Category Archives: Disaster Flicks

Superman (1978)

Posted on February 16, 2025 | 9 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: The Man of Steel.

As the planet Krypton gets set to be destroyed by its exploding sun, Jor-El (Marlon Brando) and his wife Lara (Susannah York) put their child on a spaceship that takes him to the planet earth. It is there that his spaceship crash lands into a wheat field that his spotted by Jonathan (Glenn Ford) and Martha (Phyllis Thaxter) who take the child in and treat him as their own. The boy is named Clark (Christopher Reeve) and as he grows, he begins to show amazing abilities including running faster than is humanely possible and incredible strength. Once he becomes an adult, he gets a job as a reporter at the Daily Planet newspaper where he meets fellow reporter Lois Lane (Margot Kidder). He even saves her, while dressed as a superhero, from a helicopter accident and becomes known initially as the ‘caped wonder’ before finally being coined as Superman. His publicity attracts the attention of criminal mastermind Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) who devises a plan to steal missiles and use them to create an earthquake along the San Andreas fault and thus casting off coastal California into the ocean and turning the desert land he purchased into prime real estate. Superman attempts to stop him, but Lex has found one thing that can stop him: a meteorite known as kryptonite.

At the time this film, which suffered from numerous behind-the-scenes problems and infighting, was made it was the most expensive one ever produced with a whopping $55 million budget. While the effects were mesmerizing for many back-in-the-day I don’t know if they still all hold-up. The flying segments particularly over the Statue of Liberty is impressive to a degree but can’t quite equal today’s technology and appears like two people in front of a greenscreen as does the giant red sun that moves in to destroy Kyrpton. Watching the young Clark Kent running alongside a train looks tacky too like he’s being held up by invisible wires, which he was, and his feet aren’t really ever touching the ground. In all fairness though the earthquake segment and the destruction of the Hoover Dam and the shaking of the Golden Gate Bridge remains top notch.

The script though, which takes on quite a lot and had to be slimmed down from its original 500-page version that was written by Mario Puzo, feels rushed at times and glosses over certain things that I felt should’ve been a little more drawn-out particularly when the Kents find the boy crash land in the field. The film makes it look like they just left the remains of the spaceship in the field making me think other people in the area would’ve also come upon it later and would start a panic that some alien had come out of it and invaded the town. Later on, we come to realize that the ship got hidden inside their barn, but there’s no scene showing them transporting it, or how they went about doing that, which I felt should’ve been put in for the simple sake of clarity.

Watching Superman orbit the earth in an attempt to get it to spin backwards and supposedly ‘turn back time’ is kind of cool to see and an interesting concept though not totally plausible. Making the world rotate the other way would certainly change some things like having the sun rise in the west instead of the east and have the ocean waves go in a different direction among other things, but causing everything to essentially ‘rewind’ and go back to the way they were even bringing certain people who had died suddenly back to life just wasn’t completely convincing though it’s not enough to hurt the movie as a whole.

Most fans will likely tell me I’m quibbling about the Clark Kent disguise though when you really think about it it’s not much of a disguise at all. I admit watching this muscular guy dressed in a suit and acting all clumsy and wimpy is amusing especially the way Reeve plays it but besides combing his hair in a different direction than when he’s Superman the only other difference is that he wears glasses. However, that would be tantamount to saying someone who does wear glasses but then comes to work one day without them would not be recognized by any of his friends, or co-workers especially when he’s still speaking in the same voice making me believe that Lois and Jimmy, played by Marc McClure, should and would’ve caught on to this pretty quickly. I realize the comic book did it this way, but when it got updated into a movie, they should’ve reenvisioned it a little by adding more to the Clark get-up like besides just glasses he’d also have a mustache, or goatee and speak a bit differently, so having those close to him not catch-on would be more understandable.

I think what I enjoyed most was Hackman, who didn’t play a lot of villains during his career but is highly enjoyable here. Initially he didn’t want to take the part as he felt playing a campy character would tarnish his reputation of being a serious actor, but the change of pace does him good and proves if anything how versatile he is. His refusal not to shave his head, as the Lex Luthor in the comic is bald, works in his favor as his hair gets styled differently in each scene in order to represent him wearing a wig, which creates a creative visual. Valerie Perrine is great too as his girlfriend Miss Teschmacher who helps contrast his delusional personality with her more grounded sensibilities and I just loved the way he’d yell out her name every time he got annoyed with her, which is the comedy highlight.

