Cinemasochism: AXE GIANT: THE WRATH OF PAUL BUNYAN (2013)

We’re a pretty loyal bunch here at Video Junkie. If you made a movie we liked, chances are we’re going to be checking out your other stuff. Hell, if you made a movie that we didn’t like but still had one cool scene in it, we’re probably still checking out you next flick.  Yes, we’re loyalists (or fanboys, if you want to be cruel) and that usually means we end up on the wrong end of an abusive cinematic relationship.  A filmmaker letting you down comes with the territory, but it really hurts the most when the filmmaker is one who should know better.  Ladies and gentlemen, may I now add director Gary Jones to the list of directors now suffering from Argentoitis (aka John Carpenter Syndrome).  

A native of Michigan, Gary Jones got started in filmmaking on the FX end by providing stuff for the Sam Raimi crew on THOU SHALT NOT KILL…EXCEPT (1985) and EVIL DEAD II (1987).  He was also the FX supervisor on MOONTRAP (1989), a little sci-fi flick that we dig the hell out of.  Jones really came into his own though when he made his directorial debut with MOSQUITO (1995).  Five years later he delivered the equally entertaining SPIDERS (2000).  With both films, we felt he showed a considerable knack for getting the most out of the B-movie scenarios.  In addition, Jones showed he knew how to sling the blood-n-latex with the best of them.  A little enthusiasm in your filmmaking will get you a long way in these parts.  Well, all that came crashing down like the Goliath when toppled by David with the release of AXE GIANT: THE WRATH OF PAUL BUNYAN.

I only became aware of AXE GIANT just last month when I saw that it was scheduled to be released in select theaters.  I’m sure those first-rate theaters were pissed as it did an abysmal $775 over its first three days at two locations. With an average ticket price of just under $8 in the US, that means almost 100 people went to see this film in the theater.  If you are out there, I want to hear from you.  If you aren’t locked up in an insane asylum, that is. Anyway, after watching the trailer, I joked about how I was shocked that such a terrible looking production wasn’t airing on the SyFy Channel.  It was then that my friend Bill pointed out that it was debuting June 13, five days before its DVD release.  You can’t make that stuff up.  Surprisingly, the cinemasochist in me would let this pass me by.  But what is that?  On the official poster I see something…a small credit…directed by…Gary Jones!?!  Oh man, maybe there is hope for this one yet.  Yes, I willingly held out hope even though the only notable cast members were Dan Haggerty and Joe Estevez.  I’m as naïve as the guy who thinks his boss at WalMart was listening when he laid out his concerns about employee pay.

AXE GIANT kicks things into high gear with a prologue set in snow covered Minnesota in 1894 (check out the guy sporting glasses with nose pads on them; totally authentic to the period!). The workers at a logging camp supervised by Foreman Bill (Haggerty) are getting ready to chow down on a rather hefty looking carcass roasting on the spit.  When Bill returns from going to the bathroom (“You got another log jam to take care of boss?”), he finds the entire camp slain in bloody pieces.  The culprit was local slow kid Gunnar Wolfgang Bunyan (Chris Hahn), who soon slices Bill in half on a huge saw.  Before you get too excited, this is all done with some terrible looking CGI.  Flash forward to the present day as Sgt. Hoke (Thomas Downey) and psychologist Samantha Kawalzinkowski (Kristina Kopf; Gee Whiz trivia: Kopf means “head” in German) are taking a group of five first time law breakers into the woods for a weekend of survival and psychology.  If these minor criminals pass, the State will kindly take their offenses off their records.  And what a motley crew we have here: Jesse (Jesse Kove), drug dealer; Trish (Jill Evyn), assaulting a police officer; Marty (Cliff Williams), stealing $12 million online; Rosa (Victoria Ramos), refusing to testify; and CB (Amber Connor), the innocent Sheriff’s daughter who got a drunk driving charge. Oh jeez, this is gonna be rough.

The Sergeant and his S.T.u.M.P.s (Stupid Teenagers under My Protection) soon head to the mountains for a long weekend of roughing it. Around the campfire that evening, the group bemoans their current conditions and it seems everyone is a good kid at heart.  For example, sure CB had a little bit to drink, but the person who caused her accident was totally drunk and had previous DUIs.  “It’s the system that’s messed up” they whine.  It’s then that the kids meet Meeks (Joe Estevez), the local crazy.  He rambles something about “we all got things we want to hide” before splitting.  You sure he wasn’t talking about Charlie Sheen?  Anyway, the next day the kids are out for their first hike. Jesse and Marty discover this big ox skull and Jesse decides to keep one of the horns as a souvenir. Bad move as this enrages the 20-foot, axe-toting giant roaming the woods.  Trish is the first to go as she is split in half vertically by the beast.  Sgt. Hoke fares no better as he is split in half horizontally.  Again, don’t get too excited.

The survivors make it to the cabin to hold up for safety. An attempt to hotwire their van goes nowhere as the giant drags the vehicle off. That night they get a visit from Meeks, who goes into the mother of all expositions.  He tells them that when they took the horn, they disturbed the final resting place of Babe the Blue Ox.  What?  Like from the folklore story?  Yep, it appears they are suffering the wrath of Paul Bunyan.  In a flashback, Meeks reveals that the loggers back in the late 1890s had killed Babe for food and that is why the camp was slain. Bunyan was rounded up by the locals and sealed in a cave, but he escaped after he started to grow and grow and grow.  Seems he was some kind of mutant, growing to two times the size of a normal man and living three times as long. Ah, I knew those Germans who immigrated to Minnesota were a special type.  And that is how the legend of Paul Bunyan was born (I guess the folklore storytellers thought Gunnar Bunyan didn’t have that ring to it).  Jesse figures he can end all this by giving Bunyan his horn back and throws it into the woods.  Bad move again as Bunyan sends it sailing back and it bursts through Jesse’s chest.  Somehow this doesn’t kill him instantly and he is dragged back to Bunyan’s cave screaming and fighting.  Meanwhile, CB’s dad Sheriff Tanner (Tim Lovelace) is driving up to the cabin to check on his daughter.  Gee, I wonder who will save the day.

So this all sounds like pretty good material for a B-movie right?  Well, it isn’t.  As Tom so accurately said to me in an email, “It's like TICKS, except without the fun, the latex and the fun.”  Yup, whatever fun this scenario might have provided (and the potential for entertainment is definitely there) is pretty much squashed due to a combination of bad acting and terrible scripting.  First off, the acting is awful on nearly all fronts.  As much as I hate to single out a specific person, take a look at the Sgt. Hoke character.  This is a role ripe for comedy, the perfect vessel for someone to do a wicked R. Lee Ermey/FULL METAL JACKET (1987) impersonation.  Instead, we get a flat variation that never comes off as the hard ass he is written to be.  Even if he had gone all out, the screenplay by Jones, Jeffrey Miller and Jason Ancona never gives anyone a real chance to develop real characters.  As slight scenario like this can still work (as with the aforementioned example of TICKS), but the filmmakers don’t seem particularly invested in anything they wrote.  A perfect example is when Meeks mentions to CB that she is the spitting image of his great Aunt, who Bunyan had a crush on. You’d think this would work into a great KING KONG-esque ending, but doesn’t (unless you count Bunyan stopping to moan her name after he is gunned down and falls off a bridge).

