I’m so old that I think of the art and science of modern-era movies according to whether they came before or after “Jaws” (1975) and “Star Wars” (1977). Partly that’s because those films made so much money that they changed the way films were marketed and released, but also because they were so proficient, in terms of the “sciences” part of “motion picture arts and sciences.” They set a standard, so it was shocking that many wannabe blockbusters that followed were deficient in cinematography or special effects or other technical aspects.
In other words, if you wanted to be a thrilling adventure or epic, if you didn’t measure up to Steven Spielberg’s shark hunt or George Lucas’ modern retelling of space opera tales, then your film just didn’t cut it.
Of course, I’m not discounting low-budget films or artistic films that didn’t even try to compete in terms of spectacle. I’m talking about films that, a generation before, would have aspired to the scope and action and grandeur of “Ben-Hur” or “Lawrence of Arabia.”
What does all this have to do with the disaster films of the 1970s?
The decade was a transformative one for movies. The young auteurs and film students – with a boost from the movie factory run by producer Roger Corman – had taken over Hollywood and given us films like “The Godfather” and its sequel. The decade started with smaller, gritty, sometimes downbeat films and ended with the greatest cotton candy you’d ever want to eat with “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and, in 1980, “The Empire Strikes Back.”
Straddling the 1970s is the most uneven trend in Hollywood history: the disaster film.
There were plenty of films that chronicled disasters, going all the way back to “San Francisco” in 1936 and even earlier. And there have been plenty since the 1970s, usually involving Dwayne Johnson leaping over earthquakes or floodwaters.
But the 1970s was the heyday of big disaster films, movies that chronicled epic disasters by using (ostensibly) big casts, big budgets and in some cases big special effects techniques that in one notable instance were just big speakers placed in the back of movie theaters. (Cue the line from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” – “It’s only a model!”)
As I was rewatching 1970s disaster movies for this piece, I kept wondering if there would be an arc to the decade of films. The only arc I found is that the films got steadily shoddier and sillier as the decade wore on. Even by the middle of the decade, some of the big-studio disaster films were not great. (Looking at you, “Earthquake,’ and your giant speakers.)
A review of the highlights and lowlights of 1970s disaster movies makes for instructional if sometimes excruciating viewing.
The white zone is for disasters only
Part of any review of 1970s disaster movies should note that some are “act of God” disaster movies, like “Earthquake,” and some are “act of Man” disasters, like the low-bidder wiring in “The Towering Inferno.” I hope to discuss both types here and let God sort ‘em out, which is pretty unfair when you remember that God caused a lot of these disasters.
“Airport” started the decade with a bang and, more than a half-century later, it’s still hard to beat. Based on Arthur Hailey’s novel, the 1970 film is true to its title in that it’s more about an airport than an airplane. The cast is impressive: Burt Lancaster as the airport manager carries more gravitas than the entire cast of some films, Helen Hayes is adorable as a stowaway and Dean Martin is, happily, not his boozy self as a pilot with a bomber on his airliner.
The movie, the first of a four-film series that ran throughout the decade, is about the operations of a big airport in a snowstorm. Lancaster gets to bark at everybody, including George Kennedy as a blue-collar guy who knows everything about the airport, which must be true because over the course of the series he becomes the captain of the Concorde supersonic jet.
There are a lot of scenes with guys in white, short-sleeved shirts hunched over consoles and scenes of Lancaster and Kennedy scrambling various equipment out onto the tarmac.
Yes, “Airport” features so many moments when you’ll think it inspired “Airplane!” the 1980 disaster movie parody. Lancaster even barks into the white courtesy phone at some point. “Airplane!” was inspired by “Zero Hour,” a 1957 disaster film that includes the plot point of passengers and crew being poisoned by bad fish. But there’s a lot of “Airport” in “Airplane!”
“Airport” remains a first-class effort, one of the three or four pillars or 1970s disaster films.
‘You’ll flood the whole compartment’ – wait, that’s another genre
One of the other pillars of 1970s disaster movies is 1972’s “The Poseidon Adventure,” and if you think I’m going to note that “Airplane!” star Leslie Nielsen was the captain of the titular ocean liner, well, you’re correct. But this was the “serious roles” Nielsen, back when he played heroes and heavies in a million movies and TV shows. Like Ted Knight as the cop in the final scenes of “Psycho,” Nielsen’s presence is a little jarring here.
But “Poseidon” is in the capable hands of a great cast, featuring Gene Hackman as a minister who leads a group of surviving passengers and crew “up to the bottom” of the ship with hope of rescue. It’s a challenge, walking on ceilings and avoiding flooded compartments, but Hackman and Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Jack Albertson and a few others are up to the task.
