On Mar 28, 9:37 am, "Jay Honeck" wrote:
We often talk about the BEST aviation movie here, but how 'bout the
worst?

Having spent nearly a year of my life showing aviation movies every
Tuesday night in our theater at the hotel, I am in a somewhat unique
position to comment on this. I've seen over 50 aviation movies in a
row, and can lend some perspective.

Many of the early aviation movies were saddled with the stilted acting
styles that followed the introduction of "talkies" in the 1920s/30s,
so you have to take some of them with a grain of salt.

An example is Howard Hughes' "Hells Angels", which is full of nice
flying scenes and some truly terrible acting. It's like they didn't
know how to write dialogue, yet -- which was okay, cuz the actors
didn't know how to deliver it.

John Wayne. Having seen all of his aviation flicks now, it's easy
to see where John Wayne got his reputation for being one-dimensional.
Every aviation movie he starred in (with the notable exception of the
"Island in the Sky" -- read about it hehttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045919/
) has the same plot, and he played the same character. Many are quite
awful, although the WWII flying scenes are often quite good.

But after last night I can honestly say that the award for worst
aviation movie EVER made goes to "Iron Eagle" -- the 1986 movie that
was the Air Forces's quick answer to the success of "Top Gun".

By God, it's awful. The story line (Synopsis: A teenager and a
Colonol steal two F-16s, fly half-way around the world, destroy a
Saddam-look-alike's air force, and then LAND on the runway they just
destroyed to rescue the teenager's father from certain death), the
acting, the flying scenes, the combat scenes (astoundingly bad, with
missiles that fly at light-speed), even the credits are just
TERRIBLE.

This movie should have single-handedly ended Lou Gossetts' career, but
-- inexplicably -- they actually made a SEQUEL to this dog! I will
not see it.

We showed it last night at Movie Night, and the comments ranged from
"Thank God we didn't pay anything to *that*" to "I need another
beer." The scenes where targets on the ground -- like a water tower
on stilts -- blow up with near-nuclear force after just a few machine
gun hits were especially well derided...

Although Move Night is always just an excuse to get together and
hangar fly and fly the Kiwi flight simulator, this was so truly
terrible that it 'bout killed us.

Anyone got any other "nominations" for WORST ever?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

I understand how retched Pearl Harbor but it could be seen as more of
a war film than an aviation film as could Iron Eagle. For me the
absolute worst aviation film is the execrable Cloud Dancers, David
Carradine at the height of his personal excess, Jennifer O'Neil and
Timothy Bottoms. I remember hearing about the making of it from
various aviation magazines and then never saw it come to a theater.
Years later I sat through it at Oshkosh. The only good thing about it
was some touching scenes with Carradine's character and two
developmentally disabled siblings. God knows why that was even in the
plot. Sure the flying scenes were great, what with the Christen
Eagles etc. but in every other way it stank.

Second up is Jet Pilot the Howard Hughes extravaganza with John Wayne
and that blonde from Psycho. I remember watching its broadcast debut
years after Howard's death. Beautiful shots of airplanes but I got so
bored I went for a mile walk in the middle of the movie and came back
to find the plot had not advanced one iota.

John Dupre'