best disaster movie?

i'd accept being Juggernaut.

You're The Swarm, honeybunch!

should a disaster film feed off your deeper fears, like a good horror flick? or is it better when the disaster is more of a pretext and the actual horror of the situation is rather synthetic and unreal?

Both can produce worthy films.

I went on a kick a while back and rewatched Earthquake, Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure, Airport & Airport 75, and The Swarm.

The Swarm is not very enjoyable except for the hilarious bees. Mostly it just loooooong and v v boring

Towering Inferno still my favorite of all, the pacing is tense & the effects are still impressive

No mention of Black Sunday - love that one!

Earthquake is ok but the ending is stupid

Not a huge fan of the genre, aside from Leslie Nielsen's stone-faced "My God" as the sight of the tidal wave in The Poseidon Adventure.

only ppl who like prefer bad movies are fans of the genre

*side-eye*

Veg, watch Juggernaut

https://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/1295653813_referee-flag.jpg

Black Sunday is mostly "political thriller," only part disaster movie.

*throws helmet on the ground*

Jet Storm by Cy Enfield is basically a British low-budget Airport 1959 'cept classier, in the Nihilism vs Humanism faceoff of a twitchy bomber and an unflappable yet gently mach plane captain (Richard Attenborough and Stanley Baker, of course). Half the pasengers are as crazy as Attenborough, including prefab rock star Marty Wilde and future "Maude" maid Hermione Baddeley.

Captain Baker's plan to steady the passengers includes TRANQUILIZER-SPIKED CHAMPAGNE, and platonically matched seatmates Dame Sybil Thorndike and Goon Harry Secombe happily partake!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84MKSGQzgik

that's EnDfield btw (he later made Zulu -- American victimized by the blacklist)

so i watched The Towering Inferno for the first time in 41 years and Christ, it is endless. (165 goddamn minutes.) Newman and McQueen ALMOST save it with star power. (Also, McQ has one of the best "oh shit"s in Hollywoodcrap history after he's told he has to go on a neo-suicide mission by his deputy -- Dabney Coleman!)

It's basically like Mad Mad Mad Mad World with fire and explosions as all the slapstick. Are Robert Wagner and his secretary the oldest characters who ever got the genre-movie death penalty for illicit sex?

Richard Chamberlain's got some amazing bits at the sneering heel at fault for the inferno.

Chamberlain's sniveling is amazing, and pretty queer. Susan Blakely's line to him needs more attention: "If you've done anything to Daddy's building, God help you."

and by endless i meant it couldn't end til OJ gave Astaire that cat.

Still have never seen (not my fave genre), but the SCTV parody is pretty great.

also if Maureen McGovern is ever singing at your party or cruise, haul ass

towering inferno feels like a breezy 90min compared to earthquake (or worse, the swarm)

Earthquake is funnier crap, tho/because the cast is significantly worse

(cept George Kennedy)

i just do not enjoy earthquake much until the very end

towering inferno has more good/lol *moments*

Welcome news for those who, like me, regretted not buying the FSM disc of The Towering Inferno before it went out of print:

https://lalalandrecords.com/disaster-movie-soundtrack-collection-music-by-john-williams-limited-edition-4-cd-box-set/

How the hell did the song that Maureen McGovern sings in The Towering Inferno win an Oscar? The one from The Poseidon Adventure I can kind of get, but who remembers “We May Never Love Like This Again”?

What was supposed to win that year? No way they would've given it to "Blazing Saddles" and the other three ... woof!

Benji	"I Feel Love"	Euel Box (music); Betty Box (lyrics)
Blazing Saddles	"Blazing Saddles"	John Morris (music); Mel Brooks (lyrics)
Gold	"Wherever Love Takes Me"	Elmer Bernstein (music); Don Black (lyrics)
The Little Prince	"Little Prince"	Frederick Loewe (music); Alan Jay Lerner (lyrics)

It was actually "The Morning After" that beat a better, bigger song: "Ben."

we need tapes of Benji singing Summer-Moroder-Bellotte's "I Feel Love."

Growing up, and not having seen the movie, I legit thought that was the same song

That’s a good point about the lack of original song competition at that year’s Oscars, but I was watching The Towering Inferno the other day and when that song came on I LOLed and thought “what hackwork!” Granted, we watch these disaster films for the embarrassing moments as much as for the impressive ones.

can we talk more about how Poseidon Adventure is great

I remember when it came out, my science teacher spent the better part of a class session explaining why it was impossible for a tidal wave to be that big so far out at sea.

thanks to Mad Magazine this movie will forever be The Poopside Down Adventure to me

That was apparently their all-time bestselling issue of Mad, at least based on newsstand purchases

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c3/37/f8/c337f819e24e9ac53c98734e17975c8d.jpg

If Mad did Earthquake, I desperately need to find that

https://archive.org/details/mad-magazine-180-1976/MAD%20Magazine%20180%201976/page/n43/mode/2up

omg, and it's a Dick DeB script at that!

Shelly Winters delivers a performance for the ages.

she’s so good! i love her and Jack Albertson together, they were great.

Poseidon has the best performances for sure, or at least the most enjoyable ensemble cast interactions ... still runs a pretty distant third for me behind Towering Inferno and Earthquake tho

I remember Earthquake mostly for the vibrating seats.

I miss gimmicks like that, even if Sensurround was kind of a fail (only really clicked in Rollercoaster.)

Belated New Year's Resolution: Watch Deluge (1933).

xpost Towering Inferno is great, prob my number one, but I think Poseidon is my second fave. Earthquake is waaaaay down on my list. So boring! So LONG.

When Earthquake was shown on network television they added a bunch of scenes that were deleted from the theatrical version, making it even longer (and the scenes had been cut for a reason.)

Earthquake feels against the grain in that most of its characters are basically rotten people, compared to Irwin Allen’s hero-villain dichotomies

maybe thats why else i didnt like it

Towering Inferno has an insane cast for what's almost a genre film

It also came out in... 1974

I saw the movie Murder by Death in Sensurround--Midway was playing in the next theater over.

The Last Voyage (1960)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqG8WRnbJb0