Ever since a preview for "The Poseidon Adventure" first scared me away from a deep-sea fishing trip with my uncle in 1972, I have been compelled to watch practically every disaster movie ever made (yes, even the SUPER crappy ones made-for-TV).
A little tribute, then:
The movie that freaked me out in when I was a kid. Even though I saw it over and over, I always dreaded the moment when the "dead burned guy" appeared in the fiery upside-down kitchen. The commentary by Pamela Sue Martin on the Special Edition DVD indicates that she hated seeing him there as well.
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"One of the Ten Most Popular Pictures of Our Time."
My point exactly.
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All the big stars were constantly in peril during the 70s. Look at poor Ava Gardner! I’m sure she didn’t have a clue what she was in for when Universal talked her into this. When it came time for "Earthquake" to premiere on TV, NBC aired it as "The Big Event" and added many extra scenes - mostly of Debra Lee Scott sitting in an airplane with her fiancee, mundanely discussing the fate of Los Angeles.
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The lady with glass in her face in "Earthquake." When we first moved to Los Angeles and I got a job in a tall office building, this image would come back to haunt me...I would literally scamper from the building for fear or ending up like this. Now that I work at the top of an even TALLER building, I still sometimes think about it being my fate!
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Here's the one-sheet for Airport 1975. Wouldn't a small plane striking the front of a 747 travelling at 500 miles per hour pretty much rip the whole upper deck apart? If you look closely, you can see one of the only fatalities in this disaster - the co-pilot zipping out the little hole in the cockpit. And bottom right, there's Helen Reddy as the intrusive singing nun Sister Ruth!
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Karen Black as Stewardess Nancy in "Airport 1975." Cross-eyed and helpless, you can practically hear her screaming "Oh my God, something hit us!!" Fantastic.
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Two years later and ALL NEW! Bigger and better? Lee Grant as the bitchy wife more than makes up for the appearance of annoying blind singer Tom Sullivan as a saccharine piano player. Mercifully, he dies halfway through. Actually, there are quite a few casualties in this one!
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OMG - If you visited the Universal Studios Tour in 1978, you might have been lucky enough to get selected to participate in the "Airport '77 Screen Test!" I would have killed for this chance...
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1978 also saw the arrival of "The Swarm" from producer Irwin Allen. All through the 70s we were told that killer bees would overtake North America and wipe us all out, so why not build a disaster movie around all that hype? I actually was old enough at this point to eagerly await the release of this film to theaters, only to be sorely disappointed at the content - it was kinda boring with long, long dialogue scenes and not nearly cheesy enough! According to performer Bradford Dillman, "The Swarm was populated by a swarm of stars prostituting themselves...But how could I point a finger at any of them when I was the busiest hooker in the game?"
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OK, look at this and tell me that a good time isn't in store! Please note that some of the biggest stars - Jimmie "J.J." Walker and Martha Raye - aren't even pictured! And the answer to the question posed in the ad copy above is an implausible "yes," as long as George Kennedy is able to open the cockpit window and fire off a flare gun while flying at the speed of sound.
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By the time this movie came out in 1980, Irwin Allen was pretty much done with the genre, and so were audiences. Still, the crossing the lava bridge sequence was pretty good...Burgess Meredith, a blinded Ernest Borgnine and some helpless kids? Come on - great!
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By 1997, disasters were back...and, boy, were they pissed! Contrast and compare with the volcano flick above starring Paul Newman. Crazy-ass Anne Heche the new Bissett? I think not. I still can’t pass by the Beverly Center without thinking of the film, though!
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Look at this - an inflatable ship disaster available in the mid-1990s! If we would have had this when I was a kid...I mean, come on! I was throwing lawn furniture into the neighbors pool pretending that it was the flooding ballroom on the "S.S. Poseidon."
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Roland Emmerich seems to have inherited Irwin Allen’s penchant for disasters. I saw this in a theater crowded with sciencey-types from the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena and all they did was scoff and jeer from beginning to end. Don’t ya get it people? It’s supposed to be over the top!
