When Time Ran Out... (1980)

When Time Ran Out..., I wanted to watch again for many years, mostly because this was THE first new tape I bought, not an x-rental, but a real, new, wrapped in plastic, expensive VHS cassette from the local video store in Märsta. And now I realize I'm 35 years old and a couple of years moved back very close to where this place was, 25 years later. Oh, time flies my friends. I also bought an x-rental of John Guillermin's King Kong at the same time, but that's another story. Already at a young age I was obsessed by disaster movies - and still is. One of my first big investments was a TV-recording of Mark Robson's masterpiece Earthquake, a tape my classmate Pernilla stole from her father when we was in second or third grade. But that's another story I won't go in to right now. Back to this, the last of the real disaster flicks, from the master of disaster: Irwin Allen!

Bob Spangler (James Franciscus) is the co-owner of a luxurious tropical island resort, together with Gilmore (William Holden), who owns the main chain of hotels. Today he decided to visit the island. Bob is partner of a oil drilling firm, owned by Hank Anderson (Paul Newman) and this day they strike gold: oil, lots of oil! Anderson is a bit suspicious. I thinks the pressure is way to hard and wants to stop the drilling... which makes Bob unhappy. Soon they understand that the cause of this is the volcano, who's gonna erupt! Anderson takes it upon himself to help people away from the danger before all hell breaks loose, but not everyone likes this... and soon the volcano will explode, and so the island!

It's easy to see how the genre had got bored with itself at this point and no one believed this movie would be a success - Paul Newman, Ernest Borgnine and a couple of the other stars took the parts just to get out of the contracts they had with Allen - and the script by Stirling Silliphant (what kinda name is that anyway?!) and direction by James Goldman is competent and it works, but it's far from being ambitious and fun. They're just all gun for hires, doing their job, grabbing the pay check. But as a disaster-aficionado I still think it's an okay movie, only let down by a couple of very bad visual effects scenes, worthy of a movie with an helluva lower budget.

The story is idiotic and leaves no room for more logical solutions, people just accept whats coming to them and this makes us - the audience - thinking most of them deserves getting killed. But I like the small touches or BIG melodrama, for example the fine performances by Burgess Meredith and Valentina Cortese (who you could see in Ricardo Freda's The Iguana With the Tongue of Fire, among others) as retired tightrope artists, both of them delivering very sensitive and convincing characters. Another favourite is the love-hate relationship between cop Ernest Borgnine and defrauder Red Buttons, which gives some extra warmth to the otherwise uninspired cast.

When Time Ran Out has every cliché in the book - and more! It's like they just took the best and worst of every other disaster movie the latest decade and mixed them all together in this volanco-soup. I like greedy, evil and stubborn baddies like James Franciscus who stays on the hotel just because he refused to accept that the volcano will erupt, or the mistress drawn by two men who stays with the one that doesn't love her - to die! That's actually melodrama of high class and gives us some genuine tension at the end. The final scene of two of the characters when they're watching something that will cause their death seconds later is both touching and chilling.

But still, this is a disaster movie and the disasters is the only thing that counts. It delivers a lot of action, from an earthquake to a tsunami, lava floods, volcano meteorites and panicked people causing their own deaths by acting stupid. It's just a pity that many effects looks quite crappy! The miniatures often looks good, but the visual effects - the back projections, matte paintings and double exposure effects just looks primitive and very unconvincing. According to Borgnine the budget ran out because of the super-expensive locations - and those locations truly looks great!

I think When Time Ran Out... is a fun disaster movie with a few good scenes here and there. It's worth a watch for fans of bored famous actors getting killed by a volcano. 

Dasavatharam (2008)

I rarely write about movies I dislike, but the craziness of this failure just made me want to share my thoughts with you all. It hurts a little bit because star Kamal Hassan seems to be a nice atheist with left-wing opinions, just like me, but still he probably has the ego of someone who believes he's a god! What's even stranger is the presence of a very nice and almost heroic George W. Bush (as a character) even though Kamal Hassan was arrested because of his Arabic name in the united states 2002, a consequence of the racist and fascist politics of Bush after the 9/11 attack! Anyway, why Dasavatharam came to my knowledge was that it's considered a disaster movie, and obsessed by disaster movies from all over the world. This is the third Indian I've seen and by far the worst!

The story, if you can call it a story, is a mess like I never seen before. There's tons and tons of characters who appears and disappears without much logic behind their action, Hassan himself plays ten characters - each one with less and less convincing make-up, ranging from quite okay to just absurdly bad. One problem connected to bad make-up is that one of the leading characters has one of the worst, and it's Hassan who plays something that looks like a parody of Arnold/every eighties cliché you can think of:

And maybe you think that looks good? Well, just watch the movie and you will totally agree with me. It would be more convincing watching a Tupperware bucket running around shooting with a water gun. It doesn't help that Kamal Hassan maybe isn't so fit... well, he's probably strong, but the chubby belly kinda takes away the illusion of him playing a super-strong athletic muscle-bull.

I can sense something ambitious deep inside the storyline, something about chaos theory, something about that everything hangs together just by science and humanity (there's nothing supernatural in this film and Hassan treats religion without respect - which is good of course). All the characters played by him has some kind of connection and without everyone's help (mostly without them knowing it) the world maybe had come to an end. He even turns the 2004 Tsunami to something good - indirectly - because the force of nature helps out with something that could have caused an even bigger, worldwide, disaster.

And here we have the disaster, the 2004 Tsunami - something that affected many Asian countries and also made several of them produce their own disaster movies based on a lot of water - even China and Japan jumped on the bandwagon to use the fear of water to earn a quick buck at the box office. Here the disaster is cheap but still quite effective. It's a mix of real water and digital (and real) water added to already existing locations. Sometimes it looks good, most of the times it looks crap - including the non-CG effects. But it's still  massive, big

disaster scene, which is appreciated.

But in the end Dasavatharam is just an excuse for a lot of action, a lot of it - and most of it is extremely badly choreographed and shot, taking away the power of some nice stunt that could have been a lot cooler if they were shown in their normal speed and without a lot of unnecessary editing. What's even more fun is the overly graphic kills - for being an Indian film - which includes some really juicy squibs (my favourite is a guy that gets shot in the throat and an Fulci-esque amount of blood pumps from the hole!), a gory impaling and a guy actually almost exploding from being affected by the highly dangerous virus! That's fun!

But no, Dasavatharam is just not a good movie and with a lenght of three hours it's just doesn't have "it" for me. I've seen longer movies from India that have a fantastic quality, but here... well, I'm pretty sure they had no idea what the hell they were doing!

