Completest that I am, I have made it my
business to own on DVD every key disaster movie released to theaters
from 1970 to 1980 (except City on Fire, 1979, which I've yet to get
my hands on and Tidal Wave, 1973, which I don't count – and haven't
seen.) Recently, I discovered an online special in which I could
select any three Warner Archive movies for $33.00 and decided to jump
off the cliff, so to speak, and also become the owner of Flood!
(1976), Fire (1977) and Cave-In! (1983), TV-movie catastrophes
produced by “Master of Disaster” Irwin Allen. I'd seen these in
their original airings (and perhaps once since), but eagerly awaited
revisiting them lo these many years later to see how they held up.
Flood! (imaginatively titled, just like
these other two classics!) was made as a series pilot, with the
intention of pairing a small airplane pilot and a helicopter pilot in
a series of weekly dramas and adventures. In the end, the concept was
abandoned and so we were left with just the set-up, which happened to
involve the destruction of an entire town (so we're informed... we
only ever see little side bits and the aftermath, never anything
resembling the actual event!)
Robert Culp stars as a helicopter pilot
who freelances jobs such as transporting wealthy people from here to
there for a fee. His buddy Martin Milner is an airplane pilot in
Brownsville, Oregon, where Culp has just dropped off a customer
(Roddy McDowall, in a shockingly brief appearance.) Milner is engaged
to a pretty local nurse, played by Barbara Hershey (seventeen years
his junior, by the way.)
Hershey's little brother, Eric Olson,
is traipsing about the area fishing when he heads up the side of an
earthen, rock-covered dam. He notices a spurt of water coming through
(caused by recent heavy rains which have caused the lake to rise and
increase pressure.) Suddenly, another, more violent, spurt pops out
and knocks him to the ground where he is knocked unconscious and cut
on the head. Culp lands his helicopter, offers him his bandana as a
bandage and then sends him walking on!!
Back at the hospital, Culp is romancing
nurse Francine York (who seems hell bent on keeping her face as
waxenly immobile as possible, even during the later distress!) Here
we see him in a pair of those blessedly worn '70s jeans which seemed
to show off men's packages to great effect.
Milner believes that the dam is going
to burst and consults with a local sage about it before taking on the
staid town council. Richard Basehart (Hershey's father) is the mayor
and head of the town. He and the others don't wish to drain off the
lake because they know it will remove the fish and kill off the
town's chief source of income. You may recognize Jack Collins (who
played the mayor of San Francisco in The Towering Inferno, 1974) and
perhaps Ann Doran (a busy character actress who portrayed James
Dean's mother in Rebel Without a Cause, 1956.) But who is the
brunette next to Collins in the two photos? She's strangely familiar
isn't she? I'll reveal in a moment or two while you dwell on it.
Now, if you look at this shot of Roddy
McDowall, you've basically seen his whole perfor-mance. It's quite a
rip-off and anyone tuning in 8 or 10 minutes late probably wondered
if he'd ever appeared in the movie at all! His costar from The
Poseidon Adventure (1972) is here as well, Carol Lynley, playing the
very pregnant wife of lodge owner and dam supervisor (?) Cameron
Mitchell. This couple never appears together on screen, only via
telephone. Mitchell was 24 years older than Lynley (and very grossly
refers to her as “kitten” a couple of times.)
Milner enlists a gaggle of local
kiddies to run around town, knock on doors and tell everyone that the
dam is going to burst. (Yeah, that sounds like a REALLY effective
plan!!) One of those kids is soon-to-be teen sensation Leif Garrett,
already a veteran of showbiz since 1969 when he was eight years old.
Now, that lady, by the way, who was
next to Jack Collins in the town council scene and who has several
lines, is none other than Miss Gloria Stuart, who would later star in and
receive an Oscar nomination for Titanic (1997), the most successful disaster movie of all time (and one of the few 1990s ones with any sort of glamour.)