The real kick to the gut though are the film’s horrible special effects.  A terrible movie can at least redeem itself with some well done special effects.  Sadly, Jones opts to fill his film with some of the worst computer special effects I’ve seen in a long, long time.  This is doubly painful as FX are supposed to be his specialty.  Check out the scene where Rosa’s body is flung into a tree.  It is so ill conceived and executed that I thought I was watching something from a high school AV class.  Yes, it is that bad.

Girl falling or attacking ghost?

(note his eyes not even on her)

I’ll give the team credit for the miniature cabin they built.  And I’ll also give Robert Kurtzman and his FX team recognition for the design of Bunyan himself as the giant monster is pretty cool looking at times (I’m still wondering why he was modest enough to stitch himself a pair of pants though), but when composited in with the other stuff it mostly looks terrible.  Likewise for the green screen stuff done on shots as ordinary as a guy ringing a triangle to signal for dinner.  You couldn’t capture that stuff when you did your location shooting?  The worst, however, is using CGI for 90% of the gore.  Just look at these offending shots.

That is the cardinal sin when it comes to gore.  It may play well for the SyFy “haha, this sucks” crowd, but I take my giant-monster-with-axe movies seriously.  The end credits promise (threaten?) that “Bunyan will return” in the future. If he does, I won’t be there as I’ll be too busy mourning as I add Gary Jones to the long list of “coulda been a contender” casualties.

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The "Never Got Made" Files #100: PHANTOM OF THE MALL (1980s)

It is hard to believe that we’re hitting the 100th entry in our “never got made” film series.  With such a historic milestone, it seems only fitting that I deliver something unique from the world of unmade films, so how about an examination of a movie that never got made but did get made.  I blew your mind, didn’t I?

A few months ago, we took a look at the late ‘80s cult film PHANTOM OF THE MALL: ERIC’S REVENGE (1989).  My two-plus-decades removed revisit found it still to be an enjoyable B-movie that benefits from a fun premise, a fantastic location and good performances (including an early turn by Pauly Shore that garnered him his first of many Oscar nominations).  In my examination, I laid the success of the screenplay at the feet of Robert King, thanks mostly to my familiarity with his exploitation work for Roger Corman.

Much to my surprise, a comment was left on the review by Scott Schneid, one of the film’s writers, which offered quite a different opinion.  He asserted that the original script, co-written with his former writing partner Tony Michelman, was a completely different and superior beast that suffered through Hollywood’s age old developmental process.  Even better, Schneid offered me a look at their original screenplay to judge with my own eyes.  With filmmakers constantly ignoring requests for interviews, it was energizing to have a story fall into my lap, so the challenge was accepted.  Soon I had the PDF of the original script of PHANTOM OF THE MALL in my hands and, I’ll be damned, he was right.

The film that kicked Schneid's
creative juices into high gear

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Scott Schneid grew up never expecting to go into show business, despite having an aunt – Tiny Sinclair – who was a popular stage performer that worked with the likes of Bela Lugosi (she passed away in 1954, two years before Schneid was born).  After high school, Schneid headed to Harvard University on a scholarship and, when not nursing injuries, played linebacker for the football team.  Following his graduation with a degree in American History, Schneid co-produced a series of jazz concerts. This endeavor got him interested in the business end of the entertainment industry and he soon found himself on the West Coast and part of the William Morris Agency trainee program.

While at the agency, Schneid was contact point for Harvard students curious about the film industry.  He was contacted by student Paul Caimi, who had written a rough screenplay called HE SEES YOU WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING. Schneid immediately sensed the potential in a Christmas-themed horror script and optioned the work.  This idea was nurtured by Schneid and his co-executive producer Dennis Whitehead into what eventually became the controversial SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984).  The success of that film got Schneid’s creative juices flowing and he began thinking of other ideas to subvert time-honored happy images (and hopefully not piss off Mickey Rooney again in the process).  What kind of horror film could possibly appeal to the teens of the day, he wondered. And it suddenly came to him – a film set in a shopping mall.  “It seemed like a perfect setting for that demographic at the time,” Schneid explains of the idea’s origins.  “PHANTOM OF THE MALL – it just kind of came into my head and was the perfect environment.  Again, like SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT, taking something and turning it upside down.  Taking that mall environment – something which is bright and cheery – and somehow figuring a way to make it dark, sinister and evil.”

1980s mall in all its colorful glory 

(look closely to spot Tom in there):

Another one of my false assumptions (of many, apparently) in my PHANTOM write up was that the film was made to cash in on the PHANTOM OF THE OPERA craze on Broadway.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.  Schneid originally began work on his idea in early 1984 – two years before Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical hit London’s West End and four years before Broadway – with a different writing partner, Fred Ulrich.  Together they wrote a treatment called THE MALL.  When their partnership dissolved, Schneid brought over the 30-page treatment to his new writing venture with Tony Michelman, who he met at William Morris.  “We took the treatment that Fred and I wrote, with Fred’s permission, and we wrote a spec screenplay called PHANTOM OF THE MALL,” Schneid explains.  “That’s why Fred Ulrich and I have a shared story credit, but Fred doesn’t have a screenplay credit.”

Charles Fries

The Schneid/Michelman duo – which spent over a decade together writing seven screenplays and nine teleplays – soon had their inaugural screenplay done and the magic of Hollywood took over.   In the spring of 1985, Schneid turned the script over to his friend and fellow screenwriter Tony Kayden.  Kayden had just scripted the Anthony Michael Hall action vehicle OUT OF BOUNDS (1986), which was produced by Charles Fries (pronounced “freeze”) and sold to Columbia for theatrical distribution. “You know, I love this,” Kayden told Schneid.  “I think Fries Entertainment would really like this as a low budget feature to develop and I’d like to direct it.”

The low budget film industry was booming during this period and any producer dealing with horror/exploitation material could find himself awash with fast cash in order to supply product for video store shelves.  Fries, known primarily as a prolific television producer, felt dabbling into medium budget theatrical features was worth it and the company soon began prepping PHANTOM OF THE MALL on a $4 million dollar budget.  “We were hired by Fries to do a rewrite with Kayden overseeing it,” Schneid explains of the project’s early growth.

The preproduction process saw the filmmakers really investing in the special effects heavy screenplay.  “We had really big special effects,” Schneid says.  “Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr., who went on to do the ALIEN movies, wanted to do the effects for PHANTOM OF THE MALL.  They did drawings [which are showcased throughout this article – WW]. Then there was a company called Introvision.  This was before CGI in the mid-80s, an innovative in-camera [effect] with [special effects] plates.  They gave this big presentation to Chuck Fries and said, ‘We’ll make this four million dollar movie look like a ten million dollar movie’ and Chuck Fries says, ‘Ten million dollars?  What does it have to look like ten million dollars for?’  That was the mentality we were dealing with.”