Miami Magma (2011)

There's a time in ever film geeks life when he just can't write about a movie he's seen - but still wanna share something from it. Miami Magma is a really, really, really stupid and actually quite boring disaster flick starring Brad Dourif in an extended cameo and written by then genius who gave us Savage Planet, MonsterArk and Wrong Turn 4. Personally, but that might just be me, I think a movie about a volcano eruption in Miami should have some disaster scenes... but hey, maybe I'm asking too much?

Anyway, here's the only interesting scene in the whole movie and also my nominee for the STUPIDEST DEATH SCENE EVER. Yeah.

Just a causal day at the tennis court. 

The bearded tennis teacher hits a ball! 

At the same time a sinister crack is appearing in the ground!

The blonde chick hits back! 

Suddenly lava spurts up from the crack!!!!

"What the fuck?"

Swoooosh! TENNIS-LAVA-BALL-KICK! Ultraman! 

"Alrighty, maybe I should...urghhh!" 

A dramatic insert of tennis racket falling to the ground.

"I didn't see that one coming!" 

Nasty flesh wound there, mister. 

NoooooooooOOOOOOooooOOOOooo!!!!!!!

Krakatoa: East of Java (1969)

My goal in life (and I have many of those) is to watch every single disaster movie ever made, especially those from more exotic countries. The US has always been the master of disaster movies, and it goes back to Deluge (1933) and San Francisco (1936), not counting the countless biblical disasters, Atlantis-stories and everything else between heaven and earth. One of the first ones I ever heard of as a child was Krakatoa: East of Java, but it's not until now, when I'm slowly crawling towards the golden years (there's some grey hairs coming, believe me...) I actually sat down and watched it. Was it worth the wait? Just wait and see.

Maximilian Schell plays Captain Hanson and he and his crew is out on a dangerous salvage expedition. There's a ship sunken and on that ship there's a collection of valuable pearls, and now it's time to bring 'em up. The problem is that it's very near the island of Krakatoa, and without no one of them knowing it, it's on it's way to erupt! Will the nuns and children survive? Will there be pointless singing? Will there be romance? You bet!

No, to be honest: this is not an especially good movie. Mostly because it's stuck between a more family-friendly Jules Verne/Disney-esque adventure romp and the more modern way of filmmaking and storytelling of the late sixties and early seventies. This means it even has a damn song number in the beginning and a silly theme song, not counting way to much romance and ladies walking around in nice dresses while their men is out on dangerous adventures. It's part religious, moralistic Mitt Romney-wacko and part Kirk Douglas in The Light at the Edge of the World, if you get that parable?

So the first hour is mostly boring romantic melodrama with some good actors like Maximilian Schell (very dashing and handsome) sleepwalking through his part, Brian Keith doing maybe the only complex part in the whole movie and sexy Sal Mineo looking cute and cuddly without much to do. The worst thing is that most stories never really leads anywhere, mysteries is not mysteries and no one really seem that inspired to go on that trip to find the treasure. It's just... blah...

The production started without a script so special effects director (and genius) Eugène Lourié started shooting the volcano-affects at the back lot of Cinecitta first of all, and those are also the highlight of the movie. Lourié worked as a director, art director, production designer, special effects supervisor in Crack in the World, Gorgo, The Giant Behemoth, Burnt Offerings and a lot of other gorgeous movies and his work in this film is just fantastic. The miniatures, the cinematography involving these, tidal waves and destruction - it's all top-notch. Very classy and I can't imagine how it would have looked like in cinemas! It was actually re-released in cinemas in Europe during the 70's, edited down for length and re-titled Volcano!

Krakatoa: East of Java (yes, I know it's west of Java... but everyone mentions this so why should I? Ah, damn. Too late!) isn't the best disaster movie ever made and it's hardly the typical one either (and really not worth the wait). But this would have been a lot better if it focused on the disaster and not on some silly hunt for pearls and scrapped the romantic adventures - because in the end, no one cares about romance when there's a volcano about to erupt. That's the law of cool movies. 

Kaala Patthar (1979)

My hunt for obscure non-American disaster movies goes on and now I've just seen Yash Chopra's Kaala Patthar (which triggered me to make a bad joke earlier today: "If you directly translated the Indian movie title Kaala Patthar from Swedish it would be Coold Boobhs in English. Kinda."). Often I find non-American disaster flicks even more fun than the movies they try to copy. All the clichés is there, but with a local flavours and with a lot more miniature effects made for lesser money. I've already seen and loved The Burning Train, and now it's time for a mine-disaster movie starring two of the biggest stars: Shashi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan! Is it as good as The Burning Train? Read on and you'll see...

Kapoor is Ravi, a mining engineer who works for the greedy bastard Dhanraj (Prem Chopra). He's very critical to the safety precautions in the mine, but Dhanraj refuses to listen to him. One of the workers is the mysterious Vijay (Amitabh), a man with a past! He's a former boat captain who by accident, and partly being a coward, abandoned his ship during a storm and left the passengers. But the ship didn't sink and now he's on the run from himself, trying to make up for his cowardly behaviour. We also have Mangal (Shatrughan Sinha), a convict who escaped prison and his hiding among the workers... these and several other characters we get a chance to follow during their life and work around the mine, until the disaster strikes!

I've always wondered how these Indian movies can keep up the interest. This one, for example, is almost three hours long and when looking back at it there's nothing really special about the story. Don't misunderstand me, it's well-written - but the story is like most other disaster movies. Nothing unique, and still a movie like this keeps up the interest of the audience for the whole duration. I think that, more or less, Indian movies are like an episode of The Simpsons or Family Guy, two shows that crams a lot of intrigue into 20-24 minute long episodes. Why because they're not afraid of introducing twists after twists without much explanation. It just happens, with a line of dialogue or two getting the show going in the right direction.

Indian movies do the same thing, but for 2,5-3 hours and they're not ashamed about it. The inclusion of a musical number when the story starts to slow down and more or less unprovoked fistfights (or kung fu if the movie is more wacko) also speeds up the story. Kaala Patthar is a good drama, not great, with a cast of decent actors who brings some respectability to the film. A fight here and there, some romance - and bromance - music and intrigue makes it work for 165 minutes.

The interesting thing, if you analyze the story and the main antagonist, is that the disaster strikes during the last 25 minutes of the movie! These minutes has a lot of action and people getting drown in absurd amounts of water, but it also feels a bit rushed and I wish they could have started the disaster earlier to build up more tension.