Basehart's wife is played by
Oscar-winning actress Teresa Wright. Ms. Wright was fifty-eight at
the time and a rather surprising addition to the cast (she even did
some thrashing around in the water towards the end of the movie!) She
shares no scenes with her thirteen year-old “son” Olson in the
film and I don't know what's harder to believe: that she's the mom of
a son that young or that the pleasantly attractive lady could have
such a snarl-faced kid! (Maybe he took after papa Basehart?)
So, anyway, the dam begins to spring
leaks like crazy and Mitchell strives to hold it together with a
construction crew, rocks and dirt. It begins to look like one of
those visual gags when someone who's been shot drinks water and the
liquid squirts out of his clothes!
A really questionable model depicts the
previously rocky-covered dam – now looking more like a large
chocolate cake with blue sugar crystals on it! - falling apart as toy
trucks and Jeeps flounder around, ultimately sliding into the
crevasses. Water lazily begins to pour through and it seems like we
might get some good disaster sequences, but instead we are treated to
grainy, blurry stock footage of some real floods and then a few
instances of watery aftermath...
The people of Brownsville are thus
thrown into total panic, represented by a few shots of unpro-fessional
extras jogging up the sidewalk in mock horror, many of them looking
into the camera as they pass by on the way to their nanosecond of
TV-movie fame! I love this lady in the blue coat who studies the
ground before her with great determination as she runs so as not to
trip in her white vinyl open-toe sandals! I was staggered, at the end
of the show when the credits rolled, to find that Brownsville, Oregon
is a real town and that these were the real inhabitants! The name
Brownsville sounds so made up, such like Marysville in Irwin Allen's
The Swarm (1978.)
Folks begin converging at the hospital,
which is on high ground. I cracked up at this stupid bitch carrying a
painting with her during her dramatic escape!!! Right... a housewife
in Brownsville has a priceless piece of art she needs to salvage as
she darts out of her hovel...
Other staff on hand at the hospital
include Whit Bissell (of Airport, 1970) as a concerned doctor and
Elizabeth Rogers as another nurse. Rogers was a close friend of Allen
and he put her in many of his TV shows and movies. In The Towering
Inferno, she was the lady petrified of entering the breeches buoy.
She was forty then and average in figure, but somehow, just two years
later, she's all burly and nearly unrecognizable here, looking like
she could have played a women's prison guard!
One of the more entertaining sequences
involves hapless Lynley. For starters, she's about 13-1/2 months
pregnant, but shows no outward signs of pain or anything, just
discomfort from the king-sized pillow under her muu muu. Then the
very first contraction comes and its so severe she is thrown to the
ground and knocked unconscious!! When she some to, she tries to use
the phone, but is met with an out of order sound (requiring hilarious
expressions to go with!) She then falls unconscious again (who's in
there? Damien?!?!) Next her house is flooded and Milner and Hershey
come to rescue her. She's apparently so heavy that her feet have
broken through the hardwood floor beneath her and become lodged
between two boards!
Again, we have an actress who in 1972
was the (at times radiantly beautiful) pop singer in short-shorts and
leather boots on board the S. S. Poseidon, but now, just a scant four
years later, is a frowsy, frumpy housewife!
In still another Poseidon connection,
there is an extra in the hospital scenes (shot not in Brownsville,
but back in Hollywood) who was also on board the famous capsized
ship. Affectionately known as “Bun Lady” by fans of the movie,
she nearly always wore a large salt & pepper hairpiece in movies
and TV shows of the 1970s, but such glamour wouldn't do for this
backwater epic, so she's seen in a simple gray dress with her hair
hanging straight down.
Allen was nothing if not loyal to his
favorite actors. During this time he had an almost John Ford-like
coterie of folks he hired again and again. Apart from those
previously noted, Basehart had starred in Voyage to the Bottom of the
Sea (1964-1968), Bissel was a regular on The Time Tunnel (1966-1967),
York worked on many of his TV shows and TV-movies and Milner, Olson
and Mitchell had all just been part of his recently-cancelled series
Swiss Family Robinson (which also featured Willie Ames and Helen
Hunt!) Hershey hadn't worked for Allen, but Flood!'s director, Earl
Bellamy, had directed her series The Monroes (1966-1967), which helps
explain her presence here.
