The grandaddy of all disaster flicks, Airport established the modern-day template that spawned many a towering inferno and Poseidon adventures, not to mention three of its own sequels. While time has granted it a thick layer of kitsch unintended by its makers, the movie still soars high as an all-star hoot.

Based on the 1968 novel by Arthur Hailey — who also wrote Zero Hour!, which Airplane! spoofed as mercilessly as this — the dramatic thriller is as sprawling as its cast. It’s so jam-packed and jumbo-sized that no true lead emerges, but Burt Lancaster (The Osterman Weekend) ostensibly is as Mel Bakersfeld, whose marriage is fraught with as many problems as the Chicago airport he manages. For one, the noise from passing jets rattles nearby homes; for another, the worst storm in six years has him and his co-workers gobsmacked with stress.

The biggest problem is that the Boeing 707 piloted by Capt. Demerest (Dean Martin, hic!) has among its passengers a mad bomber (Van Heflin, Shane) and, perhaps more annoying, a perennial stowaway in a manipulative li’l old lady (Helen Hayes, whose Oscar win for this qualifies as an all-time AMPAS joke). Crowding the running time are George Kennedy, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean Seberg, Maureen Stapleton, Barry Nelson, Gary Collins and seemingly everyone except you and me.

Director George Seaton (Miracle on 34th Street) has so much on his plate that the terrorism angle doesn’t really shift into gear until the second hour, meaning that the first is all setup — perhaps even an info dump, introducing character after character, subplot after subplot, and sometimes even cramming several into the screen at once with multiple splits. That he keeps this soap opera of the skies from crash-landing — until the script calls for it, of course — is quite an admirable feat. Airport should not be as much fun as it is. —Rod Lott

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Young and single, Molly (Millie Perkins, At Close Range) works in a bar. She lives with her sister (Vanessa Brown, The Bad and the Beautiful), a welfare mother of two boys who worship the sea-sailing grandfather they never met and who was lost to the waters 15 years prior. Molly’s own feelings toward her old man are conflicted; after all, he did have a sexual relationship with her.

Needless to say, Molly’s one screwed-up chick — an utterly weird woman whose dark psyche is explored in the utterly weird The Witch Who Came from the Sea.

She experiences detailed fantasies — so twisted they qualify as hallucinations — of slaughtering musclemen on the beach and the shirtless shaving guy on a television commercial for razors. The first sign that there may be more to Molly’s mind games is when she imagines draining two superstar football players of their lifeblood by slicing the Achilles tendon, only to wake up the next morning and learn that the athletes have been murdered.

Director Matt Cimber is working with a higher caliber of material than he’s used to (i.e. Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold), so it’s evident to the viewer that there’s a lot going on here, even if Cimber can’t quite communicate it. He tries, but with its oblique narrative and psychological subtext, he’s in too far over his head. Perkins gives a good performance, although the script (by then-husband Robert Thom, Death Race 2000) requires her to spend too much of it naked. For all her onscreen sacrifice, the ending does her no justice, striking a dour note — and one that feels like a cop-out.

Still, it’s different, and because different is good, the psychological thriller is worth a look. Just watch out for the TV clown. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.