The 70s style disaster movie is a genre that, aside from whatever Roland Emmerich is doing, is more or less forgotten today. The concept is simple: take a large cast of characters played mostly recognizable actors and put them in a harrowing situation where they may or may not survive the crisis at hand. Often credited to producer Irwin Allen, one of the best known of the genre is The Poseidon Adventure, a movie about an overturned ocean liner and the people who struggle to get out of it alive. And yeah, it does have a pretty colorful cast.
I mean, I didn’t expect to see a movie that featured Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, and Leslie Nielsen, and yet, here I am.
The Poseidon is a state of the art cruise liner headed across the Atlantic. On New Year’s Day, just as many of the ship’s passengers are celebrating the New Year when a massive tidal wave turns the entire ship upside down. That more or less wipes out most of the crew on the upper decks, and leaving the survivors with some harsh choices. While most seem inclined to listen to the ship’s purser and stay put to wait for rescue, that won’t do for tough-talking minister Reverend Frank Scott (Hackman). He realizes the ocean is going to keep rising, and there may be a patch at the top (or bottom) that can be cut through for any real rescue. He manages to get a few followers in the form of pessimistic cop Mike Rogo (Borgnine), Rogo’s former prostitute wife Linda (Stella Stevens), an elderly Jewish couple (Winters and Jack Albertson) who had been traveling to see their grandson for the first time, health conscious bachelor James Martin (Red Buttons), young ship enthusiast Robin Shelby (Eric Shea) and his teenage sister Susan (Pamela Sue Martin), shellshocked singer Nonnie (Carol Lynley), and injured waiter Acres (Roddy McDowall). No sooner does this group climb up a Christmas tree to the next level when, as predicted, the ocean rushes through and kills the remaining people in the ballroom.
What follows is basically a series of challenges. Scott and Rogo keep arguing, Winters’s Belle Rosen keeps worrying that she is too fat to keep going, and Martin has to keep talking to Nonnie just to keep her going since she hasn’t quite gotten past the fact her brother and bandmate was among those killed instantly when the ship flipped over. Every so often they’ll stop somewhere, find a new challenge, and need to go up as more and more water rushes in. Rogo never believes for a minute that where they are going will allow them to live while Scott keeps pushing everyone to keep going anyway. And yes, not all of them will make it, but can any of them? That’s the real challenge.
Now, in many ways, I wasn’t expecting much from this movie. And, in many ways, I didn’t get much. The opening scenes told me all I needed to know about the different characters, such as how Winters and Albertson mention seeing their grandson for the first time as Winters’s Belle goes on to say that Buttons’s Mr. Martin really needs to find a good woman–and man, it occurs to me that if this movie were made today, there’s a good chance Mr. Martin would have come out as gay before the closing credits ran–and the different scenarios are good series of obstacles. The characters who don’t make it are generally among the more sympathetic in many ways, and that is to be expected. And if you need someone to be belligerent without being an outright villain, Ernest Borgnine has you covered.
If anything, I was surprised by Hackman. When I heard he was playing a pastor, at this point in his career, that seemed, well, unlikely to say the least. But then I saw what kind of pastor he was playing, namely a “God helps those who help themselves” sort, and it made a lot more sense. He is good in that sort of role, and his is the one character in the movie that isn’t some sort of stock character outside of “stock hero,” and unlikely term to use for a pastor in what is essentially something of an action movie. Worth noting there is another minister on the ship who acts more like a traditional sort of holy man, in that when asked to leave the ballroom, he gently declines, not because he thinks it is safe there as he knows it is not, but because he thinks the people who stayed will need spiritual guidance as much as Scott’s group will. Essentially, I was surprised to see Hackman in a movie like this, and he does a good job with a role I wouldn’t have expected to see him in.
As for the rest of the movie, it was a nice diversion, and not much more than that.
Grade: B-
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