An aerial establishing shot of the mall to feature miniatures 

and live action; nothing like this was in the final film:

Indeed, it appears the executives heard “special effects heavy” and only saw dollars flying away. An executive named Maurice Singer, who previously worked for HBO, came onto the project and decided the first order of business was to slash the budget by a significant amount. “They wanted to make it for two million.  They bounced Tony Kayden off the movie and never gave us a chance to do the next draft to try and figure a way to make it cheaper.  Singer just decided to get rid of all of us and bring in Robert King [to do the rewrite].”

Fries article promising state-of-the-art special effects in films, 

after cutting them all from PHANTOM OF THE MALL:

Evocative storyboards for ambitious nightmare sequence:

To say the Schneid/Michelman and the Robert King draft are different is an understatement.  They are as opposite as – please excuse the far reaching reference – the normal and burnt side of the Phantom’s face.  The Schneid/Michelman draft from 1986 is the version that Schneid supplied me and it is the same movie only in the most general of terms – a greedy corporation kills a young boy in an effort to gain the land to build their mall and, a year later, he haunts the place while yearning for his love.  That and they both have a beginning, middle and end.  The DNA of the film is definitely there in the Schneid/Michelman draft.  However, the elements built upon its skeletal structure are almost 100% different.

One need only read the first three pages to immediately notice the difference.  The original script opens with a moody scene of empty houses being bulldozed and the mall being built in a montage.  The introduction of the female lead Amy Christopher (later switched to Melody Austin in the King draft) a year later working at the mall has a surreal dream sequence where she sees her friend Susie (saved the wrath of a name change in the final script) literally burst into flames and melt into their Snacks Unlimited workplace.  Amy awakens to find herself a scarred person, both literally and figuratively, thanks to her ordeal involving the fire that killed her boyfriend Carl Grant (later changed to Erik Matthews).  Throughout the script she is haunted by nightmares.  Below is an example of one of them.

Schneid/Michelman scripted nightmare

(click to enlarge)

Special FX drawing for charred transformation:

The Schneid/Michelman script had
thankfully no Pauly Shore buttcrack

Undeniably, almost all of the characters are changed and in some cases completely removed.  The Amy character loses a caring mother and younger brother (in fact, any sympathetic adult is removed); the mall is proliferated with young punks: the drug dealing Ajax & Harley, the stereo stealing parking attendant Devon, and the street smart King mallrat Buzz (“Buzz wasn’t working in a fucking yogurt shop,” Schneid says); the two mall security guards include crazed Vietnam vet Mike Acardi (only that last name survives to the character essayed by Ken Foree) and sleazy cholo Mando Lopez (the arsonist doesn’t work at the mall); and Amy and Susie are part of a large knit group of friends that includes Carl’s best friend and potential love interest, Peter Lincoln, who works in the mall pet store.  The major conspiracy that forms the main plot is also bigger as it involves Wilton Company VP Harvey Posner, Police Chief Daryl North, Midland Mayor Bob Conner and Karen Wilton (the last two are morphed into the character played by Morgan Fairchild).

Expansive is the first word that comes to mind when reading the earlier draft.  The script is filled with many more well drawn characters and some incredible set pieces.  For example, there is a great dream sequence where Amy remembers the fatal blaze and Carl rips off his grandmother's head and fire spews out of her eyes.

There is also a great scene where the Phantom attacks a chauffer in a parking garage and scrawls “close mall or die” on the limo’s hood as a warning.

The Schneid/Michelman screenplay also better utilizes one of the feature’s best characters, the mall itself.  The writers spent a significant amount of time doing research by visiting actual malls and getting access to the dark recesses generally closed off to the public.  While some of their ideas remain (the trash compactor room, for example), several effective scenes (like one where dogs in a pet store sense the Phantom in the air ducts) are completely omitted.  Schneid actually drew inspiration from a rather unusual source – Ridley Scott’s ALIEN (1979).  “The Phantom uses the shafts to get around the mall,” he explains.  “The mall is akin to the Nostromo [spaceship] in ALIEN. I saw the mall – the giant edifice of the mall – as almost like a giant spaceship.  If you look at a lot of the malls built in the 80s and 90s, they almost look like big giant spaceships.”

About all the romance you
get in the produced version

Unfortunately, Schneid felt that the revised script hurt the film where it mattered most, namely, the romantic plot. “The thing about PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is it’s a love story,” he explains of their screenplay’s antecedent.  “The heart of PHANTOM OF THE MALL was a love story.”  Indeed, the produced version of PHANTOM OF THE MALL treats the love story as almost an afterthought, with Amy/Melody displaying no real love for Carl/Erik.  Instead of having the heroine redeem her love, she is reduced to a supporting role as Peter, a news photographer in the King version, uncovers most of the mystery.  Even worse, she is ultimately repulsed by the Phantom and his aggressive behavior in his underground lair during the film’s final act.  Little effort is established to connect the lovers’ profound sense of loss.

“That’s THE movie,” Schneid emphasizes passionately. “That’s what the movie is all about – Amy still loves Carl to the end, but Carl realizes he can’t be with her anymore. Peter respects her emotions for Carl.  It’s not like he is some really aggressive kid who thinks, ‘Now that my best friend is dead I’m going to move in on this woman.’  At the end the Phantom realizes that he’s got to let Amy go.  And if he’s going to let her go, who is he going to let her go to?  His best friend.”

Indeed, the script’s finale not only features a better emotional payoff of the Phantom saving Amy and his best friend, it also features a more visceral one with Amy ultimately confronting the purveyor of her misery.  “You’ve got Wilton versus Amy in the mall atrium,” Schneid recalls.  “The evil woman that killed the love of her life and caused Amy all of this physical and emotional suffering.  She goes one-on-one with her at the end while the mall is burning around them.”

The Phantom puts an end to the Amy vs. Wilton showdown:

A TOWERING INFERNO-esque
stunt from the original draft

While Schneid/Michelman still retain co-writing credit (the entire scenario is definitely theirs), not a single word of their dialogue was used in the final film.  “I did get a copy of the [revised] script prior to the shooting of the film,” Schneid reveals, “and my heart sank.  I was so bummed out by it.  I said, ‘This is awful.’  Of course I’m prejudiced as PHANTOM OF THE MALL was our baby.  They ripped our baby away and gave it plastic surgery before it ever had a chance to see the light of day.”

Schneid, however, holds no ill will toward King as he figures he was just doing his job. He even liked a thing or too that King added to their scenario. “You know what scene I liked,” he states.  “I kind of liked that he had the video monitors set up, listening to that cool song and watching Amy.  I thought at the time that was a cool thing.  VCRs were happening and security people had video monitors around the mall and stuff.  So he stole some VCRs and somehow tied in electrically to the video monitoring system of the mall in his little lair.”