The rest of the supporting cast though, made up of big name starts like Trevor Howard, Maria Schell, and even Larry Hagman didn’t seem needed and given such few lines I was surprised why they’d even take the roles unless it was because of the money. Brando is an equal waste. He’s given top billing and paid an exorbitant amount of money including a percentage of the profits despite refusing to memorize his dialogue and even having his lines written on the baby’s diaper for him to read off of as he puts the child into the spaceship. Had the producers skipped the unimportant ‘star power’ and cast lesser knowns in these roles they could’ve saved themselves a lot of money, which in retrospect might’ve lessened the tensions they had with director Richard Donner for going over budget and ultimately lead to his firing and a very tumultuous follow-up Superman II, which will be covered in the next review.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 10, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 23 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Richard Donner

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Campy Comedy, Classic, Disaster Flicks, Movies based on Comic Books, Movies with Nudity

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Avalanche Express (1979)

Posted on January 24, 2025 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Defector on a train.

Based on the 1977 Colin Forbes novel of the same name the story centers around General Marenkov (Robert Shaw) a soviet agent who’s decided to defect to the west. Harry (Lee Marvin) is the CIA agent in charge of extraditing Marenkov back to the U.S., but to do so they must travel via train across Europe. Nikolai (Maximilian Schell) is a KGB agent assigned to stop Marenkov’s escape and tries many ways to stymie his trip before finally settling on creating an avalanche, which will not only impede the train ride that Marenkov and Harry are on, but if done right should completely destroy it and end the lives of everyone inside.

The film was noted for its many difficulties during the shoot including the death of its director Mark Robson from a heart attack with only 2-weeks left of filming forcing Monte Hellman to step in and complete the production. The biggest problem though was that during the post-production it was deemed that the opening scene, which featured Shaw speaking to his soviet counterparts in broken English, should be redone with Russian dialogue. However, Shaw too had already died from a sudden heart attack in August and thus was no longer able to come-in for reshoots, so they settled on his voice being dubbed by Robert Rietti for that scene. This would’ve been fine had they stopped there, but instead they came to the conclusion that for the sake of consistency Shaw’s voice should be dubbed by Rietti for the entire film, which was a huge mistake.

Shaw has a highly distinctive and wonderfully articulate delivery and for the viewer to miss out on that is downright criminal. I think most audiences could’ve forgiven that his voice sounded a bit different during the opening bit and probably wouldn’t have even cared or noticed since they were so busy focusing on the subtitles anyway. It becomes like a bait and switch, since Shaw’s name headlines the cast, but since somebody else does his speaking it’s like he’s not really in it and thus a big rip-off to his fans who came to see the movie simply because of him.

The special effects are equally abhorrent. There’s been many movies that have created fake snow scenes, but this one has to be the cheapest looking one yet. The falling flakes look more like Styrofoam and the white stuff on the ground resembles foam from a bathtub especially as the vehicles slush their way through it like it’s a white liquid. The sequence showing the train gliding down the tracks is clearly of the miniature variety and will fool no one.

The casting is a mess too especially the appearance of Joe Namath, a great football player, but a threadbare actor who has no business being in a big budget Hollywood picture. He’d be okay for a TV-movie with other B-performers, but for something that’s supposed to be taken seriously his presence makes the thing even more tacky than it already is. Even stalwart leading man Marvin fails here as he shows no emotion even when it’s warranted, like when he gets word that train they’re on is headed for disaster and yet he remains hyper stoic like he’s a robot with no feelings. Having him get shot dead early on only to return later isn’t the gotcha they thought it would be as I was predicting he’d reappear as there’s simply no way a big-name star like him would sign onto a movie just to be killed off right away.

Linda Evans is good simply because she has the ability of playing a cold, bitchy lady quite well. It could almost be described as her forte and her snippy comments and icy behavior towards Marvin during the first half are engaging and helps give the proceedings a bit of a dramatic flair. Turning the two into lovers though during the second half ruins all the underlying tension and since they don’t share much of a chemistry anyways having them remain adversarial throughout would’ve worked better.

Schell as the villain is as cardboard as he was playing the bad guy in The Black Hole. His career is long and distinguished, but his success is clearly not in these types of roles though he does at least get the film’s one good line. It comes when he’s told he must go undercover in disguise by playing someone who does not smoke. Since his character is a chain smoker, he panics that he won’t be able to go on without a cigarette and exclaims “That’ll kill me’.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: October 19, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Mark Robson

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD-R (Warner Archive), Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Disaster Flicks, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a train setting, Spy/Espionage

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Hurricane (1979)

Posted on January 11, 2025 | Leave a comment

hurricane

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Tropical cyclone strikes island.