Kaala Patthar is not the best disaster movie I've seen, but it's a good drama and well worth watching for aficionados of disaster-melodramas. You who's sceptical I recommend The Burning Train instead!

Train Week: The Cassandra Crossing (1976)

One of the first DVDs I ever bought was the UK widescreen release of The Cassandra Crossing, and that might tell you something about my love for train- and disaster movies. It's also a fitting final movie in Ninja Dixon's Train Week because to me it's one of those movies I revisit from time to time and it never fails to entertain me. Maybe it's one of those movies only for us that appreciate disaster movies filled with well-paid stars, but he story itself isn't half bad and the typical criticism against government and military that was so popular in 70's cinema is very evident here. Probably a way for producer Carlo Ponti to cash in a little bit extra on the anti-establishment trend, but it still works quite good.

Three Swedish "terrorists" from the Swedish Peace Movements infiltrates the World Health Organisation building in Geneva, but everything goes wrong and they get shot - inside a secret laboratory. One of them, played by Lou Castel, escapes but is infected with a deadly disease! He manages to get aboard the train to Stockholm and soon he's spreading the illness to the other passengers. A representative from the US government, Mackenzie (a tired Burt Lancaster)  shows up and takes control over the situation and he decides that the only way to deal with the illness is to quarantine the train - and maybe, just maybe, kill everyone aboard!

The Cassandra Crossing is a very competent and maybe a bit to calculated disaster-drama with an awesome cast of both superstars and has-beens (and I love has-beens). Just casting Richard Harris and Ava Gardner as an ex-couple who really loves each other is brilliant. Or Lionel Stander as the conductor... OJ Simpson (when he still was someone people liked) as a priest, or Martin Sheen as Sophia Loren's toyboy! Lancaster is always good and his nearest man is John Philip Law. Add Lee Strassberg, Ann Turkel, Ingrid Thulin, Ray Lovelock and you have one of the best casts in a disaster movie ever. It might not be as good or awesome as Mark Robson's masterpiece Earthquake or John Guillermin's luxurious The Towering Inferno, it's has a more gritty and European feeling and the sense that the government officials doesn't care about us anyway - far from the heroic stars in the two movies mentioned aboved. Maybe The Cassandra Crossing is more connected to the conspiracy thriller in theme and style, something the final scene echoes quite much.

What I never noticed before is the strong holocaust-theme of the movie. Not only because of concentration camp survivor Kaplan (Lee Strassberg), but rebuilding of the train to an air sealed container, the oxygen pumped into the train, which looks like gas, the trip through Poland and into Germany and the sounds of the guards screaming "Achtung!" outside. The movie gets darker from this moment and and ends in disaster for many of the passengers.

As an action-adventure this is a great movie. The fantastic aerial footage on the train and locations looks just stunning and that in combination with some train-climbing stunts, a nice explosion and lots of shoot-outs and even some blood and graphic violence this is a winner. The highlight is the final, and I don't wanna ruin it for you - but it has a lot of very cool and violent scenes (that was cut from the US video version that was released in the eighties) and really good miniature effects and big scale destruction.

The Cassandra Crossing is one of those real underrated thrillers that never seem to handle the bullying from the Hollywood big shots, but if you find the widescreen version on DVD - buy it! A good, spectacular train movie  and one of my personal favourites. 

Train Week: The Bullet Train (1975)

I reality I hate trains. I just see them as a one long coffin of boredom, and it takes forever to get somewhere. Not to mention the smell, the screaming bastard-kids and the over-priced restaurant. Have you noticed that the first hour often is quiet nice and cozy, but then the smell and dirt creeps up on you and when you finally arrive you're a germ-bomb of sweat, dirty and the stench of seats that reeks of twenty years of farting!  The only nice train I've been on is one between Shanghai and Beijing. Extremely clean and nice people. We shared compartment with a gentleman from the anti-piracy bureau there. He had a collection of 3000 bootlegs himself at home. But all my complains is nothing compared to what the passengers and crew have to experience on... The Bullet Train!

Sonny China, in a glorified cameo, is the captain of the super-fast bullet train. What he don't know is that a group of three men have planted a bomb underneath the train and it will explode if they gets under a certain speed! Now it's up to the control central and the police to figure out where the bomb is, where the terrorists are and save the day. But it's not that easy, of course, and soon there's just one person who knows how to disarm the bomb and he's not gonna turn himself in!

That's the basic storyline of The Bullet Train, but it has a lot more that makes it in may ways superior to American counterparts. First and most important, the characters has more layers than just being heroes and bad guys. After a while you actually feel for the main bomber (the excellent Ken Takakura), you can understand his pain and why he's doing it. This very important because then you have something else to care about and the scenes when the police is searching for him gets even more interesting and filled with tension because you're on his side during those scenes. I kinda liked him actually, and it's very far from the over-the-top scene-chewing "acting" by Dennis Hopper in the similar movie Speed (I need to see that one again actually).

Like many Japanese movies the filmmakers (this movie is produced by Toei) often used miniatures to boost the vision of the movie and Bullet Train is no except. It took me a while to realize that many of the train shots is miniatures! Sure, after a while you notice them quite clearly but they still looks great. Even if this is a disaster movie that actually lacks traditional disasters there's three sequences with exploding trains and those scenes looks awesome. There's some non-train action spliced in-between the drama also but it's the grittier, seventies style. Handheld camera, some blood and explosions.

The Bullet Train has a seriousness that you could find in slightly silly movies during the seventies and this makes it so much better. I have no time in watching movies that jokes away a good story, and The Bullet Train actually is really good with a lot of tension and thrills. There's a sequence when they need to transfer something from one speeding train to another that works so well! But it mainly lives because of the characters and the humanity in them. The DVD released by VCI is the shorter, dubbed, international version. It still works very fine and after a while you get used to the corny English voices. The original version seems to be released in the UK on DVD so I might have to get that one sooner or later.

Watch it, for the tension and for the wonderful actors!

Virus (1980)

I first watched Virus (aka Fukkatsu No Hi) ages ago on some obscure x-rental I bought for a ridiculous amount of money. To be honest I wasn't that impressed at the time, probably because I was very much into more special effects-drive disaster movies like Earthquake or Meteor and Virus is more or less the opposite of those films. The version I saw was also the short 108 minute cut, edited so stupid westerners around the world would appreciate it more - but when I finally now sat down and watched the original version, in widescreen and with all the lost scenes I understand that I've been missing out a minor masterpiece during all these years. Don't expect an action-adventure or traditional disaster, this is a very Japanese drama with an impressive international cast of character actors.

