Nov 11, 2009

The Best And Worst Disaster Movies

Still woefully behind the times of the counter culture 60's & 70's, mainstream Hollywood was overjoyed to discover the kind of blockbuster that everyone wanted to see. Entertainment trends come and go but, for an entire decade, big-budget, star-studded, disaster films ruled the box-office. A genre so wonderfully over-the-top that it seemed destined for Cool Cinema Trash status.


With films like San Francisco (1936) and The Hurricane (1937) on-screen mayhem was certainly nothing new. Whether man-made or an uncontrollable force of nature, the disaster was usually a dramatic device that came at the end of the movie. In the 70's that all changed.

The disaster was now the focus of the story. Once the revamped genre became popular with audiences, successful producers like Jennings Lang (the Airport sequels) and Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno) couldn't come up with perilous plots fast enough.

The scripts for these orgies of calamity were filled with outrageous situations and two-dimensional characters. But, when Helen Hayes won an Oscar for her role in Airport (1970), it legitimized the genre. This might also explain why some of Hollywood's biggest stars were lining up to be put through the ringer in these multi-million dollar celebrations of human tragedy.

With hammy overacting and dubious special effects, the disaster films of the 1970's offer up a cornucopia of campy delights. After all, who wouldn't what to see their favorite stars fighting for survival only to be killed off by the whims of fate? Ah, the magic of the movies.

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