best disaster movie?

http://www.clearviewcinemas.com/thursday_at_chelsea.shtml

http://imdb.com/title/tt0071455/alternateversions

As a pre-pube I owned photo-heavy trade paperbacks of the plots and production info of both Earthquake and Airport 1975, tho I never saw either. (If I excavate these from my apartment, I know who I'm sending them to.)

Anyone seen the apparently classier '58 Titanic film A Night to Remember? (perhaps not truly of the genre)

The only indelible Poseidon moment for me is Borgnine's line to Shelley's corpse: "You had a lotta guts, lady... ( one, two, three ) a lotta guts."

they're showing The Towering Inferno @ MoMA on Sunday

(Eric, wish you were here)

^Not sure what this says about our culture.

Avalanche is due for reappraisal, though.

When Time Ran Out has a sort of "this is perhaps the last disaster movie ever, so unleash the lunacy" -kind of vibe.

saw a commercial for 2012 advertising it as "THE BEST DISASTER MOVIE EVER". lol'd.

best = most recent

best = biggest

I admit that I was into 2012 until maybe about the third or fourth earth rupture. By the eighth, ninth or tenth, I think I'd tired of the money shot.

now you've got me really curious about 2012.

2012 is absolutely ridiculous.
That being said, I have watched it twice now.

The Day After!

that's the 80s TV movie about a nuclear bomb detonating in a midwest city? yeah, that was good. and especially scary to kids my age at the time.

I think that might have been "special bulletin" which I thought was very good at the time.

Daniel yea that's the one. some of the acting was embarassingly bad but I liked how network television wasn't afraid to show people what might happen during a nuclear explosion. the scene as the bomb hits scared the hell out of me the first time I saw it. if I'd seen that as a young boy I mighta had nightmares for months.

(so does anybody know where I can get a copy of THREADS for christssakes?)

Teller appreciating TTI:

"Here’s the problem with disaster movies: You watch something like Earthquake, which is a piece of shit, and all that happens is, there’s an earthquake, and people suffer. Then there are all these contrived stories stuck into it, to try to give you the impression that you’re watching a story. Well, in a movie that’s about something unpleasant happening, if you don’t have the possibility of getting away from it, there’s no drama....

In The Towering Inferno, you have something very, very distinct. You have a group of people trapped in a dangerous area who need to escape. There can be some real drama about that. And to add to that, this is a movie whose effect has multiplied by probably 10 since 9/11. The imagery is of things we thought were hypothetical. We thought we’d never see anything like this. We thought we’d never see people in desperation, leaping from a burning building. Well, now we have. So it has a resonance that it didn’t have when it was made.

May I say also about The Towering Inferno: I love carnival mentalities, and Irwin Allen has, famously, a carnival mentality, but with this vast level of skill and vast resources to draw from. He has really all the finest artists and designers around, working on making that movie work. You also learn something from it. You learn the rig by which firemen transport people out a building, in a little chair or by a cable. You actually learn something from that. You don’t learn anything from Earthquake."

http://thedissolve.com/features/the-last-great-movie-i-saw/611-teller-on-the-towering-infernos-disaster-movie-sup/

Still have not ever seen this film. For years I figured the SCTV spoof was good enough.

nice to see Cassandra Crossing get so much love it's amazing!

also..

http://www.soundonsight.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/juggernaut-quad.jpg

Answer to the thread is The Exterminating Angel btw

For years I figured the SCTV spoof was good enough.

That is the second time in two weeks that particular episode has come up for me. Weird.

Endorsing Inferno and dismissing Red River? Looks like I should check Tim's Vermeer out.

He loves North by Northwest too, you cretin.

Towering Inferno is pretty entertaining though I dunno if I'd go around claiming its at a lack for contrived drama.

Richard Chamberlain's got some amazing bits at the sneering heel at fault for the inferno. Best is when his wife says she'll stand by him despite his heel status, and he indifferently responds that all he needs is *this*, holding up a drink.

Earthquake is definitely a crappier film (though pretty amusing at points) but its weird to say that ones unpleasant and devoid of escape and then praise another movies newfound 9/11 parallels.

Yeah, was going to say "You don't learn anything from Earthquake" is a particularly hysterical statement/criticism.

Best is when his wife says she'll stand by him despite his heel status, and he indifferently responds that all he needs is *this*, holding up a drink.

A bottle, actually. Even better.

originally it was a dildo

This Is the End

All the early-80s nuclear disaster movies (other than Testament) on YouTube now:
Threads
Special Bulletin
Countdown to Looking Glass
The Day After

The Day After scared the shit out of me as a kid, I still can't watch it without getting anxiety flashbacks.

xxp in the Director's Cut it's a double-ender...

other than Testament

this one is the most horrifying/the one I am most loathe to watch again

xp The Towering Double-Ender

"A monument to all the bullshit in the world."

Lester's Juggernaut is p damn good... and often INTENTIONALLY funny! No wonder if gets no mention from the camp crowd.

(Roy Kinnear with possibly his funniest perf for Lester, as the social director)

Thanks, crossed it off my list.

yeah it's killer, a proper nail-biter. excellent dialogue and top legging about and tearing around by the cast. i'm astonished there's never been a remake. also, Hopkins in still-boozy years.

yes Eric, while yer at it let's reclassify Showgirls as a disaster film.

Richard Harris is a hoot... "Fallon, the undefeated champion!"

You're a disaster film.

in fact, the guy Lester brought on to rewrite the script resulted in the producer-original writer using a pseudonym.

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

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.