The Poseidon Adventure **** (1972 Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters) – Classic Film Review 1209

Director Ronald Neame’s famous 1972 definitive disaster movie launched the Seventies vogue for the genre and still provides a good measure of entertainment. It’s cast strongly with an all-star cast who include five Oscar winners: Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Albertson, Shelley Winters and Red Buttons.

Based on Paul Gallico’s novel, with a screenplay written by Stirling Silliphant and Wendell Mayes, it is a fairly preposterous but rather exciting and endearing tale.

The luxurious super-ocean liner SS Poseidon, about to be retired and scrapped, makes her way across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean from New York City to Athens.

On New Year’s Eve 1971, while passengers celebrate in the dining room, Captain Harrison (Leslie Nielsen) is called to the bridge in response to a report of an undersea earthquake and told a huge wave is approaching from Crete at 60 mph. His mayday and hard left turn are too late as the 90ft tidal wave hits the ship and she capsizes in the devastating storm in the Mediterranean.

Then the Reverend Frank Scott (played by Hackman) leads an ill-assorted, motley crew of ten would-be survivors, all of them stock movie stereotype characters, as they attempt to climb up a Christmas tree then upwards through the vessel to hoped-for safety. The rest of the passengers perish at the hands of the well-staged giant wave that submerges the dining lounge during the New Year’s Eve party.

Producer/co-director Irwin Allen, king of the disaster movies, turns in a well-produced, entertaining movie, even if some of the dialogue and performances are good mainly for a laugh, though this only adds to the fun. Winters’s non-swimming character who has to swim to survive is an unintentional hoot. Perhaps as consolation, she won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

Some of the other cast members fare rather better: Borgnine, Buttons, Albertson, Carol Lynley, Arthur O’Connell, Pamela Sue Martin, Roddy McDowall, Stella Stevens, Fred Sadoff and Eric Shea are among them. Nielsen gives a stalwart performance as the captain of the ship, in the days before he spoofed this kind of movie, and any others he could send up too.

Its song ‘The Morning After’ won an Oscar for Best Original Song , while the credible, then state-of-the-art visual effects steal the movie, as well as a Special Achievement Academy Award for Visual Effects.

Parts were filmed aboard the RMS Queen Mary, whose encounter with a rogue wave in 1942 inspired the book the film’s based on.

The 1979 sequel Beyond the Poseidon Adventure was a box office and critical failure despite an equally star-studded cast. Remade as Poseidon in 2006, another failure.

(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 1209

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/