Released as a feature outside the U.S.,
Flood! is run of the mill despite having boasted the highest budget
for a TV-movie to that time! ($2.5 million.) The situations are
contrived and pat and the effects are warm to very cold. Several of
the actors do try to give their performances everything they can,
though. It's primary asset is the joy of seeing a raft of familiar
faces in darn near every role, some of whom never worked in the
disaster genre outside this entry. This composite poster certainly
offers more epic drama than ever occurs in the movie itself!
Next on the list comes Fire (1976), the
second imaginatively-titled offering in this cycle. Filmed on the
heels of Flood! (and directed as well by Earl Bellamy), but aired on
TV about six months afterwards, it, too, was shot in Oregon. For
reasons unknown, Fire didn't warrant an exclamation point at the end
of its title.
The story of this one focuses on a
collection of folks in and around the mountain town of Silverton,
Oregon. Ernest Borgnine (of The Poseidon Adventure, 1972, and When
Time Ran Out..., 1980) plays the owner of a lumberyard who has long
been carrying a torch for Vera Miles, who owns and operates a
successful lodge. When the two main characters of a film called Fire
own a lumber company and a knotty pine hotel, you just know that
these locales are not going to remain unscathed!
Also nearby is a prison, seemingly run
by one solitary man (!) Ty Hardin, who takes a van load of inmates
into the forest to work off their time. Among the prisoners are
craggy Neville Brand and hunky Erik Estrada (of Airport 1975, 1974),
who wish to escape. Brand deliberately sets a small fire in order to
provide a distraction, yet winds up not running off once it is
underway. Hardin believes that the blaze is out, but naturally
there's a small section still smoldering.
Meanwhile, Donna Mills, a local first
grade teacher, has her own van with a handful of children in it who
are on a field trip to collect leaf and fern specimens. One of the
students, Michelle Stacy, trots off to feed cookies to a squirrel and
somehow manages to get completely lost in the woods.
Mills spots the burgeoning fire, but cannot locate Stacy. After searching a bit and calling for her, the fire begins spreading as if every blade of grass has kerosene on it and she is forced to leave the area with the other children. (Stacy, by the way, later played the little girl in Airplane!,1980, who tells a young boy that she likes her coffee the way she likes her men, “black!”)
Mills spots the burgeoning fire, but cannot locate Stacy. After searching a bit and calling for her, the fire begins spreading as if every blade of grass has kerosene on it and she is forced to leave the area with the other children. (Stacy, by the way, later played the little girl in Airplane!,1980, who tells a young boy that she likes her coffee the way she likes her men, “black!”)
Up at the lodge, Alex Cord and his wife
Patty Duke Astin (of The Swarm, 1978), a pair of research physicians,
are ready to divorce over their divergent career plans with Astin
wanting to teach in California and Cord preferring to stick to his
lab in New York. It is almost impossible to describe the annoying way
Cord speaks in this movie, especially in his first scene with Astin. It's sheer
agony to listen to him! Anyway, they head off, bickering, to bid
farewell to a local doctor friend of theirs, Lloyd Nolan (of Airport,
1970, and Earthquake, 1974.)
The fire is now roaring and a variety
of folks are hashing out the logistics of how to combat it. Gene
Evans plays a dedicated ranger, Patrick Cullitan (a protege of Irwin
Allen's who worked in many of his shows and movies) is a dispatcher
and James Gavin is a helicopter pilot who surveys the area and later
carries a large tureen of lake water to the flames in order to help
extinguish some of them. (Gavin, a real-life pilot who played
countless pilots in movies and on TV, is ill-advisedly granted more
screen time than some of the other actors!) Both Flood! and Fire
offer up countless minutes of helicopter footage, which gets old very
quickly. So many 1970s movies are fixated on helicopters for some
reason!
Back at the lodge, Mills has had an
almost total breakdown over the panic and horror of having to leave
Stacy behind near a forest fire. She takes to the couch (practically
for the rest of the movie) and Miles calls upon the authorities and,
later, Borgnine for help.
