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

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Amid other liquids, one practically can smell the dribbles of J&B through the screen of The Sister of Ursula, a title that tells you nothing and means only slightly more. It refers to Dagmar Beyne (Stefania D’Amario, Zombie), who’s not quite the main character, yet neither is her sibling, Ursula (Barbara Magnolfi, Suspiria). In fact, no character is developed properly enough to emerge as the lead.

Searching for their estranged mother after their father’s death, the two stop at a seaside hotel in Italy with majestic views and vistas and nightclub singer Stella Shining (Yvonne Harlow). Despite such amenities, Dagmar doesn’t want to stay: “Terrible things are going to happen,” she says. “I see blood.” She’s so certain that she herself will be murdered — not the most ideal of travel companions.

Terrible things do happen, to both the viewer and to the movie’s slutty female characters. Members of the latter group are slain by a killer in requisite black gloves, offed by a … well, a rather unique tool, let’s say. I won’t spoil it, but the shadow knows. The first to go is a prostitute who plies her trade underneath a decidedly unsexy Donald Duck poster.

Promiscuity reigns in this sleazy little thriller by writer/director Enzo Milioni, and each time people go at it, they do so to the tune of the same sax-fueled ballad of the damned. It’s meant to signal sexy, Pavlovian-style, yet is so overused, it will have an opposite effect on viewers. Milioni expended all his energy on these scenes, to the detriment of everything else. Unless you’re just looking for skin, there’s nothing to see here, folks; please move along. —Rod Lott

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Do You Like Hitchcock? We know Dario Argento sure does. The director’s made-for-Italian-cable pic plays primarily as a pastiche of Rear Window and Strangers on a Train, with a litany of references to Hitch’s other works. Sharp eyes will catch nods to those of Brian De Palma, who, like Argento, built a career by paying homage to cinema’s all-time suspense master.

Elio Germano (Nine) is the giallo’s erstwhile Jimmy Stewart as Giulio, a college student writing his film thesis on Alfred Hitchcock German Expressionism. From his upper-floor apartment, he has a splendid view of the sexy Sasha (Elisabetta Rocchetti, The Last House in the Woods), whom he often sees at the video store and romping about town with the equally enticing Arianna (Cristina Brondo, Penumbra).

When Sasha’s mother is brutally murdered, Giulio pieces 1 and 1 together to arrive at 2: that Arianna might be the culprit, as part of a Strangers on a Train scenario; all he lacks is proof! Like all stupid protagonists in thrillers do, he puts his life on the line to investigate.

Had Do You Like Hitchcock? carried the name of an unknown director, its reputation would be sturdier, perhaps as something of a minor gem. With Argento at the helm, however, expectations unfairly raise the bar. While there is no way this one can compete on the level of his early works — the so-called “animal trilogy,” in particular — it is a satisfying thriller exuding real love for the movies and the voyeurism they inspire. Don’t be put off by its TV status, either, as the initial murder is as to-the-pulp as anything Argento has shot, and contains more nudity than his classics.

Do I love Do You Like Hitchcock? No, but I like it just fine. —Rod Lott

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Poor William Hurt. How does one go from being nominated for the Best Actor Oscar three years in a row to toplining a below-average virus thriller called Contaminated Man?

With a mullet that makes him look like a Foghat roadie, Hurt stars as David Whitman, a hazardous materials specialist for the United Nations. He’s called to a chemicals company in Budapest (economically enough), where veteran employee Joseph Müller (a bald Peter Weller, RoboCop) has just been downsized and taken revenge by unleashing some, like, really bad chemical stuff.

Unfortunately for Müller, he’s also gotten himself exposed to the stuff and becomes … wait for it … the Contaminated Man! Basically, this means he coughs a lot and everyone he touches grows pus-filled blisters and spews skim milk within the hour. All the viewer gets is an uninvolving, sub-Outbreak-type chase where Whitman tracks Müller from one public place to another. It all culminates in the latter filling a remote-control submarine with his infected blood and threatening to taint the water supply.

Director Anthony Hickox has done fun work before in pure B-movie mode (Waxwork), but this is not another notch in that belt. No, this is drab, bleak viewing, made all the more drab and bleak by being set in the aforementioned Budapest. Both actors deserve better. The only thing great about Contaminated Man is its title. —Rod Lott

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