best disaster movie?

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

If you have access to WatchTCM, The Johnstown Flood (1926) is available through 2/7. It also came out on Blu-ray late last year.

The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) also features a settlement swept away by a flood. (I don't remember the flood scenes. I do remember the comic relief shots of a naked miner running away.)

Andromeda Strain hasn’t been mentioned but in my head I think of it as a kid in the 70s as one of these disaster type thrillers.

I just watched that on Criterion last week... it's a very pro-scientist film, unlike a lot of Spielberg stuff where the scientists are invariably sneaky villains

Fuel for thought from a Roland Emmerich interview I did once, when I asked him about "The Day After Tomorrow":

I had a lot of anguish over doing it. I said, I can’t do this again, but it was worth it. Now I’m moving on. When I’m offered a movie where things break or a disaster happens, I immediately say I’ve done that. Also, don’t forget, Independence Day is now called a disaster movie, but it’s about an alien invasion! Hello!? And then Godzilla got called a disaster movie, but in the original Godzilla, Tokyo is in ruins. I only destroyed Madison Square Garden, a couple of buildings, and the Brooklyn Bridge. New York is still standing … on purpose. So it’s a little unfair when people say I’ve done the same movie three times. They’re very different from each other.

Makes you think.