Nolan, on his way to the prison to help
a burn victim from the previous fire, almost hits a bear in the road
(I hate when that happens!) and flips his car upside-down, breaking a
leg in the process! Later, he is rescued by Borgnine, Astin and Cord,
who transport him up to Miles' lodge.
Hardin is called upon to bring more
“volunteer” prisoners to the site of the fire, which has now
spread out of control and is heading towards Silverton and, after a
shift in the wind, Miles' lodge! The fire in downtown Silverton is
depicted by just a few shots of 1950s street footage with flames
present! Every once in a while, a prisoner or lumberjack catches fire
up in the woods to keep the excitement going.
In a complete rip-off from The Towering Inferno, 1974, (a moment, as a matter of fact, that drew derision from some critics and audience members, but apparently that didn't matter to Allen) Evans - in the middle of a blazing forest fire - spots and rescues a stray bunny rabbit, just as O.J. Simpson did a house cat in the blockbuster movie.
In a complete rip-off from The Towering Inferno, 1974, (a moment, as a matter of fact, that drew derision from some critics and audience members, but apparently that didn't matter to Allen) Evans - in the middle of a blazing forest fire - spots and rescues a stray bunny rabbit, just as O.J. Simpson did a house cat in the blockbuster movie.
By now, Cord and Borgnine have
gone off to retrieve the little lost girl Stacy (who Gavin spotted
from the air.) They have to dodge flames in order to get her out of a
gully only to find that their escape route has been cut off by fire.
They head to the ranger station instead.
Miles, Astin and Mills, along with
Nolan and the children, are tensely awaiting rescue via Gavin's
helicopter as fire licks the trees in the front yard, but he doesn't
show up. Engine failure has caused him to crash land and suffer a
head injury that nearly causes him to go completely blind!
Prisoners Evans and Estrada decide to
use the cover of a dynamite explosion to make their escape, but only
Estrada is able to get free. He's tearing through the woods to make
it to a nearby train stop when he stumbles upon the injured Gavin and
decides to save him from an imminent explosion. (Gavin's acting, here
and elsewhere is ROUGH. He also stupidly clings to a letter informing
him of a new job as if the job wouldn't be offered if he somehow lost
the letter!!)
Borgnine and crew finally arrive to
evacuate Miles and the others, but first Miles has to have a
situation with one of the children who's decided that it's better to
lock himself in a room, lying under a bed, with fire at the window
and smoke drifting in, than to let Miles take him to safety. She
decides to stick it out and rescue him even as the hallway she's
standing in is about to burst into flames.
A caravan of vehicles mows its way
through the flame-engulfed passageways, trying to get all the
evacuees to safety, but unfortunately, not everyone makes it there
alive... The survivors convene in Silverton where, in one last moment
of danger, a fuel-filled tanker is in danger of “blowing up the
whole town” until Cord – of all people – gets inside it and
helps steer it about 100 feet away where it explodes harming no one!
Then, suddenly, the ripsnorting fire is declared “under control”
by an “under five” extra in a construction helmet...
:::crickets:::
One advantage that this one has over
its predecessor is that the title event begins almost immediately,
whereas one had to wait for about an hour for the flood to occur in
the prior telefilm. It's just generally more adventuresome and
suspenseful than the first movie, though I don't want to overstate
those adjectives. Borgnine and Miles do their very best with what's
offered. The others either overact (Astin and Cord) or aren't given
much to do (Mills), though it's interesting to see how much latter-day Hardin is
featured despite his eighth billing.
Like Flood!, this was released
theatrically outside the U.S. and was given one of those delightful
“box” posters, trotting out the names and faces of the stars in
the film (as well as some vivid graphics.) Again, the chief asset of
the movie is getting to see various famous faces working together,
though at least this time out much of the threat is depicted with
real fire (and stunts) and not nearly as much stock footage.
Rounding out our catastrophic trio is
the 1979 opus, Cave-In! This one had so little going for it that it
wasn't aired on television until 1983 when it was unearthed to
capitalize on the newfound success of Susan Sullivan, now a star on
Falcon Crest (from 1981-1989)! Here, she plays a state senator who is
sent to inspect the condition and historical value of a series of
caverns (run by park ranger Dennis Cole, who happens to also be her
former love.)