Fries offers PHANTOM at the American Film Market

(note Eric Matthews, the Phantom character, mistakenly listed as an actor):

Flyer with an alternate title,
which Schneid found ridiculous

Schneid did go see the film theatrically when it premiered in California – “Hardly anybody was there,” he notes, adding that Fries had “very little money to market the film” – and obviously maintains a passion for the project.  However, when asked if he felt a remake could better convey his script, his answer is surprising.  Schneid feels PHANTOM OF THE MALL was really a product of its time period and would need major updating for the teen audiences of today.  Despite the experience, he has maintained an enthusiasm for screenwriting and is currently developing several projects, including the horror-thriller THE WALLS to serve as the directorial debut for SAW villain Tobin Bell.

Ultimately, the work on PHANTOM OF THE MALL turned out to be a baffling and painful experience for Schneid.  Looking back, he is realistic about the film though.  “I’m not saying it was genius,” he shares, “but I think it was a better screenplay and potentially a much better and slightly more sophisticated movie.”  Having read the original screenplay, I can say that I wholeheartedly agree.  PHANTOM OF THE MALL in its original screenplay form was definitely epic in scope and would have provided enough thrills for audiences to support the planned sequels that Fries signed lead Derek Rydall to.  And while I still have love for the finished product, there is no doubt that this PHANTOM is the better beast.

Alternate poster with Schneid's preferred tagline:

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Sci-Fried Theater: THE SPIRITS OF JUPITER (1983)

I think I can speak for Will when I say that we here at VJ have a soft spot for the "Crazy Townie" sub-genre. It's sort of a post-apocalyptic scenario, but it's more localized. The-world's-gone-mad shrunk down to a single town, usually a "sleepy, little town" with erm, "simple" folk. This archetype can be found in films like John "Bud" Cardos' MUTANT (aka NIGHT SHADOWS, 1985), Nico Mastorakis' NIGHTMARE AT NOON (1988) and of course George Romero's THE CRAZIES (1973).

Sure, you can have films with towns full of zombies, psychos or marsupial werewolves, but it's not quite the same. There's something about docile, simple folk, the common clay of the new west, suddenly snapping and turning homicidal that is scarier than a zombie, which at first glance you know is bad news. Plus, unless you are watching a Claudio Fragasso flick, zombies don't pack heat.

The film begins with an utterly bewildering monologue about Jupiter being in the house of Aries and how "the great one hidden, long in shadows, will cool his sword in bloooooood!" Oh good, I was wondering what the hell this movie was all about. Thanks for clearing that up. Wait, what?! No time to ponder the deep insignificance of that speech that sounds like it should be prefacing an epic cut from an '80s German metal band, we have comic hijinx to attend to! And muddled political statements! And prophecies, and, uhhh... other stuff!

Big Jim Drill (executive producer Rex Cutter), the owner of a local mine located near the mile high Cañon City, Colorado and a name most likely to be associated with a failed career in porn, seems to have an ongoing issue with the local police chief, Julius Switcher (James Aerni) who wants to shut down his mine due to the unproven fact that Jim has been using illegal aliens for labor. Jim feels like he's being unjustly persecuted, and he may have a point since his entire camp is made up of crackers so white that they would scare the shit out of the Holy Ghost. One can't help but wonder which border they are alleged to have sneaked over. The Swedish one?

Not helping things in the least, back in town, two of Big Jim's miners have gone half a bubble off plumb at Janey's Chile Wagon Restaurant, killing a diner and taking the waitress (Big Jim's sweetheart) hostage. While the police chief forms an elaborate plan of intricate tactics which basically involve running straight in and shooting anything that moves, Big Jim feels that he should go in and "talk" to them, avoiding any further loss of life. Clearly Big Jim is simply a sniveling, namby-pamby liberal under that sun-baked, red-neck exterior. The miners seem to feel that they are acting a bit crazy and that's good enough for Chief Switcher, who with the help of the entire police force, blow both of the miners full of bloody holes. One, unarmed and begging for mercy is shot repeatedly and finished off with a shotgun blast. When the local reporter accuses the Chief of murder, he casually brushes it off saying "eh, he was crazy." Oh, how I miss uncomplicated Colorado reasoning. Well, I guess we've established who the villain is.

This is, of course, the tip of the unbalanced iceberg. Jim quickly finds out that every man jack of his subterranean subordinates have come up a nugget short of a full load. How do we know they are crazy? They all walked off the job and packed into the bar and are whooping it up like a Friday night... and it's only Tuesday! It doesn't take long for the miners to come to the conclusion that Jim is just a major buzzkill and take after him with shovels. Well, Big Jim commenced to fighting, I wouldn't tell ya no lie. Not only does Big Jim pull his pistol, but he impales one with a fork-lift and splatters another with his airplane's propeller, prompting his manager to shout "you'll have to replace that man, Mr. Drill!" See? I told you there was comedy.

As it turns out this has become sort of a world-wide phenomena. According to radio reports the planets are shifting alignment causing an increase in gravity in much the same way that a full moon affects the tides and increases the paperwork of the local constabulary. Scientists say that those at high-altitude and animals will be affected the most. This is all confirmed by the local hobo Nestor, an effeminate little person in a top hat who is obsessed with coffee and insists on being called Nostradamus. Uhhhh... right. I don't think it's just the townies who've gone off their meds. Nest - sorry, Nostradamus is Jim's son's best friend and presumably because of this, he gives Jim a gold plate to keep under his hat. Things will become clearer... oh wait, that's a total lie. They won't.

Meanwhile the town has gone completely off the rails causing grown men to argue with trees, a boy to ride his bicycle upside down and Chief Swinger to occupy his time by taking off one of his boots and playing Russian roulette with his little piggies! The police force has started rounding up people crazy or not and marching them into the desert for execution, and manage to grab Big Jim's son and daughter. Big mistake. Jim then is attacked by his dog, fends off motorcycle raiders, escapes homicidal police and finds an underground bunker in which people are de-nutsified, all in the attempt to get his family back. Of course there is a positive message here. As the bow-tied, bunker-entrenched scientists explain, all war has stopped because "people are too crazy!"

Directed by Russell Kern (not to be confused with Richard Kern), who I have been unable to dig up any info on, except for an IMDb listing indicating that he made two other films, SPITTIN' IMAGE (1982) and POOLS OF ANGER (1992), this movie is all over the map. There are points in the film where it feels like a '70s family adventure film, at other points it's a comedy, then it's a bloody action movie, plus it's a science fiction film, there's some horror thrown in the mix and plenty of really awkward scenes involving an alleged brother and sister. All of this is set to the most awful pastiche of stock music this side of a Doris Wishman flick.

Sappy strings and comic noodling blare over the most inappropriate scenes possible. While it is somewhat amusing, it is unquestionably the biggest downside to the movie. Sure the movie is completely ludicrous and can't even follow it's own trail of logic crumbs, but it is a lot of fun and would be even more so with a cheap score from say Richard Band or even Chuck Cirino. It seems crazy for such an ambitious low-budget film to sport a helicopter vs. crop-duster chase scene, miss such an important element as music. To be fair Kern's ambition has its corners cut in predictable ways. For instance it is painfully apparent, even to a child from Detroit, that there is no motorcycle or policeman in the frame before, during or after an explosion that was supposed to have been a the result of an attack on a motorcycle cop. They also pull the time-honored flying-the-plane-behind-the-mountain-before-it-explodes trick. Sins that are easily forgiven, I say.

