Redartz: Greetings, all! Today we will consider those classic Bronze Age popcorn flicks known as "disaster movies". You remember them: pick a crisis situation, add a cast of varied celebrities and actors in peril, shake well (especially in the case of "Earthquake"), and you have the formula for a 70's box office hit!
Which ones were your favorites? What actors/actresses do you recall, and did these films mean death for their careers? How about those special effects? What about some more recent disaster films, such as "Titanic" , "Twister" and "Dante's Peak"? And have you gone 'back into the water' yet?
15 comments:
Ohhh, I dunno fellas--- I'd maybe move to pull JAWS off of the round-table for this one. On the grounds that a) it's really a horror/thriller movie more than a disaster film, b) it doesn't fit the formula as well (no single event, no glut of fading stars), and c) Geeze, JAWS is such a GREAT film, unlike pretty much all of the other ones.
My primary reference for so many of these is their requisite MAD Magazine parody! POSEIDON ADVENTURE's was a particularly fine one-! That's also the one that still gets my thumbs-up as a legitimately enjoyable movie-- and was the one that started the whole genre, correct? (Oh man, and who doesn't love "There's Got To Be A Morning After" when it starts playing at the end, when the survivors come poppin' up out of the hull? Ha-!)
I'm just into the 70's in the INSIDE OSCAR book I'm reading, and according to those fellas, neither Hollywood nor the broad swath of critics had ANY regard for AIRPORT as a movie-- it was pretty much disdained by all. . . except for the fact that it printed money. Hence the immediate copycat bandwagon.
Airport '79: The Concorde--? Saw that in a 2nd-run movie house my freshman year of college. Truly one of the worst major pictures I've ever seen. When beloved, big ol' George Kennedy has a fireside love-scene wrapped in a bearskin rug, well. . . (although I actually would now probably have a greater admiration for that kind of courage, ha!). Extra negative demerits for whatever writer/director/producer decided that a flippin' flying oil-barge like the Concorde would have been able to fly a full loop-de-loop and skip off the surface of the ocean in a successful, "old barnstormin' pro" effort to avoid a missile. The spontaneous, unified chorus of, "Oh, come ON!"'s was the most enjoyable moment in the whole movie.
Maybe. . . maybe they actually came to be called Disaster Flicks because, try as we might, the public simply couldn't turn their gaze away. . . ??
Heh.
HB
One word...Airplane!
Jaws is one of my favorite movies of all time, in any genre. I can watch it over and over. Ever read the novel the movie is based on? Blecch. Soap opera and boring. Spielberg is a genius to have been able to create such an awe-inspiring movie from that piece of dreck.
Poseidon Adventure is absolutely the best disaster flick. It was so over-the-top, but the characters were loveable. Gene Hackman was on a whole 'nuther level from the rest of the actors, and his Reverend Scott is one of the great movie heroes imho.
I remember liking The Swarm, starring Michael Kane. It came out around the time Grease was huge. I don't remember much about Swarm, though. Meteor was another I remember watching but can't remember much about. The comic adaptation had a weird Frank Miller cover and some great Gene Colan art, though!
Easily The Poseidon Adventure. I remember seeing both Earthquake and Towering Inferno in the cinema. Towering Inferno, I enjoyed. Earthquake was a major disappointment when the Sensaround - or whatever it was called that they had fitted to mimic an earthquake striking - did nothing but gently vibrate the seats instead of totally demolishing the cinema like I'd expected it to. It did seem quite lazy of them not to be willing to destroy the entire cinema just for my entertainment.
I also saw Meteor at the cinema but it didn't make much impact on me and I saw it in a tiny little theatre the size of a shoebox which probably robbed the film of much of its epic drama.
Like Colin said, we should acknowledge Airplane. I do also feel that The Big Bus deserves an honorary mention when it comes to disaster movie spoofs.
I haven't seen too many disaster movies, not even Poseidon Adventure. I did see Towering Inferno, but only because Steve McQueen was in it and Steve McQueen is cool.
