We ballyhooed the TV career of Jerry Jameson in our review of one of the few times the prolific director was called up to the bigs with the 1974 A.I.P release The Bat People. Jameson was also behind one of the ‘70s quintessential box office “disaster” smashes: Airport ’77, which was backed by Universal Pictures. And since this ABC-TV “Movie of the Week” was known during its overseas television and theatrical runs as Airport ’85, you know why Jameson is here . . . and where this film is heading. Of course, Lee Majors is here, and the reason he’s here is because Jameson directed Majors in several episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man. The duo previously worked together on High Noon, Part II: The Return of Will Kane (1980) and The Cowboy and the Ballerina (1984). (Jameson also gave us the TV movie knockoff of 20th Century Fox’s The Towering Inferno with Terror on the 40th Floor (1974).)

The brains behind this production is Henry Winkler — and “The Fonz” made sure John Dkystra’s contributions to the film were front and center in those promo materials. And the Airport series* of films were box-office hot in the ’70s and, as we learned from our 2020 end of the year “TV Movie Week” tribute, the Big Three networks relished stuffing their disaster hangers with a slew of low-budgeted airline action flicks**. So, Star Wars meets Airport, it is!

And to whip that pitch into shape, TV scribes Robert Malcolm Young and Peter R. Brooke didn’t take any chances in concocting their Star Wars TV cash-in: they simply pinched from the 1969 Gregory Peck sci-fi borefest that was Marooned (1969) — and changed out the “Ironman One” capsule from that film with Starflight One, an SST-styled supersonic jet successor, and the Doppelganger Rescue shuttle with the Columbia. The script also bears striking similarities to the 1982 novel Orbit by Thomas Block (Amazon Kindle), but those similarities were chalked up to coincidence and not plagiarism. And if it all seems a bit familiar, like ABC-TV’s SST Death Flight familiar from 1977, then it probably is.

As is the case with the Big Three network flicks of the pre-cable epoch, the passenger cabin is loaded with lots of familiar character actor and TV series faces, in this case we have Hal Linden, Lauren Hutton, Gail Strickland, George DiCenzo, Tess Harper, and the always game Ray Milland — who you’ll remember was in ABC-Universal’s Battlestar Galactica feature film, but opted out of the series. And yes, that is Terry “Uncle Bernie” Keiser on board — who also co-starred with Majors in Steel (1980; also reviewed this week).

So, the poster . . . along with the Star Wars and Airport connections says it all, right?

Okay, so we have the big, media-covered maiden flight for Starflight One, a hypersonic jet that can travel from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, in two hours. Of course, there’s romance and corporate intrigue on the flight, with Cody Briggs (Lee Majors) two-timing his wife Janet (Tess Harper) via Erica Hansen (Lauren Hutton), a media relations rep with the airline run owned by, you guessed it, they ubiquitously gruffy Ray Milland. And we’ve got a greedy crook using the flight to transport some stolen gold out of the country, and Terry Keiser is on board as an equally greedy communication magnate stressed out over launching that crucial Saturn V stock footage (off the cost of Australia!) to put his satellite into orbit to corner the world’s TV market.

Uh, oh. The Saturn V goes FUBAR and the rocket debris scatters into Starlight One’s flight path. To avoid disaster, Briggs climbs the jet — and stumbles into orbital velocity. And the Starlight has no heat shields . . . thus the film’s alternate VHS home video titling as Starlight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land. So, while Dykstra’s on his union-mandated lunch break, it’s time to cue that shuttle Columbia stock footage (not once, but twice!) to deliver emergency fuel on the first flight, and some flimsy flexible conduit to save the 70-plus passengers on the second flight. Bottom line: If you want to see a very game Hal Linden drifting through a flexi-space tunnel to safety, then this is your film.

Truth be told, in spite of its low-budget, Dykstra’s effects are pretty good . . . well, those those outer space scenes of astronauts drifting about is more of the Salvage I variety, really. And more like when Battlestar Galactica: TOS tanked in the ratings and the effects went to cheesy feldercarb courtesy of budget cuts. So, sorry, please leave those “Star Wars” claims at the spacegate, Kubrick. This was certainly fun-filled when we were Lucas-drunk in our tweens and early teens, but this — unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running (which Dykstra also worked on), and Star Wars — doesn’t hold well to the test of time. But it’s still a hell of a lot better than that stranded-in-space hokum Murder In Space (1985) starring the not-even-they-can-save-it-cast of Wilford Brimley, Michael Ironside, and Martin Balsam — a detective-cum-murder mystery-in-space TV movie plotting trope that didn’t get better with the likes of Murder by Moonlight (1989) and Trapped in Space (1994).