The frequently obscene overacting may be a bit hard to take at times, but all in all this movie packs in so much bull-in-a-china-shop insanity that it's hard not to like.

Our very own internet bounty hunter, Will Wilson, managed to track down co-producer Steve Flanigan who was gracious enough to chat with us about the film's distribution issues.

Flanigan and Kern made a hugely ambitious sci-fi/action/horror epic, shot on Super 16mm and blown up to 35mm, for "less than the cost of a national commercial, at the time." Remember this movie has a helicopter, an airplane, several motorcycles, explosions, make up effects, choreographed fights and many shoot-outs. At this point the film was completely edited and finished with the exception of the audio tracks which needed some AR work and most importantly a musical score instead of the temp tracks.

The film was given three screenings in Hollywood to attract US distributors, with the intent "to trim the film and sweeten SFX, music and dialogue... with the cash from the initial overseas small market release." This is where things get interesting. The overseas distributor paid the producer's lawyer, who also held the 35mm negative, the $200,000 fee (which he claims was in fact $300k) and took a 1" master to New York where he proceeded to illegally screen it, forcing Flanigan to fly out to NYC and physically retrieve it. As if that wasn't bad enough, their lawyer suddenly dies and takes the money with him!

Following that, the pair had a successful screening at a Denver Sci-Fi convention and was picked up by Reel Movies for distribution here in the US, re-titling the film PLANET GONE MAD. It's amazing that in a time as recent as the late '80s, vendors would be skittish about certain types of genre films, but according to Flanigan "our lawyer told us it was banned in two territories, [as distributors were] afraid it would initiate riots."

Flanigan also mentioned that there is another version of the film that is not in distribution. "We recut the movie to really spoof the sci-fi genre... tighter better popcorn entertainment".

In my opinion, spoofing isn't necessary, this movie is a lot of fun on its own terms and works on the same level as films such as Steve Barkett's THE AFTERMATH (1982). If you are a fan of the genre, you should hunt down a copy for some great old-school late-night movie fun.

[07/26/23 Update] THE SPIRITS OF JUPITER has now been remastered and released digitally in its 80 minute version on Amazon. Unfortunately it is a butchered, horribly adulterated version with horrible editing, music and new digital effects that look like they were created in MS Paint. I hate to recommend gray market releases over a presumably legit one, but this should be avoided at all costs. 

Thanks to R.D. Francis for the heads up and you can read a great little interview with director Robert Kern on the B&S About Movies website. 

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On the Celluloid Chopping Block: THE CONCORDE...AIRPORT '79 (1979)

Enough time has passed and the intense rehab on my frame-grabbing arm went well enough that it is time to tackle another case of extended TV versions.  As they did with EARTHQUAKE (1974) and TWO-MINUTE WARNING (1976), Universal opted to shoot new footage for the final entry in the popular AIRPORT series for its debut on network television in May of 1982.  Chris Poggiali from Temple of Schlock was kind enough to hook me up with the longer version of THE CONCORDE…AIRPORT ‘79.  In retrospect, I suspect his main goal was to kill me as this is easily one of the most complex cases of extended footage I’ve seen.  The film cuts scenes, rearranges scenes, reinserts deleted footage from the original shoot, and adds newly shot footage for the TV premiere.  Keeping track of all that is enough to make you feel like Michael Ironside is scanning your brain.

It seems only fitting that the popular disaster film genre of the 1970s would see its collapse with an AIRPORT entry.  After all, the original AIRPORT (1970) is the one that kicked the subgenre off.  Audiences in America flew into theaters to witness edge of their seat thrills to the tune of $100,489,151 in box office dollars (adjusted for inflation that would be $524,963,200 in 2013), making it the second most popular film that year behind LOVE STORY.  Two subsequent sequels, AIRPORT 1975 and AIRPORT 1977, proved to be less successful, but still ranked in the top 20 gross lists of their respective release years.  By the last couple of years of the decade, however, audience interest in star-studded disaster epics was deteriorating thanks to fantasy films like STAR WARS (1977), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) and SUPERMAN (1978).  Universal had even eclipsed their own action film benchmark with the popular SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT (1977).  But keeping studio execs away from a proven money making formula is like stopping Tom from watching Aussie movies.  It ain’t gonna happen.

With the cutting edge Concorde being made available for commercial flights beginning in 1976 after a decade of testing, you knew it was only a matter of time before someone cashed in cinematically on this one of a kind, supersonic airplane that caught the public’s attention.  My own personal fantasy is a bleary-eyed Universal exec returning home from a tough day of watching dailies for THE WIZ (1978) and seeing a television news report on the Concorde. “We’ve got an airplane series, it’s perfect,” he screams before falling asleep in his beanbag chair.  In reality, MCA/Universal vice president Jennings Lang announced the production in May of 1978 after taking several trips to Europe to get permission to use the sleek bird.

As expected, a large ensemble cast was collected with a bigger emphasis in international appeal by the casting of French icon Alain Delon as the plane’s captain and sexy symbol Sylvia Kristel, fresh from the EMMANUELLE trilogy, as a stewardess and love interest.  On the American side, Robert Wagner was cast as the villain and AIRPORT stalwart George Kennedy returned as inexplicably upwardly mobile Joe Patroni, who has gone from a mechanic to pilot over the four-film series.  Filming began on November 16, 1978 in France for two weeks and then continued over to Washington DC and Los Angeles over the next month. Lang was so sure that the film would be a hit that he announced his next disaster projects – a sequel to EARTHQUAKE and THE WAVE – on January 26, 1979.

Audiences, however, had a different feeling and were de-pressurized to the series.  The film had its world premiere on August 1, 1979 in Monte Carlo with stars Delon, Kennedy and Susan Blakely in tow and slowly started rolling out in the US over the month.  Unfortunately, it was no match for the film currently at the top of the box office – THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (1979). This true life terror tale was scaring the dollars out of audiences’ pockets and yelled the box office equivalent of “get ooooout” at the Jennings Lang production.  Although the film stuck around until the end of October and got a small reissue in December, it collected a mere $13,015,688 in domestic sales.  Not only was it a series low, but it was less than the film’s $14 million dollar production budget.

Following television airings on pay channels, the network debut of THE CONCORDE…AIRPORT ’79 took place nearly three years later on Monday, May 17, 1982 on ABC in a three-hour (8-11pm) timeslot. Taking flight during the coveted sweeps period, the producers were up against NBC’s big budget, four-part miniseries MARCO POLO, so once again new footage was shot to pad out the feature’s length (my research indicates most of this new footage was shot in July 1981). In total, just over 21 minutes of new footage was added to the original film.  For the sake of a lucid article (and my sanity), I’ll only cover the added and deleted footage and not go into great detail on the reshuffling of scenes in the television version. Anyway, fasten your seat belts as this is going to be a bumpy ride!

