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Poseidon Adventure, TheThe first half of the 1970s saw Hollywood turning to the disaster movie genre, presided over by Irwin Allen, who produced 1972's The Poseidon Adventure and had a huge hit (it was the top-grossing film that year and was nominated for nine Oscars) then applied the same formula again for 1974's The Towering Inferno. These films, along with Earthquake, Meteor and The Swarm (and, to some extent their precursor Airport), saw rag-tag groups of stars and character actors facing all sorts of marvellously inventive adversity.
The Poseidon Adventure, based on the novel by Paul Gallico, involves a cruise liner on its final voyage being struck by a huge "wall of water" after an underwater earthquake. Before you can say "man the lifeboats!", the ship has been flipped over. Which is something of a bummer considering all on board are in the midst of celebrating New Year's Eve, where the band has been belting out a tune that goes "There's got to be a morning after..."
After the initial shock has subsided, the surviving passengers find themselves with a dilemma: the purser (Webster) insists they should stay put and wait to be saved, but James Martin (Buttons) resists - "do you think it might be a better idea if we went up?" That's up towards the hull of the boat, from where they might, just might, have a chance of being saved.
The idea is seized upon by Frank Scott (Hackman), a priest (who describes himself as "angry, rebellious, critical, a renegade", just so there's no question that he's the macho, heroic type) who encourages the other survivors to come with him. Only nine do: Martin, waiter Acres (McDowall), cop Mike Rogo (Borgnine) and his wife Linda (Stevens), singer Nonnie (Lynley), brother and sister Robin (Shea) and Susan (Martin), and middle-aged couple Belle (Winters) and Manny Rosen (Albertson), who were on their way to Israel to meet the grandson they've never seen. The rest of the survivors in the ballroom believe the purser. And soon pay the price.
The ship is gradually flooding, so Scott and Co. have to move fast. As well as the bickering - especially the testosterone-driven arguments between Scott and Rogo - the groups faces blockages, fires, piles of corpses, rising water and the basic predicament of everything being upside-down.
Director Ronald Neame certainly keeps things lively, taking advantage of the remarkable sets and special effects contrived by the 20th Century Fox technicians. There are slow patches by modern standards, and it's riddled by the sort of sentimentality that would become the stock cliche of the genre (Nonnie has lost her brother in the accident, but lonely bachelor Martin offers her a shoulder to cry on, and the pair fall in love). Nevertheless The Poseidon Adventure remains an epic, a hokey classic bolstered by the meaty presence of Hackman and Borgnine.
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