I wasn't sure where to start this thread because those 1970s disaster films, seemingly all produced or presented by Irwin Allen, are real camp classics, if not true classics. I was a teenager in the 1970s and didn't see many at the time. But the disaster film was a genre, like Blaxploitation, that had its moment in the sun back in the 1970s.

One disaster film I did see on original release was the POSEIDON ADVENTURE, which I recently watched again and it is viewed today only as a camp classic. A corpulent Shelley Winters is inadvertently hilarious. They tried to remake PA this summer, but it was a critical and commercial bust.

Another one was THE TOWERING INFERNO, which somehow I missed on its original commercial run. This one starred virtually every Hollywood star, including Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and, get this, O.J. Simpson, who was a far better football player than he was an actor.

I remember catching it for the first time on video in the late 80s/early 90s and finding it clunky. I watching it again, after 9/11, and it took on a whole different meaning. Still not a good film, but kind of interesting to watch in today's environment.

I've never seen EARTHQUAKE, which I understand is a real clunker that starred a couple of over-the-hill/well past their prime actors, Charlton Heston & Ava Gardner. One day I'll catch up with.

I wish some museum or rep house would run a retrospective of 70's disaster films. They would be fun to watch just for their camp value.

Disaster films really had their start back in the late 30s with THE HURRICANE (1937), IN OLD CHICAGO (1937), THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII (1935) and THE RAINS CAME (1939) which all had strong elements of disaster as a backdrop to the storyline. Then came the 60s where science and technological disaster became a disaster theme with ASSIGNMENT OUTERSPACE (1961), THE DAY THE SKY EXPLODED (1957), THE LOST MISSLE (1958), THE PLANET ON THE PROWL (1965) that seems to have be a bad precursor to ARMAGEDDON (1998). A NIGHT TO REMEMBER came out in 1958 about the Titanic that would be remade into a huge blockbuster almost 40 years.

It wasn't until the hit movie AIRPORT in 1970 that began the traditional disaster movie that has at its core a disaster that then devolves into subplots involving various characters and then spawned many spinoffs during the 1970s. The most telling and serious as well as precognitive disaster movies of the 70s was THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979) that came out seven years before the Cherynobil nuclear meltdown in Russia.

Yet the genre lives on in such more contemporary disaster films such as ARMAGEDDON (1998), ATOMIC TRAIN (1999 tv), DANTES PEAK (1997), and my personal favorite disaster film THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004), DAYLIGHT (1996) with Sylvester Stallone in a tunnel, DEEP IMPACT (1998), INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996), THE PERFECT STORM (2000), TWISTER (1996), and VOLCANO (1997) the second volcano disaster movie to come out the same year.

Perhaps it might be said that the subgenre of the transportation/natural disaster era of 70s that focused on the impact of disaster on a representative characters of stereotypical audience populations had its decade, but that disaster movie genre seems to persist and continue on to this day.

quote:

Originally posted by ChrisFromAstoria:
I wasn't sure where to start this thread because those 1970s disaster films, seemingly all produced or presented by Irwin Allen, are real camp classics, if not true classics. I was a teenager in the 1970s and didn't see many at the time. But the disaster film was a genre, like Blaxploitation, that had its moment in the sun back in the 1970s.

One disaster film I did see on original release was the POSEIDON ADVENTURE, which I recently watched again and it is viewed today only as a camp classic. A corpulent Shelley Winters is inadvertently hilarious. They tried to remake PA this summer, but it was a critical and commercial bust.

Another one was THE TOWERING INFERNO, which somehow I missed on its original commercial run. This one starred virtually every Hollywood star, including Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and, get this, O.J. Simpson, who was a far better football player than he was an actor.

I remember catching it for the first time on video in the late 80s/early 90s and finding it clunky. I watching it again, after 9/11, and it took on a whole different meaning. Still not a good film, but kind of interesting to watch in today's environment.

I've never seen EARTHQUAKE, which I understand is a real clunker that starred a couple of over-the-hill/well past their prime actors, Charlton Heston & Ava Gardner. One day I'll catch up with.

I wish some museum or rep house would run a retrospective of 70's disaster films. They would be fun to watch just for their camp value.

I have seen Earthquake and I was hugely entertained.

Has anyone seen The Swarm with Michael Cane? Pure unintentional genius. Maybe it doesn't qualify as a true disaster movie, but I whole-heartedly love it.

And Poseidon adventure is great - still love that film even now. Haven't seen the remake and refuse to do so on general principal. Maybe I'll watch it at Xmas one year when I'm completely drunk.

The Swarm has more unintentional howlers than any disaster movie (it certainly qualifies since it has train wrecks, helicopter crashes, a town destroyed), but it's hard to decide if the ridiculous dialogue (pitched with totally straight faces) or the pathetic "special" effects deserve the more laughing. The fact that the actors were reacting to things they couldn't see (which, of course, is normal for an FX movie) really makes this one a rip-snorting MST3K feature because I don't think such a big-name cast (albeit over-the-hill) ever appeared in such a pile of [hilarious] junk.

quote:

Originally posted by mark f:
...I don't think such a big-name cast (albeit over-the-hill) ever appeared in such a pile of [hilarious] junk.

I take it you haven't seen "Original Gangstas" ! This was a 90's attempt to cash in on the 70's blaxploitation genre with the stars that were once "Icons of the 70's Blaxploitation Films". The story was cliche', the acting was just awful & the fight scenes were very slow. (I guess the actors had a little arthritis.) As far as Mystery Science Theater goes, this would be their new "Mitchell"!

As to the main topic, being a big fan of explosions & destruction, these movies are my dessert! I just gotta get 'em on DVD...