You can stream Starlight One on Amazon Prime or through EPIX’s own Amazon platform. You can also check out the trailer and TV promo.

* We reviewed all of the Airport movies with our “Watch the Series: Airport” feature.

** You can catch up with all of those TV movie airline disaster flicks with our “Airline Disasters TV Movie Round-Up” feature.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Editor’s Note: This review originally ran on December 8, 2020, as part of our “Fast and Furious Week Part II” of film reviews. We’re taking a second, tweaked look at the film as part of our tribute to Lee Majors this week.

Damn you, Burt Reynolds! Damn you, Mel Gibson! And damn you, Canadian film industry! For we blame each of you for this utterly dumb collision of Smokey and the Bandit and Mad Max*. And does anyone remember 1979’s Americathon with “Mr. President” John Ritter? And we’ll blame Burt twice because, since this is a cross-country race to a “free zone” in California where there are no vehicular rules, we have a touch of Cannonball Run. What the hell, let’s blame David Carradine, too. For if 1976’s Cannonball had a jet plane, we’d have The Last Chase.

Yes. You heard us right. This is a post-apoc flick about a car vs. a jet plane. For in a petrol-void world, the last chase will not be between a futuristic, Spaghetti Westerneque cop and punk-mohawked warlord: the end shall be waged between a Porsche driven by an ex-bionic man and a fighter jet piloted by an ex-penguin.

Remember Firebird 2015 with Darren McGavin? Well, if you thought that future was FUBAR’d. . . .

In this futuristic tale that takes place in the year 2011, Lee Majors stars as our faux “The Bandit” and Mickey from Rocky, yes, Burgess Meredith, stars as our defacto “Sheriff Buford T. Justice.” Only the Pengy is a burnt-out, ex-hot shot Air Force pilot assigned to fire up a mothballed fighter jet to chase down Major’s ex-race car driver gas scofflaw. And with cars and motor racing banned, the powers that be use Lee’s mothballed celebrity as a government shill to pitch the “new order” to the oppressed masses.

And I, desperate for entertainment in my youth, went to my town’s little duplex to see this.

Shame on me.

But not shame on Lee Majors, as his Fawcett-Majors Productions was already kaput when this went into production. So the blame for this is squarely on Crown International’s shoulders, as Lee was only an actor for hire. Yes, we speak of the same Crown International whose drive-in oeuvre fell into public domain and has served as grey-marketed home video fodder for years — but has also given us Allegheny County frolicking lads many-a-gleeful Mill Creek 12-Pack Box Sets (Savage Cinema and Explosive Cinema) to enjoy and fill out our personal film catalogs.

It was expected that The Last Chase — courtesy of its sci-fi plot in a post-Star Wars cinema world — would break Lee Majors, finally (and deserving) — unlike his first four films The Norseman, Killer Fish, Steel, and Agency — into a theatrical career. Sadly, as with most of Crown’s films, The Last Chase suffered, not so much from its Rollerballesque story about a man’s quest for individuality in an corporate-run, Gestapo-like police state, but from its ubiquitously, oh so Crown low budget. And let’s not forget that Crown’s other Star Wars bid, Galaxina, was another one of their duds.

In a Devil’s Advocate world: If Lee’s Canadian-made, post-apoc bid had Warner Bros.’ and MGM Studios’ production scope of their respective ’70s apoc-flicks The Omega Man and Soylent Green made with Charlton Heston . . . well, Lee Majors would have had a theatrical career analogous to big Chuck, there’s no doubting that fact. Could you see Lee Majors in James Caan’s role as Jonathan E. in Rollerball? With Lee’s football acumen, I sure can. Somebody, call Stallone and cast Lee in the next The Expendables flick. Or buddy cop him with Bruce Willis.

Sadly, The Last Chase was another Crown International hopeful that tanked at the box office — one that coincided with Lee having to deal with the fact that he was contractually obligated to be on location filming in Canada — while his marriage was failing. And that he had to see Farrah and her new lover, Ryan O’Neill (The Driver), paraded around the tabloids. It’s believed the culmination of the film’s failure and his wife’s affair during filming led to Lee’s decision to return to television — with The Fall Guy — and give up on feature films. For if not for this film, his marriage could have been saved.