Charlotte (Mia Farrow) is the daughter of Navy Captain Charles (Jason Robards) who was appointed governor of a small island of Alava, which is under U.S. control. She comes to the island for a visit as she hasn’t seen her father in quite a while and immediately becomes attracted to Matangi (Dayton Ka’ne) who works as a houseboy at her father’s estate. A romance blossoms between the two and when her father finds out he puts Matangi in jail on trumped-up charges, but Charlotte is able to find a way for him to escape, but as they go on the run her father sets out to find them and put Matangi back behind bars just as a massive hurricane descends.

The film is a remake of the 1937 movie that was directed by John Ford and in itself an adaptation of the novel of the same name by James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff. After completing the runaway hit King Kong, another remake of a 1930’s movie, producer Dino De Laurentiis became inspired to tackle a second classic from the same era. He was most enthused with this one due to the hurricane effects as he was convinced that with modern technology it could be more vivid than the original and even hired the same man, Glen Robinson, who did the special effects for that one to recreate it here, but with modern film capabilities that had been unavailable when the story was first produced. So much focus was admittedly put into the ending that things like character development, which director Jan Troell had come onboard to work-on, were largely ignored causing Troell to consider it an unpleasant experience and he spent the remainder of his career making films in his homeland of Sweden as he felt after this that working on a Hollywood project wasn’t to his liking.

The casting of Farrow is part of the problem as the role called for a woman in her 20’s even though she was already well into her 30’s, but since she had what Dino described as an ‘eternal face of an 18-year-old’ he decided to hand her the part anyways. Her character though is so one dimensional that her time on the screen isn’t captivating. Ka’ne, who was an Hawaiin surfer with no acting experience, does better than expected though he only did one other movie after this before retiring from the business and working the rest of years as a compost truck driver and hotel doorman. Max Von Sydow is good in support playing a doctor who utters the film’s best line, most likely ad-libbed from his well-known atheist roots where he asks why a painting of Adam would require him to have a belly button since if he was created from dust then he’d have no need for an umbilical cord.

The biggest issue is the romantic angle as it occurs too quickly. An interesting relationship is one that has a challenge and this one should’ve had several as Mia’s father was clearly not going to be happy about her seeing Ka’ne and therefore she should’ve been apprehensive about getting involved, or even suspicious as how did she know he wasn’t just using her for leverage to get the old man to soften his stance on policies Ka’ne wanted changed? Instead, they fall into each other’s arms in a seamless few minutes and the whole first hour is spent with them dreamily swimming around in the ocean in a lovesick fashion, which is dull. Having the character of Moana appear, played by Ariirau Tekararere, who was the woman Ka’ne was arranged to marry, offers some potential, but since she barely speaks and when she does it’s in her native tongue without the benefit of subtitles, her presence doesn’t offer much.

Spoiler Alert!

The finale, which is all about the hurricane, is somewhat exciting, but it’s not perfect. The destruction of the homes appear like they’re miniature models and seeing constant shots of blowing rain becomes tiring, but watching the people leave the church while Priest Trevor Howard continues to pray at the pulpit is kind of funny and having the ship burst through the wall was cool too.

However, I wasn’t exactly sure that the couple really got ‘saved’ at the end like the viewer is supposed to believe. Yes, they survived the storm but were now stuck on a tiny sandbar in the middle of the ocean with no source of food, or transportation. Unless some help came along, which wasn’t guaranteed, they weren’t going to survive long. Thus, it’s not a real ‘happy’ ending because although they weren’t killed right away like the others doesn’t mean they won’t die an even more painful death of starvation.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: April 12, 1979

Runtime: 2 Hours

Rated PG

Director: Jan Troell

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Import Reg. A/B/C)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Disaster Flicks, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Remakes

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Bug (1975)

Posted on May 17, 2024 | Leave a comment

bug

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Underground insects set fires.

A small, rural California community becomes besieged by a violent earthquake that opens up large cracks in the ground that allows a type of bug to come up through them that can start fires by rubbing its two legs together. Soon fires begin everywhere and there are many casualties. Professor James Parmiter (Bradford Dillman), a local scientist, is put in charge to research these new insects and see if there’s a way to control them. He eventually learns that their time is limited because they can’t handle the low pressure of our climate, but then one of the bugs kills his wife (Joanna Miles) and this creates an obsession in him to save the last of the species and breed it with a cockroach to create a new hybrid, which he successfully does, but with horrifying results.

The film’s greatest achievement, which was the last to be produced by famous horrormeister William Castle, is the photography of the bugs, which is sure to make anyone who is queasy about insects to be squirming in their seats. My favorite moment is when the professor stabs the bug’s underbelly and all of this white puss explodes out of its insides in slow motion. Some may also enjoy the weird electronic score by Charles Fox, but for me its the quiet moments that were far more effective with my favorite part coming right at the beginning during the opening credits where we hear nothing but the wind blowing off the open prairie while a white church can be seen in the background.

