#POSEIDON MOVIE MOVIE#

It’s missing both the original’s kitsch and seriousness, but it’s a competently crafted mid-2000s action flick that improbably brings together Richard Dreyfus, Fergie, and Johnny Drama from Entourage.

#POSEIDON MOVIE MOVIE#

It utterly captivated me and is probably responsible for my love of all things disaster movie I even have a begrudging appreciation for the 2006 version of Poseidon with Kurt Russell playing Gene Hackman. My dad, a Hackman guy through and through, introduced me to The Poseidon Adventure at a young age. Ultimately, this was my entry point into the film. Hackman and Winters give easily the two most memorable performances, though Jack Albertson, Red Buttons, and Ernest Borgnine are no slouches themselves. The film one-upped the star-studded cast of Airport with a whopping five Oscar winners on the screen. The mutton chops and go-go boots our crew carries with them throughout the ship are the stuff of cult legend-not to mention the special surprise Shelley Winters carries around her neck until it comes in handy late or lines like “What a dumb stupid way to die, going to the john!” It's a scene packed with the kind of emotional power all too missing in disaster movies since.Īs serious as this scene is and as brutal as later deaths might be, however, the film is a lark-an extremely enjoyable piece of pure 1970s excess. Dramatically, Scott closes the door on them and their too-late conversion to his way of thinking while they scream out for help. Scott-our primary protagonist-tries to convince as many passengers as are willing to join him on this potentially deadly trek through the heart of the destroyed ship, but his unorthodox ways and the insistence by actual crewmates to stay put means hundreds are doomed to a particularly slow and agonizing death by drowning. The Poseidon Adventure disposes of its wilting flowers at its halfway point in a decidedly pointed way. What sets the film apart from Airport and disaster movie successors like Earthquake and The Towering Inferno is its insistence that the characters own their situation and take agency. The plucky fighters' journey for survival-'toward life' as one of them remarks-takes them from the ballroom to the steel hull at the top, which ought to be the last compartment to flood and the place most easily accessed by potential rescuers. The life-threatening situation in this particular case is a cruise ship upturned by a 'wall of water' while on its way from New York to Athens.

They are suddenly thrust into a life-threatening situation filled with dangerous twists and turns. We meet a group of people, mostly strangers. At the time of its exit from theaters, it was among the six most successful films in cinema history. And when all was said and done, the film made more than 27 times its production budget. Theaters still hold annual screenings every New Year’s Eve. They'd attend Poseidon Adventure conventions for decades. Hardcore fans made replicas of the doomed ocean liner. This was before Star Wars, but The Poseidon Adventure begged repeat viewings. Of all such action-adventures, however, none was as big as Ronald Neame's The Poseidon Adventure.Īirport kicked the craze off in 1970, but starting with Poseidon in 1972, these films became events. Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that the most popular films of the Nixon era were epic disaster movies.

Poseidon movie