Hey, John; I didnt forget that one
, I was saving it for the thread about PAINFULLY BAD MOVIES BASED ON ACTUAL EVENTS.
When Time Ran Out was loosely based on a book about the destruction of St. Pierre. But, Irwin Allen brilliantly decided that the source material would only het better if it was set in a faux-Club Med in 1980, instead of...you know....one of those dull colonial cities where everyone speaks French and wears old fashioned clothes. What was retained from the book was the volcano spitting a gas ball and destroying the entire city. Everything else was improvised.....
IRWIN ALLEN TRADEMARK: Death by Tiki. In THE TOWERING INFERNO, the actor who played JULIO on SANFORD AND SON gets crushed under a toppling tiki during the climactic tidal wave atop the burning office building. In WHEN TIME RAN OUT, several bit players and... I think...a minor villain, get killed by a toppling tiki in the hotel lobby. alas, there is no WOMAN WITH A PAST WEARING A PINK MAN'S SHIRT AND PANTIES WHO FALLS TO A SPLATTERING DEATH FROM A GREAT HEIGHT in this film, as in POSEIDON in which Linda the ex hooker falls into a fiery vat while wearing that ensemble, and TOWERING INFERNO, in which Robert Wagner's adulterous lover wears the same thing as she is driven by the fire out of a 500th story wiondow just SECONDS before the firemen arrive to save her. Thus are the wages of sin in Irwin's world.
Then there was FLOOD, loosely based on The Johnstown Flood. There's a dam about to burst, but the mayor wont open the spillways. The townspeople, oddly, wont listen to the one person who tries to warn them. The dam bursts. There are virtually NO special effects, but there IS some reddish deteriorated news footage of real floods edited in. Then, the town has about 5 feet of entirely still water blanketing it...and Carol Lynley, pregnant, does a salute to Dorothy Malone in THE LAST VOYAGE and struggles to keep her head above water as she bobs around inside her flooded cottage. Will the rescuers get to her in time?
The movie is so dull that you dont really CARE if the rescuers get to her in time. She is reunited with RODDY MCDOWELL, and gets to share billing with Robert Culp, Martin Milner, Ruichard Basehart, Barbara Hersey and Leif Garrett.
Then there is Irwin allen's seldom seen swan song THE NIGHT THE BRIDGE FELL DOWN, based on the SUNSHINE SKYWAY BRIDGE COLLAPSE, which happened when a ship struck the Skyway and it fell, taking with it several carloads of people, and a Greyhound bus, leaving only one survivor. In this film, the bus doesnt fall off the bridge, but everyone aboard it is trapped on an about-to-cave-in section. Desi Arnaz Jr., Eve Plumb, Lesley Nielsen, Richard Boone, Barbara Rush and lessers stars struggle Struggle STRUGGLE to escape.
There is a good reason why it is seldom seen.....
Then there is AVALANCHE, which manages to exploit REAL LIFE DISASTER and TRUE CRIME in the same film. It is the VAL D ISERE AVALANCHE and the CLAUDINE LONGET/SPIDER SABITCH AFFAIR seamlessly blended into a truly dull film. Rock Hudson, Mia Farrow, and lessers, attempt to generate suspense where there simply is none. when the film is called AVALANCHE, you know that at some point there will be an avalanche. So, cat and mouse plot twists dont work to build suspense, and the film makers did not come up with any viable substitutes.
My feelings about TITANIC, either film by that title, are well known and do not need to be delved into again, or so says the therapist....
A world apart from these wretched film, is FIRE AND RAIN, about the infamous DALLAS L-1011 WIND SHEAR crash, in which a jumbo jet flew into windshear while landing, lost control, and flew into an oil tank, with huge fatalities and a handful of survivors. Now, you would not expect me to pair the words REALLY GOOD with the words, DAVID HASSELHOFF TOM BOSLEY ROBERT GUILLAUME DEAN JONES and ANGIE DICKENSON, but the film is an almost strictly factual recounting of the dicaster. It has only one IRWIN ALLEN MOMENT, but it is a good one. PATTI LABELLE plays A NERVOUS FIRST TIME FLIER. Her early scenes show her being nervous, because she's a first time flier. THEN, after the plane crashes, she's shown being hustled away from the debris, disheveled and smoke-stained, and saying "I'm never going to fly again" over and over.
Jim and I are founder members (possibly the only members) of the Marihugh Fan Club. If you want to join we give discounts for ET members.