The fatal flaw is the fact that the characters are dull and one-dimensional with none of them standing-out, or having any discernable personalities. In order for the viewer to get emotionally wrapped-up in their fate they need to be interesting enough to save and these people clearly aren’t. What’s worse is that the protagonist, whom we are supposed to bond with and root for, begins behaving in stranger and stranger ways until he becomes as creepy as the bugs he’s fighting.

There’s just so many fires one can watch before it becomes redundant, so during the middle of the second act the film takes an awkward transition from being a disaster flick into a mad scientist one, but the way it gets done is confusing. Why would the professor want to keep the bug species alive as they’ve just killed his wife, so you’d think he’d be happy that they were dying off, but instead he saves one by putting it into a pressure chamber and then tries to mate it with another bug species. His motivations though needed to be better explained, but aren’t, which makes the whole second-half off-putting. Some fans of the film in their reviews on IMDb say it’s because the man goes ‘insane’, but why? Some may argue it’s because the death of his wife, which causes a breakdown, but there’s many people who survive the death of a spouse and it doesn’t turn them into a nutjob. If the man does have weak mental state that could collapse under a stressful event then this needs to be eluded to, or hinted at right at the beginning, so the viewer can be clued into the idea that the individual has mental issues, but it never is.

There are also those that say in the novel version, ‘The Hephaestus Plague’ by Thomas Page, which the film is based on, better explains the reason for the professor’s mental decline, which I don’t doubt, but the filmmakers cannot depend on the audience having read the book beforehand, nor should it be needed. The film needs to make the inner-workings of it’s lead character clearer on its own and in that respect the movie fails.

Spoiler Alert!

The way he’s able to create this new type of insect happens too quickly and seamlessly. Normally it should take many generations of breeding for a bug that doesn’t originally have any wings, and neither of the parents do, to finally begin to form them in their offspring and yet here this occurs literally overnight. The bugs are also capable of spelling out words with their bodies, but even a super smart species must learn the English language before they’re able to communicate it. No one has a language imprinted on their minds as they come out of the womb, or in this case the larvae, and yet here that’s exactly what we’re expected to believe.

Personally if I had directed it I would’ve done the storyline in reverse. Started with the professor already  in a secluded room in his house secretly trying to create a new species of bug because he has a God complex and wants to have an insect named after him. Then have the bugs escape from his lab and kill his wife and then go out into the town and start killing everyone else with their fires. I’m not saying this version would be perfect, but at least the narrative would be linear and the action better connected versus here where it comes-off like two different plotlines awkwardly spliced together.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 17, 1975

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jeannot Szwarc

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Disaster Flicks, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Sci-Fi, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Big Bus (1976)

Posted on November 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bomb planted on bus.

Cyclops is the new revolutionary designed double-decker bus that because it’s powered by nuclear fuel will allow it to travel non-stop between New York and Denver. Just before it’s set to make its maiden voyage a bomb goes off within the facility it’s been housed in, which seriously injures the bus’s designer Professor Baxter (Harold Gould). The vehicle itself remains unscathed, so the Professor’s daughter, Kitty (Stockard Channing), takes control of the project and hires a new driver named Dan (Joseph Bologna) whom she had a relationship with in the past. Dan though is still fighting-off the stigma of having crashed another bus into the mountains, and after being stranded for many days ended up reverting to cannibalism by eating all the rest of the passengers. The trip faces further obstacles when unscrupulous billionaire Iron Lung (Joes Ferrer), who resides inside a iron lung due to having polio as a child, orders his henchmen Alex (Stuart Margolin) to plant a bomb on the bus, so that it will be destroyed and prevent nuclear fuel from overtaking gasoline of which he owns much stock. Will Dan be able to overcome both his past and personal problems to both find and prevent the bomb from going off, or will this become yet another disaster on his already checkered past?

While Airplane! is widely thought-of as being the original parody of 70’s disaster flicks it’s really this one that came out a full 4 years earlier that deserves the credit. While it didn’t do well at the box office, which essentially pushed it off into obscurity it still upon second look has a lot of funny moments and deserves much more attention than it has gotten.  Not every gag works and some do fizzle, but the script by writing team Fred Freeman and Lawrence J. Cohen has far more hits than misses. Some of the best bits are the indoor swimming pool on the bus as well as the bowling alley and disco and the radiation suit to put on in times of emergency including the reaction of the passengers when it gets hung down from the ceiling compartment during the flight instructions. The attempt to treat the bus like it’s a metaphor for an airplane, which was the mode of transportation used in most disaster flicks, is quite funny especially the scene where crews in a small town try to halt the bus, or essentially ‘force it to land’ by spraying the main street with foam in order to slow the vehicle down.