HB and Colin J- yeah, "Jaws" classification here is borderline. I was thinking of some of those 'animals gone bad' films ( such as Swarm, thanks Groove) but couldn't recall the names. I remember one about dogs gone crazy too. Probably a good reason those didn't stick in my memory...
Colin B- Surely nobody could argue with your mention of "Airplane". And I know, don't call you Shirley...
Steve Does Comics- great mention of "Meteor", and even better assessment of its lack of "impact" on you (nyuk,nyuk,nyuk)!
The Big Bus was a spoof? I sort of genuinely didn't know that.
Hiya,
Does anybody remember Kentucky Fried Movie and the trailer for 'That's Armageddon'? A fake trailer for a fake movie that was more entertaining than that Michael Bey movie that came out years ago!
There was another film that I remember from the Seventies called 'Drive In' where a cheaply made disaster film, appropriately named 'Disaster '76' was playing, with audio out of sync, while a slice of life story was going on among the viewers. Not a good film but entertaining in it's own right.
Somehow the genre just lent itself to mockery.
Now for the question, did appearing in these films wreck anyone's career; like everything else some people were on a downwards trajectory while others were up and comers. Paul Newman made several of these things during a rough patch in his professional life but still had a resurgence later on.
Hey HB, I read in the book 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls' that a theater full of film distributors and theater owners got up and gave Airplane a standing ovation. Not because the film was good but because they instantly recognized it as one that would pack in the audience.
Seeya,
pfgavigan
I remember seeing Inferno with a buddy who'd seen it 3 times before. All movie long he was blurting out "Don't open that door!" and such. It was like a preview for audience behavior at the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Hey... Could RRPS be considered a disaster show of some sort? It does start with a severe rain storm!
Say PFG, AirPLANE or AirPORT for that standing-O? Although, yeah, the theater owners caught on quick to what was fillin' the seats either way. Jimmy Stewart played the owner (or something) of the airline or airport in the second or third of the Airport films, and you just cringed seeing such a peerless movie start slogging through a meaningless, small-ish, poorly-written part. Ugh. The only person I can think of that got a career re-birth of sorts was Helen Hayes, when she did indeed win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for that first Airport film. She was hokey and amusing and entertaining, yup, but c'mon. . .oscar-worthy? Still, she was a pretty busy little lady for a number of years afterward because of the re-discovery.
And I don't think Poseidon Adventure did anyone any harm-- a lot of high-B-listers in that cast. Well heck, and as I look at the poster--- at least six of those folks had an academy award on their mantle at home-! So not hurtin' for troupers, nope.
Hey, remember the series finale of the show EMERGENCY? I think it was done as an event/movie-for-TV? IIRC, much of it revolved around an earthquake or a jet crash or similar disaster scenario-- and it never actually wrapped up with Johnny and Roy. We ultimately just panned away and out as everyone did their best to save lives and contain the situation. "It never ends" was clearly the message being delivered, which was kinda neat an unconventional.
HB
Hiya,
Hey HB, you're right, AirPORT was the movie in question.
But remember, the TV show you mentioned was Emergency!. The exclamation mark was part of the title.
Seeya,
pfg
For some reason I seem to always stop and watch "Meteor" when it comes on TV, I don't really know why. Sean Connery is rather relentlessly stern and Brian Keith as a Russian is downright hilarious. It's a super cheesy movie but doesn't have a clue it's cheesy I think.
Less cheesy but rather dated is the classic "When Worlds Collide" which is a movie mired in its time and for the era pretty strong visually.
Another movie which is a fave is "Monolith Monsters" which uses the meteor trick and makes the impact slow motion as the stones rise and fall relentlessly heading toward civilization. The pacing of this Universal sci-fi classic is wonderful and it has some great small scares.
Modern iterations like "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact" are pretty good, but I tend to watch the bits I like now and ignore the other stuff. Special effects sure make them zany.
Rip Off
Haven't seen MONOLITH MONSTERS in years, Rip. Great call! More like a horror movie, really (marketed as such)- and a total B-picture-- but remarkably memorable! (That poor little girl in the iron lung-- trying to not turn to stone. . . )
HB
Is Planet of the Apes a disaster movie? I mean, you know, human civilization ends and the apes take over.
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