TV Guide write up on the film, May 1982:

Anyone intimately familiar with AIRPORT ’79 (my condolences) will notice changes right off the bat as the plane’s near collision with protestors in a hot air balloon is moved from the opening to nine minutes into the film.  The first major new footage occurs just six minutes into the film as there is a scene of bad guy Kevin Harrison (Robert Wagner) visiting the ghetto for a building dedication.  It opens with him playing some basketball with some kids.  He gets some high fives (!) before his winded self reveals he is getting to old for this and someone comes to tell him the Mayor is waiting.

A young kid then asks Harrison for his sneakers back.  They sit on a park bench and the kid asks, “You really the richest man in the world, Mr. H?”  Harrison says not in the world, just America.  Ah, humble.  The kid then asks if he has all that money whey he doesn’t have any tennis shoes and Harrison replies, “Because I can borrow yours.” Harrison then confides in the kid he isn’t even prepared for his speech and says, “When in doubt, fake it.”

They get up and are accosted by reporters.  When asked how he likes the place, the kid says it is okay and Harrison needles him to get a phony response and the kid says he loves it and loves Mr. H.  They then smile for the press.

Can you see how weird this is going to get?  Remember, Harrison is the villain in this film and this new 2-minute scene shows him having sympathy for inner city youth.

It is then around the 9 minute mark that we get the air balloon scene.  Not only do they remove the air traffic controller saying “Holy Christ” when he sees it, but there is also about a minute of extra footage of airport security getting the balloon down by shooting a hole in it.

We then get the introduction of the newswoman Maggie Whelan (Susan Blakely) in the studio. Following her talk about the balloonists, the Concorde’s flight to Moscow, and the Harrison Industries Buzzard drone project, we get a new dialogue overlaid where she says that Harrison currently lives in Washington DC with his wife and three children.  This segues into new footage of Harrison in his home talking (“Go ahead, this is a safe phone. We’re on the scramble device.”) with his henchman Cooper (Conrad Palmisano) regarding documents that were to be shredded.  Harrison gives him the go ahead to “terminate” Carl Parker, the man who stole the docs, in order to hide them from the press.

We then get a new bit back at the studio with Whelan stating to her viewing audience that she will also be on this Concorde flight.

Up next is some extended footage in the love scene between Capt. Paul Metrand (Alain Delon) and Isabelle (Sylvia Kristel) in the hotel (they definitely didn’t bring them back for new stuff).  Instead of opening with Delon telling her that he won’t hurt her again, the scene opens with him telling her she still has the most wonderful laugh and that he missed her.  It begins to rain and she gets up to close the window.  She then notices a book of his and asks him to read her something (“The tender friendships that one gives up, on parting, leaves a bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried.”).

Following the rearranged arrival of Joe Patroni (George Kennedy), we get the longest new footage so far as there is a three-and-a-half minute scene of Mr. Harrison and Maggie Whelan in bed together.  She says she loves him and he says she is “violating a cardinal rule of adultery” to never fall in love.  She mentions how she hated growing up as a diary farmer’s daughter with so many rules and then drops the bomb on him – she’s pregnant.

As you can see, he’s obviously thrilled when she says she wants to keep the baby.  This adds a new element to the film and his later attempt to blow up the plane with a missile.  Yes, it is the world’s most expensive abortion.  Her pocket watch then goes off to let her know it is time to split.

He tries to convince her to stay and go to his awards show, but she thinks a mistress in the room with his wife and three kids is a bit tacky.  Maggie then gets a phone call and it turns out to be Harrison’s wife.  He sheepishly gets on the phone and the female voice on the other end wants to know if this is Rocco’s pizza or not.  Oh, Maggie, you cad!

Our next bit of extra business is when Patroni shows up at the hotel and decides to knock on Metrand’s door and introduce himself.  There is an extra shot of the couple in bed and she scurries away saying, “I don’t want to be seen with you.”  You and me both.

The television version finally gets down to the Carl Parker subplot as the whistleblower shows up at Maggie’s place. Interestingly, the TV version has extra shots of her in the bathtub.

After the assassin disposes of Carl Parker and chases Maggie around her house, there are extra shots of him sneaking around her bedroom before he goes upstairs.

Following her narrow escape, Maggie seeks comfort with Harrison as they walk around DC. Here you actually get a 40 second scene were Harrison puts her into the limo and wishes her off.

After he sees her off, he goes to his own limo and talks with his co-conspirator William Halpern (Robin Gammell) as in the theatrical version.  Following that is a new added bit involving the countdown to the firing of the test drone.  It is made up of footage from the theatrical release and is used quite a bit by through the extended version as a tension builder before commercial breaks.

The film continues on with the build toward the plane’s takeoff.  A couple of interesting omissions happen here.  The Russian team hijinx as they board the bus are removed.  Also, when Kennedy and Delon are heading toward the plane, the TV version zooms in when Kennedy makes the motion of big breasts while telling a story.  Later they remove his line “that’s why they call it a cockpit” and his sex-filled wing walker story.  So, TV Joe Patroni isn’t as big a perv.

Around the 38 and half minute mark of the TV version, there are two new scenes back-to-back that appear to have been newly shot footage.  First, you have Robert Palmer (John Davidson) talking with his secret Russian gymnast girlfriend Alicia (Andrea Marcovicci) about not going on the flight so she can defect and get married.  She says it would be too hard on her family back in Russia and leaves him to get on the bus (which doesn’t match the bus in the earlier AIRPORT ’79 scenes, hence my belief it is newly shot).

The second new scene takes place in a hospital as a doctor tells Mrs. Gilbert (Cicely Tyson) that they are ready to move the human heart for her son’s transplant.  When she asks how long the heart (in a box clearly labeled “human heart” in bold, LOL) can last, the doctor says, “We have to be in Paris in six hours.”  They then jump into a helicopter on the roof and take off.

For the arrival of most of the passengers, the TV version uses a different shot of the bus unloading folks at Dulles.

Things proceed as normal as Harrison and Maggie say goodbye and Maggie gets the documents from Carl Parker’s wheelchair bound wife (more on her in a bit).  Once onboard the plane, we get introduced to the passengers in roughly the same fashion. There is an extra scene of Sylvia Kristel consoling a young female gymnast who is cracking under the pressure of her first trip away from home and the stress to win the gold.  She tells her to think of it as an adventure and how lucky she really is.  Sylvia gets her some tissues and says to a fellow stewardess, “They expect 14-year-olds to be mature women.  It’s a pity, childhood is short enough.”

Is that Jason Lively? (Tom: "No, it's Robin Askwith!")

Following John Davidson showing up to declare his love, there is an extra bit of dialogue between the Russian coach and Alicia.  The coach says she knows the girl’s performance is suffering because she is in love.  She too had a chance like that with a Swedish swimmer. When asked why she didn’t take it, she says, “Because I’d have to live my life in exile.”

Before the plane takes off, Maggie gets up and says she needs to make an urgent phone call. Good lord, the drama for the young ladies is getting piled on here.

She finally gets in touch with Harrison and lets him know that she has the documents and has seen them.  There is some extra dialogue here where Harrison uses his charm to keep her from exposing him

Him: “I was just thinking about that trip we made to Maine.  Remember how cold it 
was? I think we spent the whole week in bed. It was like a honeymoon for us.”