The acting is in top form with many familiar faces from both television and the big screen. Stockard was probably my favorite she pretty much plays her part straight, but still manages to be quite amusing especially during the segment when she gets stuck inside a room that fills up with soda, which she stated in later interviews she almost drowned in.  Richard Mulligan and Sally Kellerman are equally amusing as a soon-to-be-divorced couple who share a rather unusual love-hate relationship. Larry Hagman as a dubious doctor, Ned Beatty as a moody technician and Murphy Dunne as a caustic pianist all help to top-it-off. Even Bologna, whose normally brash persona doesn’t make him a likely hero, scores comedic points though John Beck as his co-driver with a tendency to pass-out the second he gets nervous steals away most of the scenes they share.

Spoiler Alert!

The actual disaster, where the bus precariously balances over a cliff, is nicely photographed in a way that makes it seem real with some good stunt work, but I was disappointed that this ends up being the only real exciting moment. I didn’t like either that at the very end, just before the final credits begin to roll, the bus splits apart, which creates screams from the passengers. This was the type of movie where despite their oddball nature I had grown kind of fond of the daffy bunch and wanted to see them arrive safely, which with the ending here doesn’t occur. Instead the viewer is left (no pun intended) hanging, which is a giant cop-out. Just about every disaster flick made offers a conclusion where we see if the people ultimately make it out alive, or not and doing it the way they do here makes the viewer feel like they’ve seen only half a movie, which could explain why this did poorly at the box office.

A  good way to have prevented this would’ve been to chop up the beginning, which has a lot of unnecessary back-story. The bombing of the facility wasn’t needed as all of the calamity should’ve been saved for the bus ride itself. Dan’s visit to a bar in which the patrons harass him about his notorious past gets cheesy, particularly the cartoonish barroom brawl. This should’ve been cut- out too. The rumors of Dan’s supposed cannibalism could’ve been brought up at the press conference announcing the bus’s initial trip and seeing Dan’s uncomfortable response would’ve been enough to make the audience realize he had personal demons to overcome. The rest of the time could then be spent on the various problems that the bus runs into as it travels on road, which would’ve allowed for more excitement versus having the disaster portion seem like a side-story to the barrage of jokes that don’t always work.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: July 23, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: William Frawley

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Disaster Flicks, Parody, Road Movies

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Gold (1974)

Posted on April 4, 2022 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Flooding a gold mine.

Manfred (Bradford Dillman) is part owner of a South African gold mine, who has colluded with London bankers to have the mine destroyed. The plan is for the miners to drill into an underground water reservoir, which will then flood it. Manfred and the London syndicate will make a profit by quietly selling their shares of this mine while buying up shares in competing mines whose price will most assuredly go up once this one is no longer usable. To achieve this they must trick the miners into believing that there is gold underneath the water and that by drilling into it won’t cause their demise. They hire Rod (Roger Moore) as the miner’s new supervisor, whom they feel won’t be smart enough to catch-on to the scheme, but he proves sharper than they expected especially as he has an affair with Manfred’s wife Terry (Susannah York).

This film, which at the time was considered controversial as it was filmed on-location in South Africa while apartheid was still happening, and based on the novel ‘Gold Mine’ by Wilbur Smith, which in-turn was loosely based on the real-life incident that occurred in 1968, is deserving of a second-look. Filming it at an actual mine is the most impressive thing about it. The cast and crew were forced to go down 2-miles into the shaft and the camera follows the grim, black walls of the cave as the elevator takes them down and it’s really stunning how long it goes until they reach bottom and how the cave walls continuously streak across the screen the further they go. I’m not one to ever feel claustrophobic, but watching this gave me that sensation, which effectively gives you the idea of what the miners would’ve felt each time they went. The climactic flooding is equally hair-raising and the beginning segment where the process of refining the gold is shown over the opening credits is also quite fascinating.

Moore, who had just completed filming of his first James Bond installment, Live and Let Die, is excellent and I enjoyed the way he keeps it serious and doesn’t revert to any jokey quips like he did when he played Bond and his characterization here is how he should’ve handled 007. This is the first of two films that he did with York as the two would re-team later in the year for That Lucky Touch, a romantic comedy that’s inferior to this one. York’s character here, where she plays a jaded and cool socialite is a more interesting and proves what a great actress she was as it’s completely unlike the part of the scared, pensive person that she was in The Killing of Sister George. 

