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This Ronald Neame-directed drama is an appropriately childlike embodiment of the disaster movie genre that thrived in the 1970s. “The Poseidon Adventure” was the top box office draw in 1973 when I saw the picture at age 10 in Richmond, Virginia.
Producer Irwin Allen had gone from making stock footage-based documentaries in the ‘50s to creating dynamic science fiction television series (such as “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”) in the ‘60s. Allen took an obvious genre cue from George Seaton’s 1970 bar-setting disaster picture “Airport.” The message was clear: put together a large cast of likable entertainers (Hollywood stars) on a distressed vessel, and let them interact like a bunch of jazz musicians on, well, the Titanic. The physical obstacles come gratis.
Every cheesy formula cliché, salacious camera angle, and goofy plot device is aimed at the film’s intended audience of 12-year-old boys. The British director Neame feeds his fetish for up-tilted p.o.v. shots of women’s panty-clad bums. There is no telling how many puberty onslaughts this movie triggered.
The cast reads like a who’s-who of big fish from Hollywood’s established-actor talent pool circa 1972. Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine milk their cartoonish characters’ trivial power struggle trope for all it’s worth. Hackman plays a liberal preacher with a type-A personality. Borgnine is a meat-headed cop on honeymoon with his new wife, a former prostitute. These were the days when leading men were all character actors; we just called them actors.
The royalty list goes on. Red Buttons, Carol Lynley, Shelley Winters, Stella Stevens, Leslie Nielson, and Roddy McDowall fulfill their 70’s-era character archetypes with utter conviction. The action movie is all about its near-camp tone and patient tempo tested by the rising water level inside the overturned ship. When their number starts to diminish, it feels like losing a friend in the same little-kid way as when a school chum moves away. It wouldn’t be a disaster movie without some significant, and splashy, loss of human life.
Gene Hackman’s Reverend Scott leads his mostly-willing flock of survivors through the belly of the capsized SS Poseidon luxury liner. Their plan is to climb on the ship’s ceiling toward its hull where the steel is significantly thinner, only “one-inch thick.” The ship’s precarious upside-down condition provides the audience with a bizarre visual perspective. This mystifying set element keeps the audience engaged in the magical physical reality with a puzzling effect.
The big spectacle feature earns its stripes during a 90-second disaster sequence in which a 90-foot tidal wave hits the ship just as the clock strikes on New Years’ Eve. James Cameron (“Titanic”) learned everything he knew from this eye-popping action set piece. Through tricks of camera-tilting and a moving set, Neame creates a pure sense of dynamic cinema that takes your breath away. “The Poseidon Adventure” is one disaster you’ll want to return to again and again.
Rated PG. 117 mins.
