Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18837 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-04-24
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Formats: Box set, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 4

Synopsis
Four features: 'Airport' based on a best seller by Arthur Hailey, tells of the manager of a glamorous international airport who must juggle personal crisis with professional responsibilities as he attempts to keep his blizzard torn facility open to rescue a bomb damaged jetliner. Also includes 'Airport 75', 'Airport 77' and 'The Concorde - Airport 79'.

Customer Reviews

The terminally boring pack?
Perhaps some childhood memories should remain undisturbed..
The Airport movies were classic disaster movies of their time, and seminal movie going moments in the seventies. Alas, on reviewing these as a collection it is clear time has done them no favours.
Ironically, it is the oldest movie that has dated the least. Airport, starring Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin, still holds the attention now. It was the least thrilling of the series, relying more on characters and melodrama for its entertainment, in keeping with its Arthur Hailey source novel. Here, while there is ultimately drama in the air when a bomber threatens to blow up Dean Martin's plane, most of the exposition takes place on the ground, and the drama is about the running of an airport rather than the planes. It is a slow build up, with a satisfying denouement. Burt Lancaster solidly holds things together, and while it is hard to imagine 10 Oscar nominations now, it is a solid piece of entertainment, 7/10.
Airport 75 switches the drama to the air - here, Charlton Heston's girlfriend, a plucky stewardess, ends up in charge of flying the plane when a mid air collision takes out the flight crew and leaves a gaping hole in the flight compartment. Sadly, most of the entertainment these days is in chortling at the bizarre 70's décor and fashion, as well as spotting the many moments that Airplane was able to parody. This IS the movie where a nun sings to the child who HAS to get to the airport in time to have her kidney replaced. It is laudable that they managed to insert so many real shots of the plane flying among the stunning Rocky Mountains, but it only serves to highlight how poor the back projection sequences are, for example the cockpit scenes. The cast is extraordinary - Erik Estrada! Gloria Swanson - bizarrely as herself - it was her first film in 22 year, and her last. Even the sick child is played by Linda Blair. However, apart from the set-piece transfer from helicopter to the 747, a stunt performed by the mighty Joe Canutt (of Ben-Hur stunt fame), the movie fails to ignite any real tension or character development. (4/10)
Airport 77 on the face of it seems the most outlandish, and yet in my opinion outperforms 75. In this one, a millionaire (James Stewart) owns a 747 which crashes in the sea as a result of a botched hijack. Jack Lemmon is the pilot this time, and Christopher Lee the character actor looking for a movie to break his stereotype. In fact, they both ham it up satisfyingly, for what requires a very large suspension of belief. On crashing on the sea, we are led to believe the plane sinks and then remains watertight (well, almost..). It's good fun, taken with a pinch of salt.(5/10)
Airport 79 `The Concorde' is undoubtedly the worst. It has the feel of a Euro-production, with poor special effects to match. The Concorde just cannot be shown realistically enough in any of the shots to allow us to withhold our suspension of belief. Again, the character actors are trotted out - Alain Delon, Robert Wagner, even Sylvia Kristel! And of course, the inevitable George Kennedy to provide a semblance of a link with previous movies. The plot is the most ridiculous, with multiple attempts to destroy the Concorde caused by one passenger having documents destined to bring down a company. Missiles, jet aircraft attacks, and the like follows..
In fact, while the previous movies attempted some sort of credibility, the aerobatics performed by a supersonic aircraft here are just too ludicrous, and it is easy to see why this was laughed off the screen on its first performances. (2/10)
An interesting footnote - the aircraft seen in the real flying scenes was subsequently sold to Air France, and is the same Concorde which crashed on take off in 2000, thereby ending the era of supersonic passenger travel.
The boxset comes with no other extras, although the transfer is crisp and clean and DTS is available on Airport. For a collection like this, it is surprising some sort of retrospective look at the 70's disaster ovie phenomenon was not included.
All in all, it has been fun to see these movies again - but only to be sharply reminded how bad they actually got. Don't be tempted by the package deal - just get `Airport' the original and best. `Airplane!' Can then supply all the entertainment value and more of the other three combined.

A Delightful Airport Collection
If you are an avid movie fan like me you have probably realised that the new 'craze' of movie shopping is the Box Set. Not two years ago I hated box sets because I loved to have all of my single DVDs in a nice neat order, but now even I have fallen for the charms of the box set. Thankfully studios and promoters have discovered that the box set needs to be elegant and attractive but also as compact as possible. What does this have to do with Airport? Well, this 4-Disc set is a lovely M-Lock style package that has its own sturdy, attractive slip-case. Each disc contains one of the Airport films of the 70s and the four in order are Airport (1970), Airport 1975, Airport '77 and Airport '79: The Concorde. It is VERY important to realise that this set inlcudes the ONLY AVAILABLE DVD releases of the latter 3 films, and you should buy it because the individual releases of these are very unlikely to happen (especially in the case of The Concorde). The discs themselves are nicely decorated with the turbofan of a Jet engine and when opened up this package really is a first-class purchase. So can it really get any better than everything I have just said? Yes it can, because while these films are all very old and three of them have never been released on DVD the digital transfer is fantastic; all 4 films are of exceptional video and audio quality and combine to form what is arguably the least advertised (I found it by accident), most collectable DVD box set released in a long time. Buy it before it goes...

Please Fasten Your Seatbelt and Kiss Your Bum Goodbye
This is a great little boxset which contains all 4 of the Airport Disaster movies,

"Airport"
"Airport 75"
"Airport 77"
"Airport 79 The Concorde"

The one actor appearing in all four films is George Kennedy in role of Joe Patroni. Patroni's character evolves over the series and he goes from a chief mechanic in Airport, a Vice President of Operations in Airport 1975, a consultant in Airport '77, and an experienced pilot in The Concorde...Airport '79.

Individually these films are ok but well worth buying as a boxset