Ray Milland, as the elderly, cantankerous, mine owner is great and there’s excellent support by Simon Sabela, better known as being South Africa’s first black film director, who plays Big King a large man who teams with Moore to single-handily save the mine. Dillman is the only detriment as his stale villainous presence doesn’t add much and would’ve been better played by Tony Beckley, whose sneering facial expression alone would’ve made him more suitable instead of stifling him into a small bit though his attempts to run Dillman down with his car at the end is still effective.

The DVD restoration is the only negative as it’s faded color and graininess makes it resemble a cheap production, which it really isn’t. The version used for Amazon streaming is the same as the DVD, which is unfortunate as the film deserves a quality Blu-ray release and hopefully one will be coming at some point.

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My Rating: 7 out of 10

Release: September 5, 1974

Runtime: 2 Hours

Rated PG

Director: Peter R. Hunt

Studio: Allied Artists Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, Tubi

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Disaster Flicks, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels

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St. Helens (1981)

Posted on February 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Codger refuses to evacuate.

Art Carney plays Harry Truman, an 83-year-old man who refused to evacuate from his lodge at the base of Mount St. Helens even as experts warned that the volcano, which had been inactive for 123 years, was ready to explode. Tim Thomerson is the local sheriff who tries to convince him to change his mind and David Huffman is a volcano scientist who travels to the area to study the potential eruption. Initially he tries to get Harry to leave too, but eventually decides to stay, so he can record the eruption from what he believes will be from a safe distance.

The film is based on the actual event which began on March 20, 1980 when local wildlife was observed behaving erratically, and ends with the climactic eruption, which happened on May 18th. I was alive when it occurred and the film manages to correctly reflect the energy of the period where people where both fearful, but also excited. Not everyone though was happy with the movie, David Johnston’s parents were not pleased by the portrayal of their son, played by Huffman who goes by the fictional name of David Jackson, nor 36 other scientists who knew Johnston in real-life and signed a letter of protest.

Since I didn’t know Johnston myself I’ll reserve judgement, but I was not happy about a dumb secondary storyline dealing with a helicopter pilot, played by Ron O’Neal, flying into a flock of quail, which forces him to drop a log that his helicopter was carrying onto a group of men below and almost killing them. Bill McKinney, better known for playing the mountain man in Deliverance, thinks the pilot was intentionally trying to injure them and has his buddies harass and eventually attack the pilot, but this didn’t seem necessary. The men on the ground should’ve easily seen the birds fly into the copter, as it wasn’t that high up, and when it lands there’s clearly blood and feathers on the windshield, which is spotted immediately by the sheriff therefore making the fight scene, which is what it leads to, completely pointless and just put-in as mindless action.

Carney, who was ironically Harry Truman’s favorite actor in real-life, plays the part in a highly entertaining way and helps give the film humor and human interest. Truman really did drive a pink Cadillac and swore a lot, which he does here, but he also owned 16 cats, but the film changes this to him having a dog even though the 16 cats would’ve been far more fun. I couldn’t help but wonder though with the scene where Harry talks to a group of reporters about the greatness of the US constitution and how USA was the ‘greatest country in the world’, which got the reporters to cheer, but today those same statements might give him the derogatory label of ‘nationalist’ and push-back from the reporters instead of applause.

The film is also notable for having two of its stars, who are adversaries here, meet tragic ends in real-life. For Huffman he was stabbed to death in February, 1985 when he tried to chase down a mugger and for Albert Salmi, who portrays a bar owner who plays down the fears of the volcano, ended up, in 1990, killing his wife of 26 years when she filed for divorce, before then turning the gun on himself. I’ve seen Huffman in other films and came away feeling he was a rather bland actor though here he displays a little more spunk. Salmi’s acting is okay, but I didn’t understand why he’s shown working two jobs as he’s a manager of a bar at one point and then supervisor of a saw mill at another. Since the bar he runs is apparently ‘the only one in town’ and seemed packed with people I didn’t get the need for an extra income.

We know how it’s going to end right from the start, so it’s important that the climactic eruption come-off impressively. They do cheat by showing the same footage of the side of the mountain exploding over and over as well as cropping in animated volcanic ash creeping in, which looks tacky. Off-screen wind fans were clearly used to blow dust over the actors and create a white-out effect, but overall it wasn’t too bad and I liked the final shot of a small tree sprouting up amidst the ash. For those who were living during the event, or just curious about the history of it, this is an adequate recreation.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 18, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Ernest Pintoff

Studio: Parnell Films

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Disaster Flicks, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies with a rural setting

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The Swarm (1978)

Posted on April 13, 2020 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer bees invade Texas.