To recap the story in this movie is just boring, but if you want to know it's about the world being infected by a virus, the Italian flu, who's more or less unstoppable. One country after another is dying and we're following the few survivors, scientists taking shelter on Antarctica. In the White House the president (Glenn Ford) is spending his last days together with his closest friends and foes, a UK submarine and it's captain (Chuck Connors) is travels the seas to find survivors and around the world everyone we love is dying... or killing themselves.

Virus is a nice feel-bad movie, most of the time. Kinji Fukasaku did a couple of big mainstream movies, all of them much less personal and edgy than his smaller movies. But somehow he actually manages to inject a big fat dose of cynicism and darkness in Virus, which makes the already bleak story even darker. It almost borders to parody when a Japanese radio crew (one of them is Sonny Chiba in his only scene) is listening to a eight year old child who commits suicide alone on a boat somewhere or when the nurse takes a small boat and a little surviving boy, feeds him with a deadly pill and drives into the sunset to die. The whole movie is packed with tragedy, no one is spared.

The sense of hopelessness and being abandoned by all kinds of higher forces reminds me of The Submersion of Japan, one of my favourite feel-bad movies ever, but in some way Virus is even bleaker, effectively killing all religions and beliefs in supernatural powers by just showing how reality is. The image of Jesus on the cross, laying on a church floor with the skeleton remains of his former followers is a striking message of atheism. The whole movie breaths "We're all alone and no one is going to save us!" and that's of course the reality. That's how it is. Forget the rapture, prepare to rotten.

The cast is very fine and even notorious rotten actors like Bo Svenson makes it work better than usual. The finest of the bunch is the Japanese cast, not surprising it's a Japanese production, but even Glenn Ford - who during this time often worked with one of his eyes steadly on the paycheck - is really damn good. Others, like George Kennedy (What?! George Kennedy?! In a disaster movie?! I didn't see that one coming!!!!), Edward James Olmos and Henry Silva (Rod Steiger seem to channel his performance in Tim Burton's Mars Attacks) does a good job.

Virus is filled with strong imagery, but I think the final scenes, when Masao Kusakari almost seem like walking back in time, through ancient civilisations, through dead religions, through the past until he reaches his goal, is the most powerful sequence in the whole movie. It's a sign both of a humanitarian view on life, death to religion and maybe even a way to find what we've forgotten and start all over again.

Metal Tornado (2011)

Cheap and generic isn't just my life in three words, it's also a part of exploitation movies since the dawn of movie history. It's nothing wrong with being generic, it's part of the game - and the best game for generic scripts is the disaster genre. I think we all can agree that not one single disaster movie is an original movie - and don't defend the 70's masterpieces in the genre, they stole everything from melodrama-king Douglas Sirk and older disaster movies like San Francisco, Deluge and When Worlds Collide. It's also my favourite genre and I never grow tired of seeing either miniatures or CG models getting torn aparts by natural disasters. It's all the same to me.

SyFy Channel has been a saviour of disaster porn for a number of years, spurting out cheap flicks over and over again. After other storm-themed movies like Ba'al: The Storm God and Ice Twister, NYC: Tornado Terror and Space Twister comes Metal Tornado - a movie I don't think is a SyFy original to be honest, but belongs to that specific genre and got released on the channel last years. What makes it interesting for me, as a trash aficionado, is that it's a Canadian production and produced by my favourite exploitation man: Pierre David! Yeah? You know him I hope? He produced Dolly Dearest and Scanner Cop - and yeah, a bunch of David Cronenberg's films. Good, I knew that you knew who he is...

Lou Diamond Philips is Michael Edwards, some blahablaha-scientist, living alone with a troubled teenage son. He's dating his co-worker Rebecca (Nicole de Boer) and that causes some friction between him and his son. Anyway! He's working on a new energy source: taking power from sun flares, sucking it down with some weird space machines into gigantic battery packs down on earth. Something like that. Of course something goes wrong and the energy creates a magnetic tornado who starts to eat every metal thing it can find and of course it's going towards Philadelphia! How can Michael and his team stop it? Will he make peace with his son? Will everyone hug each other in the end? Watch the movie and you'll see...

Seriously, for me - as a very forgiving fan of cheap TV movies - this was quite OK. There's absolutely NOTHING original with it. The story goes from one metal tornado-incident to another - just like a creature feature from SyFy, and Lou Diamond Philips is a good hero running around looking worried, sitting behind computers looking worried, hugging survivors looking worried. I like Lou, no doubt about it. He's good and even if this was an easy paycheck he delivers some acting - which is rare in these movies.

The effects are mostly very cheap (surprise!), but effective. The tornado itself looks silly like hell, but I can buy it just because the story never drags. This is a movie for people who wants to sleep when watching it, just to wake up when some disaster happens. I mean, I can't even pretend any of you will like it - but I like it and that's the most important thing with the movies here at Ninja Dixon!

I have an avid reader who always comments on my blog, and he/she wanted to read about a SyFy movie and here's one for you! Hope you enjoy it!

The Water (1981)

I collect disaster movies from all over the world, and finally I found myself one from Turkey! The Water is a very patriotic slice of propaganda starring the one and only Cüneyt Arkin, the leading hero-actor in Turkey for many years. I usually stay away from most disaster movies involving water, mostly because they aren’t entertaining enough (not counting huge tsunamis of course), but this could be fun – and it was, but not really for the disaster itself…

Arkin is Murat, an honest engineer – the man behind the biggest dam in Turkey. After loosing his wife and one his sons in the water he goes crazy and more or less becomes the village idiot, talking to himself and raving about how dangerous it is to use the water for the purpose of luring tourists to the area. And that’s what his greedy brother Orhan wants to do, to with explosives make the valley bigger and transform the place to a tourist paradise with a gigantic lake, hotels and… you know the rest! Yes, the explosions will make the dam collapse! The villains in disaster movies are always evil capitalists who want to make many in every way possible, even risking their own life! Murat want to stop him, but his brother uses his henchmen to try to stop him… will they succeed? Will the place be a paradise on earth with cheap drinks and dance clubs? Guess again…

The Water is a VERY cheap disaster movie, probably the cheapest I’ve seen – but not with out merits. The best and probably the only thing I really can recommend it for is the presence of Cüneyt Arkin who gets involved in a couple of excellent fights, mixing classic fistfights with more acrobatic martial arts. In one of them he fights with big pieces of wood attached to his arms, much like Tony Jaa in Tom Yum Gong (but Tony has of course elephant-bones instead). In another sequence he’s hanged with ropes attached to his arms from a bridge, which is a very impressive stunt – and it looks like he does it himself, at lease from a few of the angles – it’s a very high bridge!).