Argh! No freebie uploads? What the hell? This is a Crown International Pictures production, after all, and their entire catalog in the public domain. Oh, well. We did find this 3:00 opening credits clip, a trailer, an alternate-extended trailer, and a segment of the first 30-minutes, with Part 2 and Part 3. The Last Chase was originally released on VHS by Vestron Video (now a division of Lions Gate Entertainment), which licensed the film to DVD in May 2011 through Code Red Releasing.

* While we’ve never reviewed Mad Max itself, we certainly reviewed all of its knockoffs with our “Atomic Dust Bin of Apocalyptic Films ” Part 1 and Part 2 round-up featurettes packed with links to all of our reviews. We also discuss the awesome, Porsche 917-Chaparral hybrid from The Last Chase in our “Ten Post-Apocalyptic Vehicles” featurette.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Editor’s Note: We planned our “Lee Majors Week” before we came up with our month-long February blowout of Mill Creek box sets . . . and it just so happened this Lee Majors ditty appeared on Mill Creek’s Excellent Eighties 50-movie set (Agency). So, actually, this April review of Agency isn’t a repost: the Mill Creek review from February is the repost. Not that anyone cares.

A millionaire is suspected of buying an ad agency to use it as a way of brainwashing the public for his political ends. Hmm . . . subliminal messaging through inaudible sounds and images hidden in TV audio signals and magazine spreads . . . John Carpenter’s They Live, anyone?

The millionaire here is the mysterious Ted Quinn (Robert Mitchum) who buys out the giant Montreal ad agency Porter & Stripe where Philip Morgan (Lee Majors) serves as its top copywriter and project manager. Of course, as with any corporate takeover, half of the firm’s staff is soon blown out the door and replaced by “Quinn’s people.” And Morgan is getting the old “do you like your job” trope when he complains about being kept out of the loop on the firm’s new accounts.

Next thing you know, the firm’s geeky-and-too-nosey-for-his-own-good Sam Goldstein (very familiar Canadian actor Saul Rubinek), who discovered Quinn is using the firm’s new slew of commercial spots to influence a political election, ends up dead. Now it’s up to Lee and Valerie Perrine, as his love interest, natch, to get to the bottom of the advertising-cum-political tomfoolery.

I love Lee Majors, and Robert Mitchum is always cool in-the-role (but barely here; this is a Lee Majors joint, after all), but when cheapo Canadian tax shelters films masquerade as an American-made film by casting beloved U.S. actors in lead roles, what we usual end up with is, not a theatrical film, but a telefilm that pisses us off by baiting us with Lee Majors.

If this had been made in the early ’70s by a major U.S. studio, say MGM or 20th Century Fox — and cast Charlton Heston as the ad man discovering the subliminal political campaign — and had Paddy Chayefsky adapt Paul Gottlieb’s superior, best-selling novel for Sidney Lumet to direct — Agency could have been a twisted sci-fi version of the Academy Award-winning Network. Or we could have had Madison Avenue taken to task in a political paranoia thriller that reminded of director Alan J. Pakula and screenwriter Robert Towne’s The Parallax View.

I love my Lee Majors joints, but — through no fault of his own (his Fawcett-Majors Productions didn’t back this one) — Agency is a flat-as-a-pancake conspiracy thriller providing a non-intriguing conspiracy devoid of thrills. If you’re in the market for sci-fi conspiracy thrillers of the ’80s HBO-variety, then stick with Micheal Crichton’s Looker from 1981 starring Albert Finney — at least that one had some computer 3D modeling and funky light-hypnosis guns to wow us. Of course, when it comes to subliminal conspiracies of the Canadian variety, none is finer than David Cronenberg’s Videodrome.

You can watch Agency on You Tube or watch it as a free-with-ads stream courtesy of IMDb TV’s Amazon Prime channel (caveat: both are fuzzy VHS-to-DVD rips). In 2001, Anchor Bay issued a now out-of-print DVD version, which, no surprise, is the best of the DVD transfers in the market. If you’re a Lee Majors Canadian film completist, then you’ll want to seek out the 1984 TV movie The Cowboy and the Ballerina (we found a clip on You Tube).

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

As is the case with any actor who achieves a level of fame in the TV and film realms, Lee Majors, courtesy of his clout with The Six Million Dollar Man, was able to parlay his star into his own production company, Fawcett-Majors Productions, co-run with his then wife, Farrah Fawcett (the company dissolved upon their 1982 divorce). To help establish the company, during his 1977 contract negotiations for the series, Majors wanted his production shingle brought on as an independent producer in association with Universal Studios. While the negotiations soured between Majors, Universal, and ABC television, it didn’t matter: after five seasons, the show’s ratings, as well as those of its sister show, The Bionic Woman, declined, and both series were simultaneous cancelled in 1978.