The movie kicks off with a police chase
as fugitive James Olson and a sidekick are soaring through the
terrain in an effort to escape. They fool the hapless policeman
before splitting up and going their separate ways.
We then meet Cole and his fellow ranger
Lonny Chapman (who was a staple of 1970s television and appeared in
When Time Ran Out...) While looking around at conditions in
the north fork section, a portion of the ceiling collapses on a
worker, leading to the closing of that area (though Cole wants the
whole place closed down pending further inspection.)
Topside, Leslie Nielsen (of The
Poseidon Adven- ture) and his wife Julie Sommars are waiting for the
next tour. He's a despondent former cop who can't seem to break free
of the depression that's come from the death of his partner (a
situation for which he took the blame.) I cannot tell you how upset flat movie & TV purses like Sommars' used to upset an old roommate of mine. It's clear that there is absolutely NOTHING inside it at all!
Also on hand is craggy professor Ray
Milland, who is there to examine the caves for any signs of early man
in the area. With him, seemingly against her will, is his daughter
Sheila Larken. He orders the distracted young lady around while she
makes slight attempts to tame his impatient temper.
Because the place is so busy, Cole
winds up taking Nielsen, Sommars, Milland and Larken on a private
tour together. Milland is aghast that he has to share time with the
uninformed and easily awe-struck Sommars. (But, hey, at least we are
told a way to tell stalactites from stalagmites in the bargain!)
Meanwhile, Sullivan is being taken by
another ranger (William Bryant) 400 feet down to conduct her
investi-gation, starting with the hazardous north fork section.
They've barely arrived when a cave-in partially lands on Bryant and
effectively seals Sullivan inside a supposed dead end.
Unaware of the fate of Bryant, she
isn't sure what to do when suddenly Olson appears from behind a
crevasse! Though she isn't aware that he's a criminal on the run,
it's not hard to see that he is aggressive and unbalanced. Knowing
that none of the few passageways available actually lead to anywhere,
she does the only thing she can think of and starts hollering for
help.
As it happens, Cole and his small party
are taking a breather in a spot at which he can hear Sullivan's pleas
for help and he shimmies down a shaft to retrieve her. (Hilariously, she sees only his legs and crotch before instantly recognizing him as Cole! I guess he was pretty memorable down there.) He manages to
locate Sullivan and the creepy Olson and leads them back up the
passageway to safety.
Only, just then, another rumbling
occurs and now the seven of them are trapped in this new section.
Cole determines that they will have to go the back way, cross
country, to safety, along a series of treacherous locations closed to
the public. I must add that prior to this and afterwards, the film
stops dead in its tracks to allow most of the characters some
flashbacks to key moments in their lives prior to this.
Nielsen recalls the fateful night his
partner was killed, Larken remembers her father's attempts to run her
life and prevent her from seeing the man she is in love with, Olson
recalls a hot-tempered run-in with a prison psychiatrist and Sullivan
reminisces about how her decision to run for the senate cost her her
relationship with Cole. These are just four of the memories, of which there are several others.
The erstwhile spelunkers go through a
variety of obstacles including a bubbling geothermal vat of 500 degree water (!) with some convenient stepping stones jutting up from one side to the other. Each person takes his or her turn nervously crossing the obstacle while occasionally one of the rocks gives way.
They next come to a claustrophobic sliver of a crack with a segment missing that leads to some jagged stalagmites below. This requires Cole to act as a sort of human bridge, his body lodged between the open pathway as he helps the others across. (Now this sort of bridge, I'd love to cross!)
They next come to a claustrophobic sliver of a crack with a segment missing that leads to some jagged stalagmites below. This requires Cole to act as a sort of human bridge, his body lodged between the open pathway as he helps the others across. (Now this sort of bridge, I'd love to cross!)