Most of the movie is almost a one man drama. Murat walking around talking and thinking, sometimes directly to the camera, with a scene or two here with him verbally fighting with his evil brother or taking care of his old mother and surviving son in their village below the dam. Much is said about using electricity wisely and not on unnecessary things like entertainment, and several references is given to the great leader in Turkey at the moment. The movie actually ends with a filmed signed encouraging people to work hard for their country.

Directed by legendary Çetin Inanç (Turkish Jaws, Turkish Star Wars, Death Warrior and hundreds of probably better but less talked about films) with a raw energy and creative use of the very low budget. The fights and acting are mostly very good, but when the disaster finally hits the lack of money is seen very clearly. Except a very ugly miniature of the dam (who looks very different from the real dam) there are hardly any special effects. Most of the disaster is spent in rivers where the water runs fast and furious, and makes a good stand-in for dry ground. The rest is a lot of scenes when they’re spraying the extras with fire truck hoses and throwing papier-maché rocks at them! How do I know there is fire trucks involved? Well, in one scene you actually see the fire truck standing by the side of the road waiting for the next water-scene, while people running in panic from it. On the good side, the disaster takes up a big part of the ending and those takes when they obviously just pouring a bucket of water in front of the camera can’t stop it from being entertaining.

Worth watching for the spectacular fights and for a lot of shots of Cüneyt Arkin just standing up looking handsome and cool – or for those that desperately need every disaster movie ever made!

The Last Days of Pompeii (1984)

I’ve seen most of the screen versions of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s 1834 disaster novel classic with the same name. This is by far the best version, even if it’s still just a very expensive slice of Christian propaganda. I haven’t read the original book, but somehow it feels like it could have been the forefather to all the disaster clichés. Sure, there have been a few other early disaster movies that helped the film industry to design all future movies in the same genre (1933’s Deluge, San Francisco, 1936), but this has always been the mother of them all. Why? Because it has a fantastic gallery of stereotypes, from the evil non-christian priest, the proud slave, the good-hearted roman, the leader of the city that just want to please people with parties and fun, the old fart that knows everything etc etc.

Like almost all the other versions we mainly follow the noble Greek Glaucus, the up-and-coming capitalist Diomed and the good gladiator Lydon. All around these characters are a jungle of other personalities, all with their own agenda. But the main thing is the secret group of Christians that fight for their survival, both hiding in the forest having meetings and in the arena versus warriors and lions. It’s all pretty clear that the reason why Vesuvius finally erupt is because of the evil heretics who want to stop the good-hearted Christians from worshipping their god.

Anyway, this is a co-production between Italy and the US and has an impressive cast of heavy character actors: Ned Beatty, Laurence Olivier, Anthony Quayle, Brian Blessed, Ernest Borgnine, Olivia Hussey, Lesley-Anne Down and two very familiar faces from Italian genre movies, the great Catriona MacColl and the awesome Franco Nero – both make probably the best performances in the series. A young and very sexy Benedict Taylor plays a future priest that has doubts about his profession. Olivier is for once really good, even if he uses all his traditional acting-tricks in the book (his use of eyes, the tongue, the nervous laughter etc). Ned Beatty and Ernest Borgnine, both of them good actors, are obviously playing the same parts like they have done so many times before, but it works.

The story unfolds slow and with a lot of dialogue and melodrama, but strange enough it never gets boring. Peter R. Hunt, the work-horse of British cinema, makes the story work without to much boring talking heads and shows his talent for action (this is the guy directing On Her Majesty's Secret Service, no surprise!) especially in the excellent gladiator-scenes.

But the reason for a production to exist is of course the final scenes should deliver something extra spectacular. I’m happy to say this version has the best and longest volcano eruption with fantastic use of both real sets falling apart and nice miniature getting crushed. This is also, I think, the only version I’ve seen so far were we actually see people (and animals) getting buried in the ashes (in dramatic poses, probably inspired by the archaeological excavations which made Pompeii famous). The special effects is top-notch and among the best I’ve seen in a TV-production from this time.

Right now you can only buy this mini-series in Germany. The set is quite cheap and is worth every penny. Quality? Ok, nothing fancy, but works fine on my big Sony Bravia. A must of disaster movie aficionados.

The Burning Train (1980)

In 99 % of the cases a good disaster movie has a title that tells it all. Earthquake has earthquakes, The Towering Inferno has an inferno in a tower, Meteor has a meteor coming towards earth, Avalanche has an avalanche threatening Rock Hudson, City on Fire has a… city on fire! You get my drift. The perfect title of a movie about a train on fire could be The Burning Train, and it is – even if my partner suggested the title Train on Fire as something catchier. This was the most expensive movie ever in India and flopped. Wonder why? I’m far from an expert on Indian movies, but this has romance, dancing and singing, adventure, bad guys and crying children. Maybe it was too much for the Indian audience? Maybe it was, with the Indian history of train accidents, too sensitive? I have no idea, and I won’t analyze it even further.

After the electro-funkiest theme music ever (where a female voice and a hilarious “monster”-voice sings “The Burning Traaaaaain” over and over again) we’re introduced to the movies main characters, for more or less ninety minutes. Vinod (Vinod Khanna) works for the Indian railways and his dream is to create a super express train which can go from Delhi to Mumbai in 14 hours! Another dream, which he makes come true, is to marry his sweetheart – which also is the sweetheart of another employee at the railways, Randhir (Danny Denzongpa). This makes Randhir plan for revenge, something he does for six years until the train is ready and everyone is aboard. He fucks up the brakes and plants a bomb on it, which seem logical. I would probably also kill hundreds of people of someone stole my sweetheart from me ;) The disaster becomes even worse when the kitchen staff forgets to turn of the gas, and turns the whole train into a flaming inferno (which means it’s like The Towering Inferno, but horizontally!).

I don’t mind long movies or excessive character development and massive build-ups. Just look at the Soviet masterpiece Air Crew, which take its time to create the characters before killing them off. The Burning Train takes a similar approach, but never succeeds in the same way. It still feels a bit to shallow and there’s a lot of repeating in the first half of the movie (It’s three hours long). But wait, I can’t say I dislike it. It’s colourful and entertaining and never really boring, it’s just don’t have “it”. But after 80-90 minutes it finally kicks into disaster-mode and never stops after that.