Fawcett-Majors Productions made its feature film debut with the Vietnam war drama, Just a Little Inconvenience (1977) starring Majors, which aired on U.S. television. The company also produced the Farrah Fawcett-starring Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978) and Sunburn (1979) — both which flopped at the box office (and Saturn 3 sealed the deal on Farrah’s theatrical career). Meanwhile, Majors chose three films for himself, each which became popular, much-run HBO favorites: The Norseman (1978), Killer Fish (1979), and this action adventure — which, according to a 2015 interview with screenwriter Leigh Chapman, started out as Look Down and Die — about a rogue crew of The Magnificent Seven-styled steel workers against an evil corporation to complete a skyscraper project.

Now, if Leigh Chapman’s names rings a bell, that’s because she’s named dropped often around B&S About Movies with the blaxploitation classic Truck Turner, Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, Chuck Norris’s The Octagon (1980), and The Fast and Furious precursor King of the Mountain.

For his director, Majors picked the Roger Corman-bred Steve Carver, who brought us the Pam Grier blaxploitationer The Arena, along with the mob epics Big Bad Mama and Capone. Remember when Hollywood tried to turn Heavyweight Boxing champ Ken Norton into a movie star? Steve Carver directed it: Drum. Then there’s Carver’s Chuck Norris two-fer with An Eye for An Eye and Lone Wolf McQuade. And we recently reviewed his own Fast and Furious precursor: Fast Charlie . . . the Moonbeam Rider.

Returning to his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, and filmed in the surrounding Fayette County, Majors, acting as Executive Producer, pulled together all of the usual actors we care about here at B&S About Movies as his burly crew of steel workers: Jennifer O’Neill (The Psychic) as his construction damsel-in-distress, Art Carney (who co-starred with Farrah in Sunburn) as Pignose, George Kennedy (Top Line) as Big Lew, Terry Kiser (forever known as “Bernie” from Weekend at Bernie’s) as the ladies’ man, Valentino, character actor extraordinaire Albert Salmi (Escape from Planet of the Apes) as Tank, Robert Tessier (who got his start in the biker romp The Born Losers and co-starred with Burt Reynolds in The Longest Yard) as Cherokee, and the great Richard Lynch (Ground Rules) cast-against-type as a good guy (well, almost) with his character, Dancer.

It all starts with construction magnate Big Lew Cassidy — a guy who likes to get up the girders and get his hands dirty — who falls to his death (A.J Bacons, the stuntman who doubled for Kennedy, died when the airbag split on impact). So in steps Big Lew’s inexperienced, spunky daughter Cass Cassidy . . . and she’s determined to finish off the last nine floors and meet her father’s deadline before the bank forecloses.

But how?

By recruiting the best “ramrod” in the business. But according to Pignose: one’s dead, one’s on a project in Canada, and one’s in Saudi Arabia. So that only leaves the once great Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) Mike Cattan (Lee Majors), but he washed-out of the steel biz to become a long-haul trucker. And, to be honest: Mike’s the only one crazy enough to fly to an asteroid to drill through a solid-iron rock attempt topping off an impossible nine floors in three weeks.

So, once Cass gets the reluctant ex-ramrod on board with the ol’ “I thought I was meeting a real man” speech, they’re off to recruit the “best of the best” (now this really is starting to sound a lot like Armageddon, sans the asteroid) to finish the job before Cassie’s slimy uncle Eddie (Harris Yulin!) and his partner Kellin (the always welcomed heavy, R.G Armstrong!) absorbs his estranged brother’s company.

While this Majors theatrical hopeful played in duplexes, triplexes and drive-ins, Steel — along with Agency starring Robert Mitchum and The Last Chase with Burgess Meredith — bombed at the box office. And the failure of the earlier The Norseman and Killer Fish didn’t help either. And, with that, Majors returned to a successful five-year run with ABC-TV’s The Fall Guy and a succession of successful TV movies throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, such as Starflight One, A Smoky Mountain Christmas, Fire: Trapped on the 37th Floor, and The Cover Girl Murders (which also starred Jennifer O’Neill).

Opinions vary on Steel. You can chalk it up to my youthful nostalgia for those HBO days of yore, but I love this movie and think it’s one Majors’s best. This is good ol’ fashioned, non-CGI filmmaking with real men on top of real steel girders, real prefabbed steel floors dangling from choppers, and real steel girders crushing real stretch Cadillac limos. And you can watch it all on You Tube.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.