10 Plane Crazy Movies

After 7 years of the jet-setting lifestyle, my tired old body forced me to take a non-travel position at my job.  Two weeks into my new role, the realization that I’m literally grounded for life hit me like a ton of bricks. For 1/6th of my life, I travelled the world for 70% of the year. I got used to my clogged airplane ears, the endless array of rental cars, the weirdos I met at hotel bars and Jacuzzis, and the rambunctious trysters sharing my hotel room walls. Since mid-July, I’ve had none of these things.

Oddly enough, I miss the worst part of my journeys: Flying the friendly skies. No more fighting for airport parking spots or taxi cabs. No more getting groped and molested by the TSA! No more porno scanners that check my schlong size but wouldn’t be able to tell if I were filled with explosives. And no more having to explain to the No Fly List people that I’m NOT the Odie Henderson whom they suspect is a terrorist.

I should be happy. Airplanes are horrible places to be. They’re germ-filled sardine cans with hollering babies, terrible food that used to be free, and 6 inches of space between you and the person in front of you. The service is usually terrible, with delay after delay coupled with grumpy customer service. Even in first class, there’s the potential danger that you, as I once was, will be sitting next to a woman holding an infant. That kid won’t remember this! Put his hollering ass in coach!

I was going to dedicate this list of movies that feature scenes on planes in honor of Disney’s Planes. Then I saw Disney’s Planes, which deserves nothing but scorn and contempt. Instead, consider this list my coping mechanism, a traveler’s lament over the fact I’m no longer the star of Tyler Perry’s Up in the Air. In other words, expect lots of trash!

10.) I’m So Excited

Pedro Almodóvar’s fizzy farce takes place on an airplane that’s supposed to be a metaphor for Spain and all its problems. I don’t know about any of that symbolic malarkey; all I saw was a flying Mile High club full of booze, drugs, the kind of sex the Republicans frown upon and the Pointer Sisters. As a huge fan of his earlier, dirtier work, I hoped Almodóvar’s self-proclaimed gayest movie would be more fun than it is. Outside of the gloriously gaudy set and costume design, and the lip-synch number shown in the trailer, there’s nothing here to truly satisfy. Before I’m So Excited, the closest I’ve ever come to having gay flight attendants sing to me is when the attendant sang a lullaby to quiet the aforementioned hollering infant sitting next to me in first class.

9.) Red Eye

Here’s the other 2005 movie with Cillian Murphy as the villain. Wes Craven’s PG-13 rated suspenser is a surprisingly good white-knuckler. Rachel McAdams is kidnapped on a plane, and her scenes with Murphy are violent, scary and smart. Craven uses crammed airplane spaces like the bathroom to great effect. Both the villain and our heroine are smarter than usual, and even when the film flies off the rails into the ridiculous, Craven keeps you riveted. The concept of a woman in plane danger is not new. See Doris Day’s HILARIOUS 1956 disaster, Julie, or its dreadful Ray Liotta’s remake, Turbulence, for two examples of how not to do it.

8.) Executive Decision

Here’s something rare: A good Halle Berry movie! Berry plays a flight attendant who helps badass Kurt Russell foil terrorists on her plane. With Steven Seagal sharing top billing, one expects him to drop into the plane on the people-transferring Stealth plane he’s flying. The film expects it too, but if you’ve seen this movie, you know that Russell is the hero, not Seagal. What happens to Stevie is surprising, but not as surprising as how much fun Executive Decision is. Screenwriters Jim and John Thomas (Predator) employ a few clever tricks to sweeten this film’s request for a larger-than-usual suspension of disbelief. Featuring Marla Maples as a fellow flight attendant, J.T. Walsh at his slimiest as a politician, and Poirot’s David Suchet as the main villain, Executive Decision continues Russell’s unbroken string of everyman heroes in extraordinary situations. Nobody’s better at it than Snake Plissken.

7.) Passenger 57

Passenger 57 is an example of what I affectionately refer to as “colorizing,” that is, “remaking” a movie with a Black person replacing of the original’s White character. 57 is a terrorist plane hijacking movie with Wesley Snipes in the Kurt Russell role. Or in the Bruce Willis role if you consider this a Die Hard clone. Regardless, Snipes’ security expert kicks ass and takes names as the titular character. Facing off against villain Bruce Payne, Snipes utters the now famous line “Always bet on Black.” I’ve learned that advice sucks at the roulette wheel, but is pitch perfect in a Wesley Snipes actioner. Features Liz Hurley and a young Tom Sizemore. Directed by Sounder’s Kevin Hooks!

6.) Airport ’79: The Concorde

With no disrespect to my #1 movie (no peeking!), this is the funniest movie on this list. Veteran NY Times critic Vincent Canby said “I laughed my head off,” which is great praise if Airport 79 were a comedy. It wasn’t—at least not initially. Once Universal got wind of the piss-inducing audience laughter at screenings, they rebilled Airport 79 as an intentional laugh riot. Paramount would take the same page from this playbook a few years later with Mommie Dearest.

