 |
| Images courtesy of 20th Century Fox |
‘Master of Disaster’ Irwin Allen who popularized the science-fiction
genre as a director in the 1960s and then producer of the disaster subgenre
throughout the 1970s all but kicked off the action survival thriller subgenre
involving people trying to survive a natural and/or manmade catastrophe. Though the special effects laden survival
thriller had been done before as with George Seaton’s 1970 Airport which
itself saw several sequels, parodies and remakes, it kicked into high gear with
Allen’s production of British director Ronald Neame’s The Poseidon Adventure
two years later. Based on Paul Gallico’s
1969 novel, it told of the fictitious SS Poseidon luxury cruise liner traveling
from Athens, Greece to New York City with a crew and passengers celebrating New
Year’s Eve when a tsunami capsizes the ship trapping everyone inside struggling
to survive or get out alive via the bottom of the hull with the help of a pastor
on board. An overt survival thriller
story ripe with cinematic energy, it was adapted into at least four screen
adaptations including in 2006 but few have the strength and vastness of this
still bold and perhaps timeless subgenre game changer.
The crew and passengers of the SS Poseidon led by Captain
Harrison (Leslie Nielsen) are traveling across the Aegean Sea when a new
company rep demands they go faster against safety precautions to save money and
prevents the ship from achieving ballast, starting off the way most disaster
movies tend to with greed and/or avarice.
Forming into an ensemble piece jumping between interlocking stories
involving Reverend Frank Scott (Gene Hackman), Detective Lt. Mike Rogo (Ernest
Borgnine) and his ex-prostitute wife Linda (Stella Stevens), Susan Shelby
(Pamela Sue Martin) and her younger brother Robin (Eric Shea), retired Jewish shop
owner Manny Rosen (Jack Albertson) and his wife Belle (Shelley Winters) and a
bashful haberdasher names James Martin (Red Buttons) along with singer Nonnie
Parry (Carol Lynley), the stage is set for this subset of characters to be
turned upside down which eventually it does.
Following an underwater earthquake which triggers a tidal wave in an astonishing
stunt sequence of a large set piece turning upside down as actors hang onto
tables mounted to the floor to keep from falling into the glass ceiling, the
reverend along with a hurt waiter named Acres (Roddy McDowall) form a team of survivors
determined to make it through every life-threatening obstacle the film throws
at them.
With its murderer’s row of a cast, scope 2.35:1
cinematography by MASH cameraman Harold E. Stine in his final picture, a
rousing score by John Williams well before he’d become synonymous with screen
excitement, incredibly staged stunts such as the a forklift turning a dining
room set with tuxedoed costumed partiers celebrating New Years suddenly thrown
around like ragdolls and an extended underwater escape sequence predating James
Cameron’s aquatic thrillers The Abyss and Titanic, The Poseidon
Adventure while bearing the eventual cliches of the disaster thriller is a
nevertheless expertly made and executed example of the subgenre. Thanks in large part to hiring Ronald Neame
who just completed Scrooge which itself was a giant set-heavy
expenditure filmed at the enormous Pinewood Studios backlot, the film does a
good job of establishing the subset of characters with their own interpersonal
moral quandaries brewing and eventually clashing together once calamity
strikes. A saga of self-sacrifice as
certain characters rise to the occasion for the survival of others on multiple
occasions, it eventually becomes a nerve-wracking endurance that almost feels
biblical at times due in large part to Hackman’s preacher who soon becomes the otherwise
ensemble film’s chief protagonist.
Let it be said everyone here is fantastic with Gene Hackman initially
calm but forced by circumstance to stand loudly against the storm, Ernest
Borgnine as a petulant boorish and often dejected cop with his annoying but
well-meaning wife played with dumb but street smart glee by Stella Stevens, a
post-Planet of the Apes Roddy McDowall and particularly the dual
performances of Shelley Winters and Jack Albertson. Albertson who had just come off of the labyrinthine
funhouse of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory like everyone else
finds himself trapped in Hell yet he and his fat but tough swimmer wife played
with intense devotion by Winters keep each other going through this nightmare
and perhaps become the film’s most affecting couple. Child actor Eric Shea from Yours, Mine and
Ours alongside Nancy Drew actress Pamela Sue Martin form a strong
pair of youths whose own smaller than adult sizes come in handy when certain
obstacles come up. Leslie Nielsen isn’t
given much to do but reprise his captain from Forbidden Planet here but
it is interesting to catch him prior to his resurgence as a bad guy in Creepshow
before becoming a comedy actor in The Naked Gun films.
Released by 20th Century Fox in 1972 budgeted
around $4.7 million, The Poseidon Adventure became an out-of-the-gate
blockbuster amassing $125 million in box office sales. It was also a critical darling of sorts and
was nominated for a total of nine Academy Awards including two wins for Best
Visual Effects and Best Original Song The Morning After by Al Kasha and
Joel Hirschhorn. The score by John
Williams, reportedly one of five compositions done for films that year,
cemented the style that would soon follow on the forthcoming disaster flicks Earthquake
and Irwin Allen’s own The Towering Inferno both also scored by
Williams. Further the British Academy
Film Awards awarded Gene Hackman with the Best Actor award while Shelley
Winters won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
While alternative critical junkets like the Golden Raspberry
Awards later dunked on it as one of the ‘100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever
Made’ and Mad Magazine parodied the film as well, The Poseidon Adventure was
nevertheless a money printer whose commercial prospects spawned a 1979 sequel
film Beyond the Poseidon Adventure though sadly was a critical and
commercial disappointment. There was a
television film version in 2005 albeit with a fraction of the budgets on either
Irwin Allen film and in 2006 Wolfgang Petersen remade the film for Warner Brothers
as an IMAX experience simply titled Poseidon for considerably more
money, budgeted at $160 million though only breaking $181 million at the box
office making it a failure. Looking at
the resurgence of the disaster film in the 1990s which was also characterized
as a minor craze that eventually died down, we must point to the second crucial
entry in the subgenre The Poseidon Adventure as the tidal wave that not
only flipped the ship but arguably burst open the floodgates of an entire new
movie built around the spectacle of destruction and the thriller of trying to
survive it.
--Andrew Kotwicki
