included in the script. Rather than sending in the lawyers to close down all the unauthorised activity, the film’s producers recognised the value of this free, fan generated publicity and encouraged it, even reshooting certain scenes to incorporate some of the fans’ ideas. All this was picked up by the mainstream media and reported on extensively, so by the time of the film’s release in the summer of 2006 expectations were so high that they really had nowhere to go but down, and that’s exactly where they went. The film did just average box office business, and now it resides in the memory as a passing fad if – indeed - it resides there at all.

It’s not difficult to work out why the film fell below expectations. It wants to be a combination of airborne terror, horror, thrills and campy comedy, but lacks the imagination to make the mix work. The writers and director have filled the plane with the sort of stock characters that aficionados of mid air disaster movies have come to expect (single mom with baby, honeymooning couple, unaccompanied minors, old woman, stewardess making her final flight etc), but forgotten to give them anything interesting to do. It’s a sad commentary on the quality of contemporary pop culture that the only two passengers with any kind of depth to their character are a Paris Hilton-like airhead blonde with a miniature dog, and an egotistical hip hop star who might possibly be modelled on P.Diddy.

Ranking the odds of survival for each of the passengers is one of the fun aspects of watching this

film. Even before they’ve fastened their seatbelt it’s not too difficult to identify those likely to make it to the end of the film, and those who are shortly going to become snake food, but what would have made it more entertaining is to have done something a little different with them. Why not confound our expectations and feed the cute kid to the snakes while making the obnoxious businessman the only passenger who can fly the plane? And it would have been great to have included a cameo appearance from one of the stars of previous midair disaster movies - maybe Peter Graves from “Airplane!” or George Kennedy, the only actor to appear in all 4 “Airport” movies.

If it wasn’t a lack of imagination then perhaps the reason why these options weren’t explored is that they would have detracted from Samuel L.Jackson. This is his film and he’s not going to compete for attention with anyone or anything else, even the snakes. Jackson makes his passion for the project very clear on the DVD commentary track, describing it as “entertainment and movie making at its best!”, but that enthusiasm doesn’t translate into a particularly impressive performance. His kick-ass FBI Agent Flynn comes across as a watered down cartoon retread of John Shaft.

There’s also another way to look at this film, and it’s summed up by director David Ellis. He says that SNAKES ON A PLANE “never pretended to be anything but a great fun summer movie” and he’s right, at least about the fun part. This is not highbrow art house cinema; it’s ninety-nine minutes of silly, gory, violent and sometimes smutty nonsense that will make you laugh and make you jump.

THE MAN WHO WATCHED TRAINS GO BY: a masterclass in a minor movie

This 1952 crime drama is worth reviewing for the title alone, but there's actually a lot more to it than just the quirky name. In particular there's the entrancing performance from Claude Rains, demonstrating once again his impressive range as an actor.
Assets though they undoubtedly were, his face and his voice could easily have typecast him as a

suave, sophisticated, slightly world weary middle-class man of reasonable means and, indeed, his enduring fame rests almost entirely on playing just such a character, Vichy Police Chief Captain Louis Renault in 'Casablanca', but he could also subvert those expectations on occasion, and one of them is THE MAN WHO WATCHED TRAINS GO BY.
He plays Kees Popinga, the meek and fastidious head clerk at a small manufacturing company in Holland whose entire identity is tied up in the meticulous books he's kept for the past 18 years. Kees is solid, dependable and dull; a man who's a spectator not a participant in his own life. But he harbors secret dreams of breaking free from the strictures of small town life and boarding one of the trans-European trains which hurtle through his town every day heading for exotic destinations like Paris.
Then one day his chance comes most unexpectedly when he discovers his boss has been looting the company, leaving it teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and wiping out Kees' life savings. During an angry confrontation Kees apparently kills his boss and makes off for Paris by train, clutching a suitcase stuffed with money.
Once in the French capital, Kees stands out like the proverbial sore thumb, with his small-town dress sense, wide-eyed wonder, and the tatty suitcase that he clutches to his chest, but he manages to track down his boss's mistress, Michele (a gorgeously sultry Marta Toren) with the ill-thought-out idea that he can use the money to persuade her to run away with him.
Despite that debonair voice and face, Rains is never less than convincing as the timid, mouse-like, imitation of a man behind whose bland exterior lurks an ill-formed calculating mind. Kees knows he's an innocent abroad, who must constantly be on his guard against those who will take advantage of

him, even as he's helplessly drawn to Michele and her ruthless accomplices who will stop at nothing to separate Kees from his money. Toren is equally impressive as the down-market femme fatale whose drop-dead gorgeous face and flawless skin conceal a corrupted and completely amoral soul.
The film's beautifully deep and lush colour only heightens Michele's beauty, contrasting her dark hair and eyes with her creamy skin and Kees grey, washed-out look.
The film itself is nothing special, despite a script by Paul Jarrico based on the original novel by the great French writer Georges Simenon. It's Rains, in a rare leading role, that makes THE MAN WHO WATCHED TRAINS GO BY well worth the investment of 80 minutes of your time.