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| Airplane! Airport 1975 |
Airport 1975 and its parody; Airplane! had something that many disaster films don’t have today: characters in the midst of a crisis that are dependent on some form of medication or a machine to live. We don't see that too often in disaster films these days. And this isn’t just a problem with today's disaster movie genre either. In today's thrillers & horror movies where we see characters trapped somewhere and can’t go out or make a sound because they'll be eaten by zombies (Dawn Of The Dead, The Descent, Rec, etc), killed by vampire-like mutants (I Am Legend) or trapped on an elevator (Devil), we rarely seem to have a character in need of liver meds, hearts meds or...kidney meds. The only recent film to even kinda touch on this was Con-Air when Nicholas Cage’s friend needed insulin on the hijacked plane but they couldn’t get to it. On television there was an early episode of Lost where one of the people stranded on the island needed an inhaler or she'd die from an asthma attack. But that’s about it. Sure more television shows have been focusing on kidney transplantation (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Family Guy, American Dad), but never under the extreme circumstances that I’m talking about. Is Hollywood blind? Adding this kinda element to a thriller or horror movie would work on two levels. It would add realism to an otherwise unrealistic plot. I mean let’s face it; in this day & age there seem to be more & more legitimately medication-dependent people in this world due to organ transplants than ever. Let’s say in 2012 that zombies really do attack and a group of people are stuck together in a shopping mall or an abandoned house to hide from the brain eating monsters and can’t go outside. The odds of someone running out of or needing medication at some point in the near future is highly likely. This would also add excitement to the story. Another monkey wrench thrown in to the spokes. Speaking from personal experience, the most kidney meds I keep on me on a regular day is two days worth. And for those of you asking why only two days worth; it’s because there aren’t any pill cases compact enough to hold the 24 pill a day supply I need without being a fucking nuisance in my pockets. If that zombie attack hit RIGHT NOW, in 36 hours I'd be pretty screwed (although I could be as healthy as a horse and I'd probably still die due to the fact that I'd be a black person in a zombie scenario. History has only proven that we don’t last in these movies). But think about it for a second - if there was a character in need of meds in a short period of time or they're organ would fail ultimately killing them, this adds a new mission to the story. A group of people would have to venture out among the zombies, mutants, whatever to make it to the closest pharmacy (where the zombies would obviously be waiting) to get the medication for the dying organ recipient before it’s too late. And this wouldn’t be a quick task because they’d have to fight their way behind the counter then proceed to read the labels on the bottles to make sure they got the right meds (it would certainly suck if they did all that work only to bring back cold sore medication to a kidney transplant recipient). It would be a nail biter, wouldn’t it? And naturally everyone wouldn’t make it back (probably the sacrificial token black guy).
Both Airport 1975 and Airplane! involve the same commonly forgotten subplot where a little girl is in need of a kidney transplant but the plane taking them to their future life saving organ malfunctions and someone has to land the plane before it’s too late (obviously if no one can land the plane then everyone will die, making the transplant irrelevant but whatever). They weren't just the "sick girls" that they're commonly labeled as. They had a specific illness and that illness was kidney disease (had they needed a heart transplant or had sickle cell you'da remembered). But between the two movies, people were too distracted by pedophile jokes, Charlton Heston's rugged manliness, jive talk and Leslie Nielsen's brilliant deadpan performance to remember. Even though these movies were made in the mid-70's the subject matter is more relevant today. Due to mass kidney swaps these days which sometimes involve up to 20+ people all over the country, planes are required to take ‘em from one end of the country to the next for a transplant. I guess Airport 1975 and Airplane! were just ahead of their time...
