SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Leofwine_draca MURDER ON FLIGHT 502 is an Aaron Spelling-production murder mystery TV movie from 1975. It's an ultra-cheesy and dated tale about a flight from New York to London and the situation that arises when it becomes apparent that one of the passengers is intent on committing murder. Like one of those cheesy disaster movies from the decade, this features an all-star cast of faces (B-list this time around) and no less than four red herrings and one real murderer.The convoluted script from veteran TV writer David P. Harmon is the worst thing about this low rent and obscure movie, because it's really long-winded and lacking in interest. You're supposed to care about the characters involved in a film like this but you never do here; the tale is merely episodic, solving one mystery sub-plot before moving on to the next. Director George McCowan had previously made the fun B-movie FROGS but can do little with this film's story.The actors do the best with the material they've been given. Old-timers Ralph Bellamy and Walter Pidgeon supply old-timer advice. Theodore Bikel does shifty and sweaty very well (as anyone who saw his Columbo appearance can testify). Farrah Fawcett-Majors and Brooke Adams supply glamour as the stewardesses. Danny Bonaduce is incredibly annoying as the red-haired joker. George Maharis is the guy on the ground trying to solve things. Sonny Bono plays himself, essentially. The unravelling of the mystery isn't very interesting, but I do have a soft spot for TV movies from this era so it wasn't all bad for me, and the more dated a film is the more fun I find it to sit back and enjoy the fashions and attitudes from the era.

gfast This film falls firmly in the So Bad You'll Love It pile of bargain-bin wonders, a TV feature film, of the type made for audiences assumed to have an IQ equivalent of a retarded chicken.The corny Dialogue reaches new heights of hilarity only matched by the Airport series, and its spoof Airplane! (Flying High). Cheap sets - an "airport lounge" that looks like the set of a cheap office where some equally cheap 70s show had just been filmed, the "aircraft" with impossibly wide expanses, giant square door, "hundreds" of passengers of which we only see a handful and sometimes the cabin seems empty, the TWO, yes TWO stewardesses, disappearing passengers (Danny Bonaduce stops appearing in the cabin half way through) a cockpit where nothing ever seems to happen except hilarious radio exchanges, a plane that takes off and in the next shot is shown landing (different models, different colour schemes even used in consecutive shots of the supposed airliner taking off), not to mention the impossibly ridiculous "script". Its hard to believe that this film was intended to be taken seriously. One of the priceless lines (about a bogus priest who wears nail polish - what???!!!)comes from a psychologist attempting to analyse why someone would impersonate a priest: "A clinical manifestation of religious hysteria!" - I kid you not. See it and prepare to laugh yourself silly.

Stephanie Jonsdottir You know why I gave this a 10? Because I watched it two nights ago with a friend and we laughed the whole way through. It is so deadpan that you could never accuse the cast of taking it seriously. The production values are bottom of the barrel, at the beginning of the film the cast congregate in the TOA first class lounge that is supposed to be at JFK airport in New York, however the 'Theme Building' at LAX is clearly visible out the window as well as several palm trees. I am an airplane buff so I notice when things don't match up in films involving airplanes, but anyone can see that the different shots of the plane in this film are clearly of several different airlines, and the shot of the plane taking off is actually a plane landing. I remember watching it on TV when I was younger and thinking it reminded me of an Agatha Christie story on an airplane, and that's basically what it is. the story is good, the set is so so, an earlier review mentions the lawn furniture and cheese display in the planes upper deck, that got a good laugh from us as well. On an interesting note, the stewardess uniforms that Brooke Adams and Farrah Fawcett are wearing were actual uniforms for TWA and can also be seen in 'Catch Me if You Can' at the end when Leonardo DiCaprio climbs out of the plane through the toilet. This movie deserves audience participation, or at least a drinking game.

Jon Spader If you've seen Airplane!, enjoyed Airplane! and perhaps wondered where Airplane! got some of its inspiration from, check out Murder on Flight 502. My brother found it for the astounding price of one dollar American, and for that single bill you get Robert Stack, Farrah Fawcett, Sonny Bono, and...Danny Bonaduce? Oh, but yes. And there's more. As the film tepidly moves along, begging you to find the murderer among the passengers before anyone is actually murdered, you'll be treated to outrageous mid-70's fashion (brown is IN!), bizarre character backgrounds, and the hottest burgeoning romance this side of Harold and Maude, an elderly Jewish woman and an elderly Methodist known only as Uncle Charlie. "Ah...I know half the story already!" says the elderly woman slyly after Uncle Charlie introduces himself, and believe me, you will know every sundry detail of Uncle Charlie's hard knock life, even though it's probably better that you didn't.You will see Sonny Bono sing, and you will realize why Cher was much better on her own. Robert Stack will make Bruce Willis in Die Hard look bad with his endless barrage of hard-boiled, sarcastic one-liners. But most of all, you will figure out who the murderer is, and you will be satisfied when they get their comeuppance.No, there is no singing stewardess, no jive-talkers, no inflatable auto-pilot, no Leslie Neilsen. But unless you are unable to mock the earnest, but futile work of many to make a taut murder mystery shot almost entirely on a plane full of large, orange seats, you will like Murder on Flight 502. I promise.