By Lee Pfeiffer
In viewing Warner Brothers' DVD edition of the 1972 film Skykacked, I was totally prepared for another cheesy Seventies disaster film - an Airport Lite, if you will. Initially, my premonitions were shaping up to come true. The script follows the tradition of presenting the quasi-all-star cast by rote, with each actor given a few precious seconds to establish their personality quirks and telegraph what their dilemma will be once the inevitable crisis unfolds. In this case, the plot is simple enough to make The Poseidon Adventure look like The Big Sleep. Rock-jawed Charlton Heston is the pilot of a commercial airliner on which the head flight attendant (or "stewardess" in the vernacular of the day) is former lover Yvette Yvette Mimieux . Shortly after the flight takes off, a message is discovered written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror. There is someone aboard who claims to have a bomb they will detonate if the plane isn't diverted to Anchorage, Alaska. It isn't giving the store away to inform you that the mad bomber is James Brolin. Not only is this revealed very shortly into the film, but you'd have to be blind, deaf and dumb to not realize he is the bad guy - especially when the other passengers consist of pregnant Mariette Hartley , folksy musician Rosie Grier and crusty U.S. Senator Walter Pidgeon. Besides, the brainiac who designed the menu for the DVD eliminates any doubt of the culprit's identity because the still photo they used on the main menu shows Brolin holding a gun on the cockpit crew.
With all the stock characters from disaster movies seemingly
present, I wondered sarcastically where the prequisite priest or nun
was - when, bingo! The camera pans across the cabin to show a priest
sitting near the front row. I expressed relief that at least there
wasn't the
curmudgeonly flight controller who talks the captain through
the crisis a la George Kennedy in
Airport when- you guessed it, Claude Akins pops up as a Kennedy clone. However, just when
Skyjacked is
beginning to shape up as an inferior movie-of-the-week, the screenplay
takes a more interesting turn and director John Guillermin actually
milks some suspense from the routine situation. Brolin is a cliche as a
mentally disturbed Army veteran (Hollywood didn't seem to think any
veteran could
not have been disturbed during the Vietnam War
era). For reasons never quite explained, Brolin bares a grudge against
the army and ultimately decides to take the plane to the Soviet Union
where he intends to defect. This is where the plot picks up steam and
avoids the obvious cliche of making Heston a super hero. Playing
against type, Heston avoids heroics and realistically puts the
interests of his passengers first by capitulating to Brolin's demands.
Only in the slightly contrived climax does the former Ben-Hur get to
flex his muscles.
Skyjacked is nowhere near the top of the disaster movie list. That honor still goes to The Towering Inferno, the Citizen Kane of the genre. However, it is nowhere near the worst (see Irwin Allen's The Swarm - the most awful "bee" movie ever made). Although Skyjacked suffers
from '70s kitsch, there are plenty of enjoyable elements. For one,
Heston is unusually subdued here and doesn't ham it up as he was
inclined to do in so many films. His macho screen presence makes you
all the more aware of the lack of such leading men in today's film
industry. The supporting cast doesn't rise to the level of other
disaster films, but then again Skyjacked doesn't pretend to be
more than it is: an above average TV movie. James Brolin tries hard to
make his cliched character as complex as possible, but his bug-eyed
histronics are often more distracting than frightening. The great joy
in a film like this is seeing how the passage of time is reflected on
the habits of the characters. Passengers smoke freely in the main
cabin, Brolin simply walks onboard toting a bomb, hand grenades and a
full-size machine gun, and Heston smokes a pipe in the cockpit. Throw
in a cliched musical score and the obligatory dreamy flashbacks of
Heston's affair with Yvette Mimieux and you have the kind of guilty pleasure
that probably seems more enjoyable today than it did upon its initial
release. If that wasn't enough, you even get ex-Tarzan Mike Henry as
the co-pilot!
EXTRAS: Surprisingly,
Warners -which is always generous with extras- drops the ball this
time. There isn't even a single trailer included. The transfer,
however, looks terrific.
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