It’s been a long time since I read author Paul Gallico’s original novel, the basis for the movie, but if I remember right, the film version took a lot of the book’s characters and beats and turned them into exhilarating cinema. The acting is top-notch, the soap opera subplots aren’t intrusive (as they are in our next film) and the sets, stunt work and Ronald Neame’s direction are peerless.
I suspect “Poseidon” has passed into the distant memory of movie fans after a half-century, unfortunately, but it’s still a great watch.
‘And Walter Matthau IS a drunk in a bar …’
It’s sad to say that “Earthquake,” released in 1974, has not held up in a manner similar to “Poseidon.” There’s a horrible fascination to the idea of seeing a major earthquake shattering Los Angeles, but the movie is lacking in so many ways. And, when seen on our home screens, it’s missing its biggest feature: Sensurround. More on that in a minute.
Part of what makes “Earthquake” so lackluster when viewed today is that the special effects are not good and the drama is substandard. The soap opera aspects that worked well in “Airport” are cheapened and seem silly here. Charlton Heston is drawn to another woman (the adorable Genevieve Bujold) and turned off by his insecure, shrill wife (Ava Gardner.) Richard Roundtree, the coolest guy in 1970s action with “Shaft,” gets to play a motorcycle stunt driver. George Kennedy takes some time away from the airport to play a Los Angeles cop. Lorne Greene plays Gardner’s father despite being virtually the same age as the actress.
The movie is co-written by “Godfather” author Mario Puzo, which seems surprising and disappointing at the same time. The absorbing characters and soapy narrative of Puzo’s mob family epic are just limp here. Future “Dallas” star Victoria Principal wears a bizarre fright wig. Lloyd Nolan, a disaster film stalwart, furrows his brow.
Maybe the most surprising appearance is Walter Matthau, acting under a pseudonym, as a guy drinking in a bar, wearing an outlandish wig, hat and outfit. Matthau mugs and rolls his eyes and does the worst job of acting drunk you can imagine. It’s a bizarre presence and his “scenes” go on forever.
Fifty minutes into the movie, the Big One kicks in and people react as if they’d never heard what they should do in a quake before, running outside and standing under power lines and inevitably getting squashed by falling debris. Maybe they weren’t properly cautious because of the awful special effects: A house tumbling down a hill literally looks like a cardboard box. Some of the effects are better but still look like miniature trucks being run over the side of miniature highway bridges. The budget for shaking the camera must have been bigger than the budget for building miniature buildings.
A couple of shots appear to have been “influenced” by similar moments in “The Poseidon Adventure,” including a man falling into a glass ceiling and a chandelier falling.
The producers obviously hoped that Sensurround would carry the day, and it probably did in the film’s initial theatrical run. Sensurround, if you don’t remember it, was a process that was intended to introduce deep, bass rumbling to movie theaters. This was accomplished, more or less, by installing massive speakers in the back of theaters. The speakers were all bass, no treble, and the sound they produced was pretty impressive. The speakers were like something that would have been introduced by pioneering movie gimmick maestro William Castle in the 1950s and 1960s. The expensive speakers were deployed again for a few other films, including the World War II film “Midway” in 1976” and the disaster pic “Rollercoaster” in 1977.
‘Die Hard’ before ‘Die Hard’
The same year as “Earthquake,” “The Towering Inferno” outclassed the competition and remains one of the key disaster films of the decade. Everything was big about the movie: it was based on not one, but two books, and was jointly made and released by Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox. It starred two of the biggest Hollywood leading men of the decade (and the decade before), Paul Newman and Steve McQueen.
Newman plays the architect of a 138-floor high-rise in San Francisco, a mix of office and residential space. On the night of the tower’s ribbon cutting, Newman begins to suspect corners were cut on his project as a small fire breaks out in a small utility room. As the staff tries to handle the blaze – yes, this is the disaster movie with O.J. Simpson as a security officer – the architect confronts the builder, played by William Holden. There’s a strong vibe of Amity mayor versus Chief Brody here as Holden doesn’t want to ruin the tower’s debut and Newman becomes more worried and insistent. Before long, McQueen arrives as the fire battalion chief who knows what his firefighters must do but worries many of his men will be lost.
“The Towering Inferno” has what might be the biggest cast of all the ‘70s disaster films. Besides the three leads, there’s Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Jennifer Jones, Richard Chamberlain, Robert Wagner and many more. Susan Flannery has a horrifyingly memorable scene that, upon watching today, is too reminiscent of the people who jumped from the World Trade Center on September 11.