When his parents (Robert Varney, Doria Cook) are attacked by African Killer Bees while out on a picnic their young son Paul (Christian Juttner) manages to escape by jumping into their car and driving off. He then drives into the small town of Marysville, Texas where he tells the people about what happened. Scientist Bradford Crane (Michael Caine) and Army General Slater (Richard Widmark) are put in charge, but neither can agree on what strategy to use. Meanwhile Paul gets some of his friends to go back out to the park where the attack occurred to set fire to the hive, but instead of killing the bees it gets them to swarm onto the nearby town and the unsuspecting citizens.

Director/producer Irwin Allen was by the late 70’s known as the disaster master after having by that time either produced or directed 4 ( he ultimately ended up making 7) disaster flicks for both TV and the big screen many of which like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno made a ton of money, so he was riding high coming into this one only to have it bomb monumentally at both the box office and with the critics. He took the failure of this film so personally that he refused to ever mention it and even walked out of an interview when he was asked about it.

In retrospect it’s easy to see why it failed as the special effects just aren’t interesting enough. Watching repetitive shots of swarming bees can only go so far and the victims just lay there without having their skin show any signs of swelling from the multiple stings, which you’d expect them to have. The shots from the point-of-view of the victims, which shows the bees in a giant form, is the only cool thing though, like everything else in the film, this ends up getting overdone and corny.

The script is ripe with unintentionally funny moments including having the authorities attempt to kill the bees by spraying at them with a flame thrower, which doesn’t seem to affect the bees at all and instead only sets buildings on fire as well as some of the people. The idea that the bees were set off by an alarm siren at a military base, which somehow sounded exactly like their mating call is too preposterous to believe and only makes the ‘science’ behind the film completely silly.

The film also makes the mistake of having the setting be in Texas, but not actually filming it there. Sure there’s a few shots of some famous Houston landmarks that get briefly shown, but the majority of it was clearly shot on a studio backlot in California and any true Texan will easily spot this as the topography and landscape between those two states are quite different. Had the film been made on-location it would’ve helped give it a little more character, which it is otherwise lacking.

The cast is made up of a lot of famous names, but they all get wasted. Lee Grant appears only briefly as an aggressive TV reporter that for the most part has little to do with the progression of the plot. Fred MacMurray, in his last film appearance, plays a rival to Ben Johnson who both compete for the affections of Olivia de Havilland, but all three get killed off in the second act, so what’s the use of introducing this potential story arc if it ends up not really going anywhere?

Caine makes for one of the most boring screen heroes in film history and gets seriously upstaged by Henry Fonda, who plays one of the scientists trying to create a serum to combat the deadly bee stings, even though Fonda is confined to a wheelchair the whole time. This was the first of many ‘paycheck movies’ that Caine did and in fact he admittedly never even bothered to read the script before agreeing to sign on, but still felt it was worth it as he was able to use the funds to purchase a nice mansion in Malibu unfortunately for the viewer there’s no such mansion just boredom instead.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: July 14, 1978

Runtime: 2 Hours 35 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Irwin Allen

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Warner Archive), Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Disaster Flicks, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in Texas, Movies with a rural setting, Sci-Fi

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Earthquake (1974)

Posted on January 19, 2020 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Los Angeles really rocks.

A jolt from a massive earthquake shakes the Los Angeles metro area one morning, but researchers at the nearby seismological institute fear that there may be another one that will be far stronger and yet they hesitate about warning the public fearing that it may create ‘too much panic’. They agree instead to alert the National Guard about it, so they can prepare for the fallout when it happens, but in the meantime many innocent people go about their day including those working in skyscrapers ill-prepared for the tragedy that is about to befall them.

Due to the success of disaster flicks during the 70’s many studios clamored to get on board and while this concept may have sounded good in theory, it really leaves on lot to be desired. For one thing most earthquakes last on average for only 10 to 25 seconds, so the majority of the film deals with boring, soap-opera-like drama of a bunch of cardboard characters both before and after the quake while there’s probably less than 5-minutes of actual quake effects.

The special effects are, despite winning a Special Achievement Award at the Oscars, not very convincing and come off looking like shots of miniatures homes and buildings made of paper that could easily fall apart without much effort. The shot showing workers falling down while on the Mulholland Dam  appears more like they’re all dancing some sort of gig and then intentionally dropping themselves to the ground as part of the dance routine.