First of all, Danny Denzongpa (who also plays the bad guy in last years Robot) is awesome in his part. He’s probably the best actor of the bunch and gives it all as the man filled with madness and revenge. He also sports a nice hair-cut and moustache. The rest of the cast is the usual disaster-fodder: the good-hearted thief, young lovers, older couple, the policeman, a couple of different holy men, the unselfish hero, the wacko, innocent children and the crazy guy who wants to save himself before all others. Yes, it’s the same cast of characters like in all disaster movies with a multi-cast (like Towering Inferno, Earthquake, Poseidon Adventure etc). It’s very familiar and also very welcome, because I demand safe and non-original entertainment when it comes to disaster epics.

If you manage to get through the first half you’re treated to a lot of awesome stuff in the second half. The Burning Train has a lot of nice stunt work (some look very dangerous), explosions and impressive fire effects. It’s on the same quality-scale as the Hollywood movies, where only the slightly primitive miniature train in the end betrays that its non-Hollywood. I love scenes when people are hanging on the outside of trains or fighting on the roof, and its all here! The fire stunts looks very dangerous and there are some explosions in slow-motion that are closer than, I guess, they was planned to be from the beginning. Like most of the Indian movies I’ve seen there is also some comedy, and here it’s – and I can’t say what they’re meant to be – two silly men who seem to be in the toilet together several times. They also sit beside each other when they eat. Not sure if they are meant to be some comic relief gay men? No explanation is given to us.

The Burning Train is a very entertaining and spectacular disaster movie. If you gonna buy it, go for the version from Eros Entertainment. It’s in widescreen and it’s the long version.

Flood (1976)

The beauty with Irwin Allen is how he cast his productions, always very competent character actors – even in the main roles, and always some old movie star. It’s the last thing I appreciate extra much. It’s similar to how Swedish director Arne Mattsson worked, always gave the old-timers something to do, let them be a star in something bigger. In Flood Richard Basehart and Gloria Stuart represents the classic generation of actors, and of course both of them is excellent. But Flood is mainly a man’s movie, a manly man’s movie. Robert Culp, Martin Milner and Cameron Mitchell, all three middle aged men with young hot girlfriends!

Story? Yes, it’s the same as always. A coming disaster in form of a poorly constructed dam, a small town with a mayor that refuses to believe in that something so absurd as a dam-disaster can happen and the man of warning himself, the all American hero (with his buddy, the tough helicopter pilot). And then the dam bursts and…yeah, you all know it by now!

Nothing bad with clichés, I love them, and Flood indeed delivers some of the most juicy clichés since Earthquake! Everything from the boy-in-peril to pregnant-woman-in-peril to the meeting with the officials that ends with them not believe in our hero – and everything in-between! The budget is slightly higher than Cave In and here there are actually extras, and bigger sets… and a miniature of the dam! And visual effects! And even a stunt or two! Not much of course, because the main effect scene is when the dam bursts and then we’re treated to some stock footage, a couple of scenes where water is flooding into houses and over streets. Not much visible casualties as usual in Allen’s TV-productions.

But Flood is something for us that loves and appreciate TV-movies. It’s often effectively told with out to much unnecessary scenes, and it’s always guaranteed political correct – in that special seventies way we all like. It’s a movie made by pros, and I can’t complain about anything special, except maybe that it – as always – needs more disasters to feel really spectacular! Robert Culp and Cameron Mitchell is favourites of mine, especially Mitchell who was one of the most underrated actors of his generation. Here’s a weird thing, Roddy McDowall, another fantastic man and actor, shows up in the beginning – but then he kinda disappears! Maybe I looked away the moment he died or departed from the story in some other way. Weird!

Flood is out from Warner Archive in a great-looking release, and like the other in their Irwin Allen-collection, this is a must for the serious disaster- and TV-movie fanatic.

Tidal Wave (1975)

In his memoirs, Roger Corman mentions Submersion of Japan (1973), a big budget disaster movie from Toho, which he bought the rights to, removed most of the drama, let Joe Dante and some people at the office re-dub and added Lorne Greene as “Ambassador Warren Richards” in three scenes. The result was Tidal Wave, a movie never – what I know – released on home video, but shown on television later on. I’ve been trying to find the Corman-version for many years now, and thanks to the magic of torrents I’ve just seen it. Was it worth the wait? Ah, maybe not, but it’s still good to close that chapter of my nerd-life.

Submersion of Japan, read my review here, is actually one of my favourite disaster movies ever (together with Earthquake, Avalanche and City on Fire – even Meteor is high up among my favourite disasters). An impressive spectacle about how Japan starts to sinks, getting torn apart by earthquakes and volcano eruptions, and at the same time a low key drama about life and death and the future of the Japanese people. That last part is completely gone in this version, where we instead have a very fast-told story about some dubbed Japanese dudes talking about nothing in-between the disaster scenes and then Lorne Greene doing his job for a quick paycheck.

It’s not actually bad in boring way, but if you’ve seen the long version (which has way over an hour of more drama) it’s a thin and silly little movie which just showcases the impressive special effects and rides on the popularity of bigger disaster movies from the same time. The dubbing is very sloppy and sometimes you can notice how the voice actors talks more slow to try to fit in their words in the original lip movements. It works so-so. But like all Corman-productions there’s always entertainment and here they just jump from one disaster to another and uses that footage well. The effects are very impressive, and some scenes with people are quite gory and sadistic. It’s a Godzilla-movie without Godzilla, which is the best way to explain this version.

The title is actually most stupid thing with the whole movie, because there’s hardly any tidal wave in the story – just a short not especially impressive one at the end. The rest is earthquakes and volcano’s doing their job.

Compared to the original movie this is crap, but fun and crazy crap like we all love. I wish all versions (there’s three edits in all) could be released in a nice fat, DVD and/or Blu-Ray box for people like me to worship.

When Worlds Collide (1951)

I have a love-hate relationship with George Pal. Most of the time I start watching his movies and realizes once again that he’s pompous religious fool with morals that probably even felt old-fashioned when the movies where made, but then I often revisit the movie some time later and enjoys it more than I should too. Maybe I just need to experience that first burst of anger, analyze it and then look beyond the stupidity the second time.

My biggest complain with When Worlds Collide is actually the lack of disasters. There’s one cool sequence in the middle with a lot of cool miniature-mayhem and even some flood-footage that was used in the Christopher Lee-movie End of the World, but that’s it. Even the final scene when the planets collide is quite weak and don’t deliver enough mayhem for my taste. It’s more about the human drama before and under the disaster, which is quite OK but very naïve.

