Airport '77

The Last Flight of the Disaster Movie

I remember the first time I saw a 1970s disaster film. It was The Poseidon Adventure on a grainy VHS tape, the kind that unspooled if you hit rewind too hard. The adults in the room groaned at the cheesy effects, but I was transfixed—not by the spectacle, but by the way the camera lingered on the faces of the doomed.

There was something almost religious about it: the way Shelley Winters clutched her purse like a life preserver, the way Gene Hackman’s voice cracked when he told them to follow him. These weren’t just characters; they were people you’d seen in the grocery store, suddenly forced to confront the fact that the world could end in the time it takes to finish a cup of coffee.

Airport '77 doesn’t have the same mythic weight as Poseidon or The Towering Inferno, but it’s got something else: the quiet exhaustion of a genre running on fumes. By 1977, the disaster movie had become a well-oiled machine, churning out sequels like a factory assembly line. Airport (1970) had been a surprise hit, Airport 1975 had upped the stakes with a mid-air collision, and now here was Airport '77, sending a luxury 747 crashing into the Bermuda Triangle. The premise alone feels like a dare: How much further can we push this? The answer, it turns out, is underwater.

The film opens with all the subtlety of a fire alarm. A hijacking goes wrong (because of course it does), and the plane plunges into the ocean, settling on the seabed like a beached whale. The survivors—played by a roster of actors who could’ve headlined their own films—are left to contend with flooding, dwindling oxygen, and the creeping realization that no one knows they’re down there.

It’s a setup that should feel ridiculous, but there’s a strange sincerity to the way director Jerry Jameson lingers on the mechanics of survival. The camera doesn’t flinch from the slow creep of water up the aisles, the way the passengers’ breath fogs the windows, the way their voices grow thinner as the oxygen runs out. For a film that’s essentially a high-concept B-movie, Airport '77 has an oddly tactile quality.

You can almost feel the damp seeping into your own clothes.

The cast is a who’s who of Hollywood’s golden age, and they’re all working overtime to sell the material. James Stewart, in one of his final film roles, plays Philip Stevens, the wealthy art collector whose private jet this is. Stewart had spent decades playing men of quiet authority—*Mr.

Smith Goes to Washington, Vertigo, It’s a Wonderful Life*—and here, he’s asked to do little more than look concerned while clutching a priceless painting. It’s a thankless role, but Stewart brings a gravitas to it, as if he’s aware that this is less a character than a placeholder. Jack Lemmon, on the other hand, gets the juiciest part: Captain Don Gallagher, the pilot trying to keep everyone alive.