The film is also notorious for its elevator scene in which people get stuck inside an elevator as the quake occurs and then it goes plummeting down the shaft before eventually crashing and killing everyone inside. However, due to an inability to effectively spray stage blood onto the stunt people, director Mark Robson decided to have animated blood added in during post production, which looks as cartoonish as it sounds and puts an embarrassing, amateurish mark on the entire production.

The casting is out-of-whack as well and features Charlton Heston in the lead as a sort of hunk even though he was 50 and too old for that type of thing, but is still seen sweaty and shirtless in a couple of scenes nonetheless. Ava Gardner livens things up a bit as Heston’s clingy, bitchy wife, but having her portrayed as being Lorne Greene’s daughter, who in real-life was only 8 years older than her, was ridiculous.

I did enjoy Marjoe Gortner as the psycho grocery store manager, who after the quake occurs, puts on a wig and takes part as a member of the National Guard to control the looters only to become more of a nemesis than a help. Walter Matthau, who appears in a bit part wearing an Afro wig, is funny as a patron at a bar who’s so drunk he’s oblivious to the chaos.

Spoiler Alert!

The only part of the movie that I really liked was the end where Heston is helping people out of an underground tunnel that is filling up with water and instead of climbing up out of the hole to his lover, played by Genevieve Bujold, who is waiting for him with open arms, he jumps back down to save his bitchy wife only for them to both end up drowning, which I found interesting. Too many movies especially the ones made these days, always have the hero come out of these things unscathed, or making a full recovery after being temporarily injured, but in reality saving others in treacherous circumstances has its share of risks where not everyone will come out of it alive, so it’s nice to have a film share a realistic balance.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: November 15, 1974

Runtime: 2 Hours 2 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Mark Robson

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Disaster Flicks

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Avalanche (1978)

Posted on November 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sliding snow destroys resort.

David Selby (Rock Hudson) is a driven businessman determined to build a ski resort in an area that’s vulnerable to avalanches and despite the many warnings is able to get the building constructed and even have it host a ski tournament to kick-off its grand opening, but as the festivities get under way the snowfall continues. Eventually the weight of the snow on the nearby mountaintop becomes too much causing a massive avalanche forcing the guests at the resort into a fight for survival.

The film starts out with a lot of boring, poorly written soap opera-like drama that will put most viewers to sleep before the avalanche ever even takes place. The storyline concerning Mia Farrow’s and Rock Hudson’s marriage and his desperate attempts to ‘rekindle the old magic’ between them is particularly contrived as the vast age difference between the two, a whole 18 years, makes it look like the type of union that would have no chance of it working right from the start, so why even bother making it a part of the plot? The first 40 minutes are so draggy that you start hoping for the avalanche to happen and wipe out all the cardboard characters simply to provide some excitement.

The glossy cast if filled with some well known faces, but their parts offer them little to work with and in the case of Robert Forster, who acts as this environmentalist warning of the avalanche danger, is completely wasted. Only Cathey Paine, a lesser known actress, offers some diversion as a possessive girlfriend who becomes unhinged when she catches her boyfriend (Rick Moses) in bed with another woman and watching her try to kill herself by swallowing a bottle of pills only to be crushed by the snow a few seconds later is darkly funny. I also got a kick out of Jeannette Nolan sporting white hair, which you can tell is a wig because you can see her brown hair underneath it along the edges, and I felt this should’ve been shown falling off her head when the avalanches occurs, but of course it doesn’t.

The special effects, which would be the only reason to watch this thing anyways, gets highly compromised mainly because producer Roger Corman, in his patented stingy way, cut the budget in half just before production began and it definitely shows. The avalanche looks like nothing more than having the actors shot on a screen and then having styrofoam made snow blown in front of it. I also found the howling wind noise, which permeates every outdoor scene, to be irritating and unnecessary especially when all the trees in the background are completely still.

The third act, which deals with rescue efforts, offers some minor tension and is an improvement from the rest of the movie, which made me think they should’ve started it with this and then shown scenes of the avalanche happening, and some of the background ‘drama’, intermittently via flashback. The setting, which was filmed on-location at the Lodge of Tamarron in Durango, Colorado, is quite scenic. I even liked the snowmobile race, which has a Death Race 2000 feel to it especially the ugly wipe-outs.

Spoiler Alert!

Unfortunately everything else falls predictably flat, which includes the dopey ending where Hudson humbly admits that he allowed his greed to get in the way  and that the resort should never have been built, but this isn’t satisfying enough. He should’ve been handcuffed and thrown into prison, which is not shown nor any confirmation if this ever ultimately happened.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: September 29, 1978

Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Corey Allen

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Disaster Flicks, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting

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