The fourth film in the increasingly ridiculous Airport series continues the trend of a “star-studded cast” and a series of disasters and near-misses. But this time it’s supersized. We’re on the Concorde with The Talented Mr. Ripley (Alain Deion), Miss Jane Pittman (Cicely Tyson), Emmanuelle (Sylvia Kristel), JJ from Good Times (Jimmie Walker), Oliver from Green Acres (Eddie Albert) and the voice of Satan in The Exorcist (Mercedes McCambridge). For you highbrow folks, Airport ’79 also has Bergman regular Bibi Andersson and Oscar winning actor George Kennedy. Kennedy loves this series so much, he’s been in every installment.

You need to see this movie. Robert Wagner is the evil mastermind who wants to bring down the Concorde because his mistress is on it. She plans to expose his illegal arms business, so he sends an illegal missile to blow her up. An open airplane window and a flare at 20,000 feet spoils his plan, but that’s not the most incredulous thing to happen in Airport ’79. Screenwriter Eric Roth, who wrote Forrest Gump, has never met a dopey plot device he didn’t like. Airport ‘79’s biggest stretch is having the passengers who survived a harrowing ordeal and emergency landing get back on the exact same plane (complete with the chick Wagner’s trying to kill) to continue their flight.

Any movie where Eddie Albert is married to Chained Heat’s Sybill Danning deserves your eyeballs all over it. See this movie. Wear a Depends, because your bladder will explode.

5.) Snakes on a Plane

Had Bob Wagner seen this movie, he’d have found a far less convoluted way to kill a witness on a plane. Rather than shoot it down, just put some mother-effin’ snakes on it! Villain Eddie Kim must stop witness Sean Jones before he testifies against him. So he puts a time-released capsule of snakes on the same plane Jones is flying. Fortunately for Jones, he has foul-mouthed mongoose Samuel L. Jackson to protect him. David Ellis’ movie sought Internet ideas and intervention while crafting Snakes on a Plane, but the result was a movie that exists in the limbo between “not good enough to be a classic” and “not bad enough for cult status.” I liked this movie, and a fair number of critics did too—the kiss of death for a film with that wonderful title. Like Deep Blue Sea, another Sam Jackson creature feature, I will watch this whenever it’s on cable. When I saw it on 42nd Street, which is where it should have been seen, I wrote about my experience here.

4.) Air Force One

Air Force One takes place in an America where Indiana Jones is the President and the psychotic lady from Fatal Attraction is his Dick Cheney. Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen pits Indy against Gary Oldman’s loopy Russian Ivan Korshunov, who takes over the plane and kidnaps the First Family. Exercising his zero-tolerance policy against terrorists, which he conveniently mentioned a few minutes beforehand, President Ford goes after Korshunov and his minions, executing them with extreme prejudice. Despite credible work by Ford and Close, the memorable kiss-off line (“Get OFF MY PLANE!”) is probably all you remember from this movie.

3.) Flying Down to Rio

How about an entry with folks on the wrong side of the plane? Flying Down To Rio is the first pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Their musical number, the Carioca, made their pairing famous. Far more memorable, however, is Astaire singing “Rio, Rio by the sea-O” while planes fly high overhead. On each plane is a series of beautiful women standing, sitting, and dancing on the wings. The women do routines, swing from trapezes and, since this is still pre-Code, get stripped of clothing when their parachutes deploy. One unfortunate soul falls off her plane, only to be saved in mid-fall by another  plane. This goes on about 5 minutes, and is pure joy. As a kid, I wondered why the women didn’t fall through the wings. As an adult, I wondered why more movie musicals didn’t have hot babes dancing on airplanes.

2.) Wings

This is a classy movie, but that’s not going to stop my trashy reign. This flick’s got naked boobs, bare asses and two men kissing! Granted, the kissing is fraternal and during an emotional death scene and the nudity is not for titillation. But it’s there, years before Hollywood clamped down on such yummy practices. Wings is the first film to win the Best Picture Oscar, and its flying sequences were ahead of its time. Set during World War I, this is a love triangle between Richard Arlen, Buddy Rogers, and Paramount’s It Girl, Clara Bow. It’s sort of like Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, except that it’s good. WWI veteran William A. Wellman directed, and Rogers and Arlen flew their own planes. This is technically the only silent feature to win Best Picture. (The Artist has noise, dammit, which doesn’t make it silent.)

1.) Airplane!

Surely I can’t be serious! Widely considered the ZAZ-crew’s masterpiece (I myself prefer Top Secret! to this), Airplane is non-stop hiliarity. Like the Airport series from which it cribs, Airplane! is funny because its actors play their roles completely straight. Unlike the Airport series, the actors know they’re in a comedy. To fully appreciate this comic masterpiece, you should see Zero Hour! and Airport ’75. The latter features the late Karen Black in the Julie Hagerty stewardess role, Linda Blair as the sick little girl and Helen Reddy as the singing nun whose guitar causes all sorts of mayhem in Airplane!. Zero Hour! gives Airplane! its plot, several verbatim lines of dialogue and its titular exclamation point. Regardless of influence, Airplane!’s actors and the ZAZ-crew provide multiple layers of wordplay, visual puns and gross-out gags. You can watch this movie a million times and still see something new. With Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Robert Stack and Lloyd Bridges playing essentially their standard roles from numerous other movies. Rumor has it that Universal was considering a fifth Airport movie, Airport ’82: UFO. Airplane! successfully killed that franchise. It should be commended for that, if nothing else.