Well, the whole movie is naïve. From this idea that a rocket will movie people to another planet in just a few hours to the idealistic newspapers headlines how humanity gets together with face their destiny (the panic never really happens, except a few guys at the end), prays to god and behaves like the proud race we definitely not are in reality. But the building of the rocket and some other visual effects is very nice to look at, if that counts.

What bothers me more is the religious theme in the movie. I have nothing against religion in movies, if there’s some kinda criticism, not just blind faith – which tends to be very silly after a while. Here the movie opens with shot some ancient bible and some words about end of the world. People pray and talk about god, humanity (as mention above) turns to their myths and legends to seek comfort and the weird thing is that only 44 people cane be taken away from earth and find a new home in “heaven”, which reminds me a lot about the 144 000 people Jehova’s Witnesses whines about all the time. In the end our completely white gang (no room for blacks, Hispanics, Asians on this brave new world) of survivors arrives to a planet which feels so heavenly it’s absurd.

But sure, this is a movie I watch for the sci-fi elements, the disaster scenes and the completely ridiculous amount of silly dialogue. And shit, it was a long time since I saw people smoke so much in a movie! I hope they brought some good lung cancer-experts with them to the planet Zyra!

Ah, it’s a fun movie. I can’t deny that. Wattya think?

Cave In! (1983)

Shot in 1979, but not released until 1983, Cave In! clearly feels a lot more seventies than eighties. Produced by Irwin Allen, this TV-movie with a disaster theme was one of several he produced for Warner and now, thru Warner Archive, they’re finally out on DVD. For me, as an Irwin Allen-o-holic this is fantastic, even if I read mostly negative opinions about these made for TV-disasters. But I know what I want, and I’m not disappointed…

Senator Kate Lassiter (Susan Sullivan) is on her way to visit the Five Mile Caverns, to see if they still can be open to the public. One of the guides is her ex-boyfriend, Ranger Gene Pearson (Dennis Cole) and this will be a tense situation! At the same time an escaped convict, Tom Arlen (James Olson) manages to hide in the cave after killing a police! But the worst thing is of course the marriage between ex-cop Joe Johnson (Leslie Nielsen) and his wife Liz (Julie Sommars) who are on a trip to try to piece it together again… and do I even have to mention the manipulative and controlling professor Harrison Soames (Ray Milland) who keeps his grown-up daughter in symbolic chains. When the cave suddenly caves in, our gang of wandering clichés is stuck there and must survive to get to the ground level again, and at the same time fix their problematic relationships!

Yes, this is Irwin Allen all the way, but with a small budget and a set consisting of a papier maché cave and a dramatic flashback for each character! To be honest, and we all know it, this is not original. This is a TV-movie of the week, with a script tossed together from a lot of other movies that has been done (Irwin Allen “remaked” one scene a couple of years later for When Time Ran Out…), but it also has that amazing TV-coziness that we rarely find nowadays. I can imagine how the family, but not the youngest, gathered in front of the telly to watch the latest Friday-movie with a bowl of popcorn and dad holding a beer in one hand and with his other arm around his wife’s shoulders (I also see brown or orange wallpaper, but that was only if it was released in 1979 instead of 1983).

The cave obviously is a symbol for relationship-hell. If you get thru it you’ll survive and can live happily ever after. The drama works, especially because of the very fine performance of Leslie Nielsen as the bitter ex-cop and Julie Sommars as his desperate wife. Good stuff. Ray Milland calls in his performance, but his character is also so twisted and evil that it’s hard not to be fascinated by him. When his daughter finally breaks up with him (I just don’t consider that a spoiler) I got goosebumps.

Action? Yeah, there’s some falling cave-walls, a diving-scene and a good sequence with our gang trying to get over a very weak bridge (also see the volcano-movie with Paul Newman…), which is not bad at all considering the budget.

I love old TV-movies and Cave In was a pleasure to finally see. Nothing new under the sun of course, but a couple of solid hours of entertainment. And please Warner Archive, release the longer version of When Time Ran Out… on DVD so I can buy it!

Crack in the World (1965)

I have no nails left. This is a common syndrome from watching Crack in the World, Andrew Marton’s classic disaster-flick with Dana Andrews in the performance of his career. It’s silly to criticize new movies, to compare them with old movies (and of course, all the older movies are always better according to the fan boys out there). But now, for once, this is a movie that is in every way better than modern examples like The Day after Tomorrow or 2012. Not that it has the same kinda budget, but it’s a real nail-biter and has character that somehow feels real and that you can relate to.

Here we have Dana Andrews as the aged, sick and very bitter Dr. Stephen Sorenson. He’s married with the young and beautiful Dr. Maggie Sorenson (Janette Scott). She actually loves him, for real. But the tension is very frail because of her former lover, Dr. Ted Rampion (Kieron Moore), who works with them. Stephen is convinced that she don’t want him anymore, and uses this to put Ted in a bad light.

In this case this silly game is more serious, because they together are trying to reach the hot interior of the earth to from there gain energy. It’s just that Ted believes that the way Stephen wants to do it, is dangerous and will create the destruction of the earth! And guess what, he was right…

The budget was probably not that high, but Crack in the World still looks magnificent. The look is big and fancy and with intelligent direction by Andrew Marton. He let the actors faces speak, and never cuts away to fast or let the camera linger to long. He knows he has a great script to work with, and in the centre of it is Dana Andrews with a very complex character. He shows off every emotion, but never too much. It’s subtle, but still manages to affects the audience. All the other actors are wonderful, but Dana steals the show.

Now, the script builds the story quite slow. The movie never had so much money to show all the disasters, and it’s a lot of talking about what’s happening around in the world – but the further the movies goes, the more of Eugène Lourié’s awesome special effects. Lots of explosions, a couple of very nice miniatures and a very tense final where all the disaster clichés comes to use and still it feels fresh and original.

It’s recently been released by Olive Films, so get this DVD – it’s an order!

End of the World (1977)

"Some of the films I've been in I regret making. I got conned into making these pictures in almost every case by people who lied to me. Some years ago, I got a call from my producers saying that they were sending me a script and that five very distinguished American actors were also going to be in the film. Actors like José Ferrer, Dean Jagger and John Carradine. So I thought "Well, that's all right by me". But it turned out it was a complete lie. Appropriately the film was called End Of The World."