Her: “The honeymoon is over.”

In both versions, however, she concedes though and ends with “I’ll see you in Paris.”

It is hard to believe that we are only now getting to the plane taking off.  Once in the air, both versions are pretty much the same for a period of time.  Not surprisingly, the TV version edits out the shots of Jimmie Walker smoking a joint in the bathroom.  As a result, it makes it looks like he just plays his sax so much that it causes big clouds of smoke to surround him.  We then get the thrilling near miss with the drone.

It is now that a huge chunk of the newly shot material begins appearing.  Obviously shooting new footage inside the plane would be a continuity and logistics nightmare.  So where did the producers go?  Why to the ground, of course.  If you are still with me (thank you!), you might recall me telling you to keep the wheelchair bound Mrs. Parker (Kathleen Maguire) in your minds.  Well, she is back and telling the cops that they need to investigate Harrison for her husband’s murder.  This four minute scene establishes one of the main storylines in the newly shot footage – a ground investigation of Harrison that spans two continents.  Also, it has the best line where Mrs. Parker says, “Stop treating me like I’m an emotional cripple!”

Lt. John Ratcliff (J.D. Cannon) asks for some sort of proof because he needs evidence and Mrs. Parker says to talk to Maggie Whelan.  The cop says he did and she offered nothing. Then Mrs. Parker says of course she didn’t because she just gave her the evidence at the airport today.  Think about that for a second – this new subplot has a woman who just gave away her best evidence going to the cops.  Anyway, she gets angry that he isn’t taking it seriously and demands to see his superiors (“I’ll see the President himself if I have to,” she cries).  Lt. Ratcliff calls in a dude and has her wheeled out.

He apparently did that just because he likes making women in wheelchairs hysterical because right after she leaves, he jumps on the phone and asks for everything they have on Kevin Harrison (“That’s right, the Kevin Harrison.”).

After Harrison speaks to his French baddie friend Robelle (Jean Turlier), we get more new footage with the FBI getting involved now.  Ratcliff calls an FBI agent (Alan Fudge) and says, “We’ve got a case here in the District that may involve your department too.”  He gives the details and says that Parker’s widow gave a statement and “it reaches pretty high up.”  Wait, didn’t you just force her to march…er, wheel out of your office?  Regardless, the Feds are now on the case.

Back on the plane, we get a new bit where Delon tells the passengers their location and tells them to look outside to see the curvature of the Earth.  We cut to Maggie looking outside and then she is shown putting the documents back into her bag.

During the sequence where the Concorde is fired upon by the rogue fighter, there is extra dialogue between Delon and Kennedy.  After Kennedy spots the fighter plane, Delon asks, “What’ he carrying?”  Kennedy says, “Four heat seeking air-to-air missiles. Range six miles at Mach 2 point 5.”  Goddang, not only is Patroni an adept social climber, but he has the eyes of a hawk.

During the insane getaway, the producers of the new footage felt that they needed to insert shots of pipes bursting during the Concorde’s flip for some reason (“The hydraulic system has been hit!”).

There is also a bit where John Davidson saves his Russian love as she is thrust from her seat.

Following ample disaster hysterics (the Concorde dodging missiles and a crash landing), we finally arrive in Paris.  But this craziness is only getting started.  We now get another new scene involving the investigation and jump to INTERPOL and the office of Charles Davenport (George Innes).  If there is one man for the job, it is Charles Davenport in room 305.

An associate (Ben Piazza) enters the room and fills him in the Harrison case details. Davenport is obviously the serious type given his beard and map with pins in it.  His buddy tells him Harrison and his businesses have all been under surveillance for some time. Davenport says to relay Washington their info.  The guy leaving says he is getting coffee and Davenport asks for tea.  He's British, we get it!

Okay, are you still with me?  If so, I’m sorry.  Anyway, prepare yourself as now we get the monster of new footage added to the film, nearly 13 minutes worth!  First, we have Harrison’s henchman Cooper (who somehow also arrived in Paris) breaking into Maggie’s dressing room at the studio where she is about to go live.  How do I know this?  There is a PA announcement that saying the broadcast will begin in 30 minutes.  I like that Mr. Incognito knocks first before break in.  I also like that he is searching for a bunch of documents and the first place he looks is a petite handbag.

Meanwhile, the total pro Maggie is already on the air telling how she survived the harrowing ordeals on the Concorde and plays her audio tape of the incident for audiences.

Harrison shows up as promised.  She doesn’t look thrilled to see him and his pinky ring.

She gets up to meet him outside the studio and they hug (“I’m so glad you’re alright,” he says).  They talk and she hits him with the one-two combo of “You lied to me” and “How far would you go to protect yourself?”  But he battles back with the classic “I would never do anything intentional to hurt you” before asking if she still has the documents.  She says security has them locked up.  Foiled!

Back in the dressing room, the guy is still looking for stuff when a security guard arrives with flowers for Maggie.  The security guy places the flowers down and then eyes the guy suspiciously before seeing a handbag on the floor.  The guard picks it up and…places it on the table.  Qui, that was a close one.

He then checks the card on the roses (why, the documents ain’t in there) and sees they are from Kevin Harrison.

There is then a new scene with Harrison’s associate William Halpern meeting up with the French bad guy Robelle in a hotel.  Frenchie apologizes for the fighter plane fiasco and then questions whether they should have had Cooper come over since he botched the Parker job. Yes, in a world of billions, Harrison likes to only deal with 2 or 3 of the same guys.  Halpern says, “I promise you we will deal with the situation properly.”

We then get new footage in a hotel lobby with Concorde honcho Eli Sands (Eddie Albert) and his wife Amy (Sybil Danning).  You go Eli!  I have to respect anything that gives me extra footage of Danning. He asks her what is wrong and she mentions how she doesn’t want to make the next flight on the Concorde to Moscow and is frightened.  He says he has to go as he is the top guy and “how would it look if I chickened out?” He reassures her by saying people think the terrorists “have shot their wad” and won’t try again before telling her that she’s “the best thing that ever happened to me.”  You and me both, Mr. Albert!  He then says he will take her shopping in the morning because the plane needs a little more time for repairs.  Oh, and the INTERPOL people want to talk to them in the morning.

After that is another new sequence between Maggie and Harrison as they walk on a bridge in Paris.  Harrison talks about his past and how he got into the weapons trade.  He gives a strange “right hand of God/left hand of God” speech.  He even points out a guy drawing street art and says, “There is a man who understands life.  Nothing is permanent.” Yes, dudes who fill the world with weapons long to have the philosophy of a street chalk artist.  Okayyyyyyyyyy.

Their conversation then moves to down by the water.  Maggie asks Harrison what he is going to do and he says he will hold a press conference and confess everything.  He then buys some flowers from a little old lady and gives them to Maggie.  He says, “I want to change my life.  You’re a big part of it now.”

