SST: Death Flight (1977)

Waste of time

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

I am surprised that the score is so low. Okay, I admit the movie is technically bad but at least we got to see a lot of familiar faces here. You rarely see that in a TV movie. This is the only time I've seen Regis Philban in a movie of any kind. It was hard to recognize Billy Crystal. Probably the coolest part of this movie was when it showed that explosion. A pity it was just that one scene. I know that this movie is really clichéd. It probably helps that "Airplane!" is my favorite comedy too. They mocked stuff like this perfectly.The version I saw was 92 minutes (on "Mystery Science Theater 3000"). This says it's only 89 minutes. Wow, that is the first time I have ever heard of a movie having a longer version being shown like that. It was certainly an interesting episode as it was their longest ever. Yeah, it's not worth watching on its own, but I think there have been many worse disaster films. I guess it probably did go on too long and there's still nothing unique about it. **

This is one classic disaster movie from the late 1970's. Starring: Billy Crystal, Lorne Greene, Peter Graves and Misty Rowe. ''Death Flight'' begins with a scene of a silver, white, red and orange supersonic passenger jet which looks like a Concorde with four turbo-engines from a 747, two on each wing, flying through the sky. Next we see Capt. Jim Walsh played by Robert Reed making announcements to his cabin supervisors to not worry about going twice the speed of sound to his crew members.Next are the movies main titles at JFK airport in New York. The story of this movie revolves around 7 crew members, 250 contest winners turned passengers and a deadly flu virus. One hour after takeoff, the first flight of America's first S.S.T. is struck by, in this order: an on-board explosion due to faulty hydraulic lines, three crew members burning to death on-board, and last but not least, a virus being released. After many attempts to land at various worldwide airport's, the plane crashes and explodes in South Africa, leaving only most of the films main stars alive, and all of the extras dead naturally. One things for sure, if you can find this movie do not miss it. In total, so far, there are eight different versions of the movie on release, this includes foreign releases. For Irish TV, in the summers of 2004 and 2005, RTE ONE showed the ''Death Flight'' uncensored release at times between 12:15 a.m. and 12:30 a.m. Let's hope they show it again soon.

A truly awful movie of the week, with a model airplane as the backdrop...I could see the superglue on the nose of that airplane in the terminal... Thank God I was too young to watch this on TV when it came out... I owe Mystery Science Theatre a debt of gratitude for riffing this ham... The only thing missing from this one would be, oh say, Regis Philbin as a reporter (oh wait)...I really knew this movie was in trouble when Martin (Shecky) Milner was doing comic relief... Are we supposed to have watched that ending and said, "Yeah, it might have turned out that way"... May this movie self destruct in 5 seconds... 4... 3... 2... 1... Oh crap, it didn't work!!!

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.