Watch San Francisco International For Free

That was an excellent one.

Simply A Masterpiece

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

A series that has airport disasters every week should be cool so this series should be cool. Well it is not, for the simple reason that it is a television show, so it is not like they have a budget to show a whole lot of crashes and whatnot. So you get minor incidents and heists being pulled all at the same time in this pilot episode! Though while watching this and the way it sets itself up, it sort of resembles the typical disaster film of the era and a couple of points of it seem like scenes they made fun of in the parody film, "Airplane". There are stars aplenty in this one, the typical people you would see in many television series and made for television movies of the era as well. So, while not a particularly entertaining show as far a plot and what is going on, it does have some interesting points to look out for.The story of the pilot episode has a person who is sort of in charge of the airport scaring some congressman, a boy whose parents are getting a divorce because the father works to much and this boy really likes planes, a kidnapping that is a set up for a heist and a man punched by a hippie. All these stories intertwine a bit, well not the hippie one. That one just seems thrown in for no apparent reason. The boy with his parents was really kind of lame as the mother's reason for wanting to separate is idiotic, as she knew going in what his job entailed and the funniest part is when the head of the airport talks to the boy at one point it so reminded me of the scene with Peter Graves and the boy in "Airplane". The one with the boy leads to some airplanes being flown and really small cheap ones, which probably all the show could afford to do. The heist was a good story to have in this film as it is in an airport, but only really affected a plane on the ground. So other than a possible crash at the beginning of the film they teased us with there isn't really any other areas where there could have been a possible crash with the big planes.I, of course, saw this on Mystery Science Theater 3000 as I would imagine seeing a film made for television in 1970 that was basically a bit of a failure would not be easy in 2015. I guess I could have youtubed it, but no, it was released in the latest volume from my favorite television show of all time. It made for a very funny episode as they also did good with another television pilot called, "Code Name: Diamondhead". These old shows from the 70's just make for an entertaining watch because it is fun seeing all the stars in them and the groovy settings.So, this one was not a good story, but it had its moments. You get to see plenty of television stars from years past and what is apparently the blueprint for disaster films in its infancy. Remember the film, "Earthquake" and the plot point of the couple on the plane who became a boring plot point once their plane averted the danger, it could owe some gratitude for man punched by hippie! The main reason this show probably did end up failing is simply the fact it is a television show and you just cannot do a whole lot involving planes and disaster on a television budget.

San Francisco International (SFI for the rest of this) follows what I've started calling a Love Boat style of plot development. You know – a movie or television show with an ensemble cast where each character has their own storyline that may or may not have anything to do with the other characters. One plot line is deadly serious, another is romantically charged, the next is played for laughs, and on and on it goes. I don't know where the Love Boat plot style first originated, but SFI follows this to a "T". The story lines in SFI include: a boy, upset over his parents divorce, climbs into an abandoned plane and takes off; a band of crooks robs a shipment of cash going through the airport; seeking additional funding for the airport, airport head honcho Jim Conrad (Pernell Roberts) fakes an emergency landing with a planeload of government officials; a businessman and a hippie get into an altercation; etc. But being a 70s made-for-TV movie, you know everything is going to work out fine in the end – not that you really care or anything.There are several reasons why SFI never made it to our television sets as a regular series. And chief among them as far as I'm concerned is Pernell Roberts. Being self-assured is one thing, but Roberts' character comes off as one of the smuggest in history. He's too unlikable to care about any of his problems and whether they get resolved or not. You can't build a series around a horses rear-end like Jim Conrad and expect anyone to watch.As with a lot of the "bad" movies I've been watching lately, I saw SFI courtesy of Mystery Science Theater 3000. And as far as a MST3K episode goes, SFI is a keeper. A laugh at every turn. If you're a fan of the show, do yourself a favor and seek it out. This one gets a 4/5 on my MST3K rating scale.

OK, so this movie and the subsequent series tanked...but it's brought many evenings of joy to us as cannon fodder for the rapier-like minds at MST3K, who hit this one over the 400- foot sign. It succeeds in a way its makers never intended...Pernell Roberts struts around "his" airport, annoying congressmen and local bureaucrats alike. Clu Gulagher mumbles and mutters his lines while trying to be the sheriff on the spread, though his thunder is stolen by the postal inspector. A Mr. Hunter inserts "Tab A" into this B-movie with a plot to steal either a million bucks or a crate of old magazines, I'm never sure which. Weaving through this plot (sic) is Davey, who stumbles through the action like Billy in the Family Circus. Will he find the radio? Will the plane land safely? Will we even remotely care? And who gets to ask David Hartman, "Why the long face?"Previous reviewers have been much too harsh -- this one should be viewed as a monument to all the things the 1970s brought us -- B movies, no Homeland Security checkpoints, planes with aisles as wide as city streets, three-martini lunches, and made-for-TV hippies...Having expectations just means disappointment in the end. Let it wash over you and laugh!

OK, here's how the movie works.There is the barest germ of an interesting detective story plot here to drive the movie: thieves use a kidnapping at the San Francisco Airport to serve as a distraction from their attempts to smuggle stuff into Mexico. Watching Pernell Roberts (the airport administrator), Clu Gulager (the airport security chief) and Van Johnson (a newspaper columnist who happens to be in the airport at the time) try to assemble the clues, figure out what's happening, and scramble to thwart the bad guys before the bad guys can 'get away with it'...is mildly diverting in the same way that the 'caper plots' from "Hawaii Five-O" used to be.But because this series pilot is supposed to be setting us up for a series similar to "The Grand Hotel", and not just a detective series, the filmmakers have to flesh things out with human interest and character tags. So we get Pernell's battle with the senators over modernizing the airport. We get a divorce subplot between Van Johnson and his wife which in turn generates an ABC after school special segment with son Davey, who is so upset by his parents' impending separation that he...um....gets into an unguarded plane on the tarmac and takes off. (What?????). And we also get a public service announcement subplot in which it is revealed that businessmen tend to be stuffy and prejudiced, while guitar playing hippies and airport security chiefs can relate to each other. Or something.The results are, well....watchable. All the actors here are competent in a made-for-TV way. Pernell Roberts' character is incredibly smug and self-important, but I think that was a deliberate choice by the director and the screenwriter - don't forget that "McGarrett", the hero of "Hawaii Five-O" (a very successful hit in the same era) was also arrogant and hard-nosed, and I think the writers were hoping to mimic that series success with a similar protagonist.But it's obvious that the makers of "SFI" spectacularly misjudged the drawing power of the airport setting in generating viewer interest, especially when they made the airport and everything in it muddy orange and brown. And the screenplay is pretty much stuck in 2nd gear for the duration of the film. You've never seen so much screen time devoted to actors giving each other meaningful glances in your life.Anyway, no one bought it, and the pilot sunk without a trace, to be revived by "Mystery Science Theater" over 30 years later. The MST coverage is mildly amusing (as always) and helps you pass the time until the pilot winds to its inevitable close and everyone lives happily ever after.