This scene is really tricky in terms of deciding if it is new or shot for the original release.  It reeks of newly shot footage given the wishy-washy character intentions of Harrison. However, would they really fly them over to Paris just to shoot one new scene? (edit: actress Susan Blakely has confirmed to us that this was scene was from the film's original shoot.) Wagner’s hair is a bit different from the original shoot and I wonder if they were trying to soften his character given the popularity of HART TO HART at the time.  Either way, this scene isn’t in the theatrical version.

Meanwhile, we cut back to Cooper who is now going through Maggie’s hotel room.  After a bit of searching, he calls down to the front desk pretending to be her manager (do news women have managers?) and says he needs to put some of her papers with other stuff she gave them for the safe.  However, his ruse doesn’t work as they said there is no record of her putting anything in the safe.  Foiled again!

After we go through all of the romantic bits (including Delon hooking Kennedy up with a prostitute!), we get more new footage back in Washington DC.  Lt. Ratcliff is in the office of his FBI buddy and they discuss what is going on with the case.  The FBI guy tells Ratcliff to keep his cool as Mrs. Parker’s statement has been sent to the Attorney General and Treasury has sent their info on Harrison to Interpol.  New scene, thy name be exposition.

Immediately following this scene is new footage of Eli Sands and his wife meeting Chief Superintendent Morabito (Jose Ferrer) of INTERPOL.  When Sands asks why they are interested in what happened with the plane, the Superintendent says that they are more interested in Kevin Harrison and asks Sands if he knows him.  When told of his nefarious connections, Sands defends Harrison as “one of our top people” and that the Chief is “barking up the wrong tree.” Then Amy says that the only connection Harrison has to the Concorde is one of its passengers *wink, wink*. She then spills the beans on Maggie and Harrison.

After the Sands leave, Morabito gets on the phone to Davenport to talk about the case.  He stresses that “we must check out every lead, no matter how trivial.”  Davenport complies due to Morabito’s beard seniority.  Davenport then rings his secretary and says, “Washington, please.”

A few scenes later we see more new footage.  In the theatrical version, a mechanic (Jon Cedar) sabotages the Concorde’s wiring system and later attempts to escape with the money taped to his body.  In the TV version, his role is expanded and we see him meet Mr. Robelle in the mechanics shop to get the money.  He is also given a plane ticket and told his services would no longer be needed…EVER!

After everyone has boarded the Concorde for the second time, there is a quick extra scene of Kristel telling the passengers that the boy’s heart transplant was a success and the little boy is doing fine.  Everyone applauds in response.

Unfortunately, this section also has an omission that I’m sure will hurt everyone.  I don’t know how to break it to you guys, but the entire scene from the theatrical version with Charo trying to smuggle her dog onboard has been removed. While scenes were altered/removed for adult content, this is the only scene removed outright.  I guess ABC knew the world wasn’t ready for primetime cuchi-cuchi.

Did you think we were done?  Not quite.  The producers of the new footage saved the best for last.  During the aforementioned George Kennedy/prostitute courtship, he woos her at the dinner table by telling her his wife died in a car wreck and he has a college age son.  They decided to shoehorn that into the film via a flashback, which is done by just zooming into Kennedy’s head.  Dissolve to cheap sitcom set where Kennedy is having breakfast with his family.

Son Joe, Jr. mentions he’s finished his tea and his mother gets all excited.  Dad pleads for him to let his mom Helen (not played Susan Clark from AIRPORT 1975; in fact, it is Jessica Walter, who has a completely different eye color) indulge “in her only vice” which is – I kid you not – reading his tea leaves.  Obviously, Joe, Jr. has a bright future and a new love on the horizon according to mom, but a dark shadow is over someone near you.  Pop kids his wife about her half-English, half-gypsy heritage.

Naturally, the time comes to read Joe, Sr.’s tea leaves and, you guessed it, shit is looking bleak.  “There is some kind of machine with an engine that’s crushed. There is death surrounding you,” she says.  She pleads with him not to take a flight to Chicago.  He dismisses her tea leaf reading as just a hobby and assures her he will be fine.

Cut to Patroni walking down a hospital corridor and meeting with a doctor.  The doc explains that his wife got in a car wreck with a drunk driver and is in serious condition (“She has brain damage and can’t talk, but there’s no pain.”).  OMG! The tea leaves were right…but it wasn’t about him…it was about her!

This nearly six minute new scene ends with Patroni going in to the hospital room and checking out his wife.  He kisses her and she wakes up.  He tells her that they are going to “fight this and beat this.” Seems his prediction skills aren’t as good as hers.  We then cut back to the theatrical version where Metrand asks Patroni what’s up and he says he was just thinking about his wife.  Well played, TV producers, well played.

Back in Paris, there is a new scene with Robelle talking to Harrison on the phone.  He informs him of the mechanic’s accident and that INTERPOL will be questioning him.  Also, he’s heard the authorities know about Maggie and the documents.  “Try to save your self, my friend,” Harrison says over the phone before they hang up.

The path to the film’s final Concorde disaster is pretty much the same.  However, there is a 40 second bit of extra footage in the cockpit where the plane tips forward and Delon says, “She nosed.”

The plane eventually crashes in the snow in the mountains and things are pretty much normal.  Well, except Maggie goes live on the air to cover it.  Is she the world’s only news reporter?  She explains that Halpern hung himself and Robelle was arrested by Paris police. And what has happened to her hunky beau Harrison?  A warrant has been issued for his arrest.

Cut to Harrison watching this in a hotel room.  He gets up from his chair and goes over to his briefcase, where he pulls out a gun.  He goes into the hallway where a bunch of reporters are there.  When asked if he has any statement, Harrison says, “Just tell them I’m in the left hand of God.”  He then shoots himself.  This “left hand of God” line actually refers to the earlier Maggie/Harrison Paris walk.

This new suicide replaces the earlier scene in the theatrical version where Harrison commits suicide on his own plane while watching Maggie’s report from the scene of the plane’s crash landing.

The film then ends with Maggie summing up the events as she addresses the camera.

Holy Patroni!  Did I just spend nearly 5,000 words typing up AIRPORT ’79?  And grab over 150 frame grabs?  My mom would be so proud.  If you’ve made it this far, I congratulate you and hope I was able to showcase what a maddening task this was.  I have seen plenty of TV versions with alternate footage/new footage, but I am firm in my belief that this is easily one of the most complex versions ever made.  We've never been able to decipher who wrote and directed this new footage (edit: co-star Sybil Danning has confirmed to us that original helmer David Lowell Rich also directed the additional TV footage).  In the end, however, it paid off for Universal.  Despite the poor box office and the later parody AIRPLANE (1980) having put an end to the airplane disaster series, this TV version of THE CONCORDE…AIRPORT ’79 came in tenth place in that week’s ratings with 18.3 million viewers and a 31 share of the viewing audience.  It proved that AIRPORT fans were still out there, but that they just didn’t want their faces seen in public.  Now, what is the number of my frame grabbing physical therapist again?


Special thanks to Chris Poggiali for supplying the TV version plus the push over the edge to actually do this and TV sleuth Marty McKee for identifying some of the actors in the new footage. 

Also, thanks to George White at www.ateenagersguidetotrash.blogspot.com for painstakingly finding out who played Davenport.

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