Producer Irwin Allen, who had overseen classic 1960s TV series like “Lost in Space,” became known as “the master of disaster” with his 1970s films like “Towering” and “Poseidon.” Allen himself produced and directed two other big-screen disaster films, “The Swarm” and “Beyond the Poseidon Adventure,” but neither was as good as his two classics.
By the time of “The Towering Inferno,” it became obvious that singer and actress Maureen McGovern was an essential part of the best disaster films. She sang the main themes for “The Poseidon Adventure” – at least for a record release – and “The Towering Inferno” and played Sister Angelina, the singing nun in “Airplane!” Her resume is better than almost anyone in disaster films.
Literally sudden death
Some people apparently don’t consider “Black Sunday,” the 1977 film directed by the great John Frankenheimer (“The Manchurian Candidate” and “Seven Days in May”) a disaster film, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to name a 1970s film that has greater storyline potential for disaster, other than “Earthquake.” The deaths of tens of thousands of spectators, athletes and others at a Super Bowl would be one of the most notable, even if man-made, disasters ever.
“Black Sunday” is certainly a thriller, though, and features a made-for-blockbuster cast, including Robert Shaw, two years after “Jaws,” as an Israeli counter-terrorism agent pursuing a Palestinian terrorist played by Marthe Keller.
The pursuit takes Shaw’s hard-charging agent around the world and ends at the Orange Bowl in Florida, where Keller’s operative has recruited a disillusioned Vietnam War veteran-turned-Goodyear blimp pilot played by Bruce Dern to fly the airship into the stadium during the game and let loose a quarter of a million razor-sharp projectiles into the crowd. It’s a suicide mission, Dern and Keller know, but they have their own motivations for the act.
So yes, there are a lot of hot-button issues in “Black Sunday,” which is based on a novel by “Silence of the Lambs” author Thomas Harris. Frankenheimer makes Dern’s veteran as sympathetic as possible, but there’s no doubt who the hero is here, and it’s Shaw’s Israeli operative. It’s a good political thriller that expertly sets the stage for a horrifying plot that threatens to mass slaughter a stadium full of people on live television.
One of the most awe-inspiring and horrifying moments comes when Dern and Keller do a test run of their plan, riddling a remote barn – and a farmer – with holes.
Nowadays, Hollywood would make this film with computer-generated effects. While special effects are certainly used here, this is as thrilling and low-tech a disaster movie as any made.
Not even Bond can save ‘Meteor’
No movie that includes Sean Connery’s grousing delivery of the line, “Why don’t you stick a broom up my ass, I could sweep the carpet on my way out” can be all bad.
But “Meteor” is pretty bad.
So much so that it’s startling to realize that Ronald Neame, who directed “The Poseidon Adventure,” one of the best of the 1970s disaster films, also directed “Meteor,” just seven years later.
One essential fact to know about “Meteor” is that it was distributed in 1979 by American International Pictures, a film production and releasing company responsible for an array of releases in the middle of the 20th Century that is dizzying in the scope of its films, from good to awful. For some of us, AIP – the domain of producers and executives James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff – turned out hundreds of films from the likes of producer and director Roger Corman (“The Raven”), Herman Cohen (“I Was a Teenage Werewolf”) and Bert I. Gordon (“The Amazing Colossal Man.”)
In other words, moviegoers should have seen “Meteor” coming.
“Meteor” followed by a year “The Swarm,” another “death from above” disaster movie, in that case about a horde of killer bees. “The Swarm” had, if anything, a more powerful cast than “Meteor,” toplining Michael Caine and many other stars.
“Meteor” had Connery, Natalie Wood, Brian Keith, Karl Malden, Martin Landau “and Henry Fonda as the president,” the titles tell us. It looks like most of Fonda’s part what shot in a couple of days in an Oval Office set, while Connery and the rest got to stomp around a laboratory set for a few weeks.
From the ridiculous opening credits – with swoops and whooshes that are meant to recall “Star Wars” and “Superman” – to a score that sounds like it was lifted from a Hammer film, “Meteor” is imitative and derivative.
And it doesn’t have much faith in its audience: Literally 15 minutes in, there’s an audio flashback from earlier in the same movie, recapitulating some plot.
“Meteor” is prime material for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, with its incredibly tedious special effects shots and a climax that puts most of the cast in a sub-basement that gets flooded with muddy water.
I will note that there’s some mildly startling footage as a splinter of the meteor destroys the World Trade Center in New York. But it’s as sad as it is low budget.
You’re better off watching “The Poseidon Adventure” or “The Towering Inferno” or “Black Sunday” again.