That’s what Christopher Lee remembers about End of the World, and even if I can understand his anger of being fooled into making a movie with old friends and none of them (except Dean Jagger) is cast, he’s a bit to harsh against this Charles Band-produced sci-fi/disaster/thriller. Hardly a fan favourite, but if you look beyond some of the silliness, it’s actually quite cool.

Kirk Scott is Andrew Boran, communication-expert. Under a period he’s been tracing signals from earth to space and back again. When he finally decrypts them, the message is creepy and points to that the earth is going to be destroyed. He traces the signals and finds that they lead to a monastery. The place is run by Father Pergado (Christopher Lee) and a staff of six nuns. At first everything seem fine, but when Andrew get back to his lab and finds out that he’s mention in the messages to space, he realize that something is very wrong with them...

It’s a simple story, but actually works fine. The budget is very low, very low and some scenes and sets is very cheesy. The control room, that we’re spending some time in later in the movie, looks like it filled of props from some old Ed Wood-movie and the disaster scenes is stock footage from (among others) Mark Robson’s Earthquake. In a low budget movie like this, it works fine and is eerie to see the disasters only on crappy monitors in the control room.

But the script holds up and never explains too much. Lee is good as usual, and so most of the actors. Joel Goldsmith, the son of Jerry, is credited with the weird and abstract electronic sound/music together with Andrew Belling, and is one of the best things with the movie. It ads to the quirkiness a lot.

Not as bad as I expected and an interesting little sci-fi movie with some deep flaws, but also a lot of highlights.

Meteor (1979)

It wasn't that long ago I watched Meteor and wrote a few word about it, but after getting my hands on the gorgeous German DVD from Warner Brothers I had to revisit it. First of all, the DVD beats the hell out of the US and UK DVDs, and the movie looks like it never looked before. It helped me appreciate it a bit more, because the framing was correct and the colours a lot better than before. The effects (some say those are the weakest spot in the movie) also felt better processed.

After watching it now, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a bit unfair to call it a bad movie. It’s certainly generic to the brink of stealing everything from other movies, but Ronald Neame still makes it work with a slick and commercial style of filmmaking. The shots are big and bold, the actors are famous and the lines are ridiculous. A typical American disaster movie. Now, this has all the big names, but it came to budget it probably had less than the more famous disasters from the era. This shows in several ways: lots of dialogue – and the use of stock footage.

Thank heavens the dialogue is less clunky than some other movies, and with a bunch of fun actors – especially Natalie Wood and Brian Keith as Russians (both spoke fluent Russian in real life too), our own Bo Brundin in a small part and the great Sybil Danning in small part where she gets buried by an avalanche. Sean Connery had a tough time during these years and more or less took every job he was offered, but manages to not look to bored. It’s a bit eerie to see Natalie Wood almost drowing in mud, when you think about her famous fear of drowning – and how she died two years later.

So, the disasters then? The main attraction. Better than their reputation. The Swiss-sequence is mostly built around stock footage from the Roger Corman-produced Avalanche and has very little new to offer except a few effect shots that looks ok and the little story about Sybil Danning and her boyfriend. But it’s nicely cut and has some suspense.

The Hong Kong-sequence is actually a lot better with a great build up and a tidal wave that looks way better than some other critics claims. The processing works very good and the miniature-water in combination with the real footage looks kinda neat. Sybil Danning gets a billing in big letters, but the two main Chinese actors here is quite anonymous. But it’s Yung Henry Yu who had (and still has) long career in Hong Kong, and tried his luck as “Bruce Ly” for one movie too! His wife is played by Tsui Ling Yu, a Shaw Brothers veteran who’s credited with twenty movies between 1977 and 1983!

The final in New York looks a lot better in widescreen, and has a cool miniature of WTC exploding – but the rest is mostly footage of real houses getting torn down with explosives, and with a fancy filter on top of it. But it works a lot better here than I’ve seen before. The rest of the show, where our heroes is trying to escape thru the subway, almost drowning in mud, is exciting and fun.

No, Meteor isn’t a masterpiece. But it’s really neither better or worse than Deep Impact or Armageddon, only with less budget and a slightly bored Sean Connery in the lead. Ah, I can’t forget Henry Fonda in one of his one-day-cameos either, as the president of the US. I can never get enough of these one-day-shoots, a good way for a famous character actor to earn some doe and still work minimal time :)

Hurricane (1979)

Poor Timothy Bottoms. He thought he had something going. Big disaster-drama. Fancy European director, mega-producer fixing the money. Wonderful co-actors and a one hundred percent hit on the box office. But Timothy Bottom was wrong, as usual. Hurricane cost over twenty million US dollar and didn't earn much money. The chaos on set is legendary, and Swedish director Jan Troell once said that he could spend hours every day on the beach, just laying there watching the sky. Nothing else. So what is the problem with Hurricane? I think it's mainly the script, which a classic love-story: white rich woman falls for nature boy and everyone get's angry at them, but everything is told very lifeless. Characters are either reacting to hard or to little on what's happening, and when stuff is starting to get interesting the hurricane arrives and kill everyone.

So during ninety minutes nothing really important happens, except the love story which never has that spark. Nothing wrong with either Mia Farrow or Dayton Ka'ne, it's just nothing between them. Jason Robards transformation from nice dad to psychopatic military is sudden and it's hard to imagine it ever happen in real life. Good character actors like Bottoms, Von Sydow and Howard are slumming in the background and never gets something good to do. The only time the movie lives is when Troell is focusing on the island natives, which are a lot more interesting and well written than all the whiteys running around pretending to be important.

But thank the fairy tale-god, finally the storm hits and it's a nice thirty minutes of classic Dino De Laurentiis-megabudget-action. A good combination between nice minatures and real life physical effects shows a realistic and powerful disaster, one of the best I've seen actually. It's far from typical Hollywood but never shy away from some big budget extravaganza. Hurricane also has a kinda downbeat ending which makes up for the ninty minutes I almost fell asleep. One can wonder what would have been if Roman Polanski didn't get in trouble at Jack Nicholsons house and he instead of Troell directed Hurricane? I doubt it would have been better, but maybe Polanski was more used to the big budget politics and could handle a production like this better. Troell admits this wasn't his cup of tea and went back to Sweden and directed some of most critically acclaimed Swedish movies ever.

And Timothy Bottoms? Some years later he starred in classics such as Amando de Ossorio's The Sea Serpent, Don Sharp's What Waits Below and of course the legendary killer-baboon movie In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro. He's still the best, and has worked steadily since then... but very far from the movies he deserves.