As they trudge onward, they head towards
a dry creek bed that – thanks to a spate of recent rainfall – is
now underwater! So we're treated to a sort of light rehash of the
underwater swim that the survivors of The Poseidon Adventure had to
take. This time, they only have to dip under the water long enough to
slink underneath a shard of stone and emerge on the other side. In a
shameless rip-off of Poseidon, Sommars announces that she was captain
of her high school swim team before she drops into the water.
Naturally, even this compar-atively easy
swim creates problems for some of the other trekkers. For one thing,
Milland is deathly afraid of the water and so Cole has to go with
him, his constant thrashing a danger to both of them. Then Sullivan
somehow manages to get her foot caught in the three or four small
rocks that are lying about the bottom of the bed. This requires a
mid-swim transfer of oxygen from Cole to her that any swimmer would
be grateful for! Ha! (Lucky for Cole, it wasn't Milland that got
stuck!)
Things are far from over for this weary
gaggle of unlucky cave explorers. Their backstage tour of the caverns
from hell continues with a climb up the side of a cliff followed by a
rope bridge that was built by miners many years before. The
straggly-looking bridge overlooks a rock-ridden river that is
whooshing through the bottom of the cave!
One by one, they have to cross this
rotting, creaky bridge, never knowing for certain if it will hold out
until they're all across. (Inci-dentally, this looked in 1983 like a
rip-off of a similar scene in When Time Ran Out..., but as this was
actually made in 1979, it was the feature film that stole from this
movie. However, Allen's movies always did so much cribbing from one
another it scarcely matters.)
Now close to safety, the bedraggled
survivors have one last obstacle to face. Olson decides to pull his
gun and take one of them hostage, demanding a helicopter to get him
out of the area. (Oh, God... after the endless, endless shots of
helicopters in Flood! and Fire, this is more than I can take!) Now
it's up to Cole and Nielsen to stop him from taking Sullivan with him
on his getaway...
I SO wanted this movie to feature Cole
in some clingy polyester dress pants, but instead he was dressed in a
blue ranger uniform with cotton pants. Nevertheless, he did have at
least one moment or two in which that famous bulge was in evidence, so of
course I share those with you now! The show below is probably the best of all.
Any movie that has the cast swimming underwater fully-clothed is going to appeal to me on some level since I've been obsessed with water ever since my childhood viewing of The Poseidon Adventure, but this campfest also appeals to my sense of step-by-step demolition of clothes and hairstyles. You can bet your sweet ass that at no other time in her career did the ordinarily coiffed-to-the-max Sommars ever look like this!
By this stage, Allen had practically exhausted all forms of nature's fury and with the release of Airplane! (1980), the genre was put to rest until a decade or so later when a spate of CGI-heavy feature films reignited it for a while. (Almost none of those films was any fun, however.) He had other TV opuses as well, though, which I've seen long ago, but haven't got on DVD. (Now I feel like I have to obtain them... that completest thing again!)
By this stage, Allen had practically exhausted all forms of nature's fury and with the release of Airplane! (1980), the genre was put to rest until a decade or so later when a spate of CGI-heavy feature films reignited it for a while. (Almost none of those films was any fun, however.) He had other TV opuses as well, though, which I've seen long ago, but haven't got on DVD. (Now I feel like I have to obtain them... that completest thing again!)
They include Adventures of the Queen
(1975), about an ocean liner hijacked by a bomber, Hanging By a
Thread (1979), about three couples caught on a disabled skylift who
flashback to their various personal problems, The Memory of Eva Ryker
(1980), featuring Natalie Wood on board a ship that is sunk by a
torpedo during WWII, and The Night the Bridge Fell Down (1983), another 1979 project that aired later, which
dealt with drivers caught on a bridge in which both ends have
crumbled off! (Am I still reeling from Dennis Cole or does James MacArthur's thumb look like the head of a flaccid penis?! LOL) Those last two marked the end of his full-on disaster days,
though some consider his bloated, garish production of Alice in
Wonderland (1985) to be a sort of disaster all its own! His final
production was the surprisingly serious and well-regarded legal drama
called Outrage! (1986), but still with the exclamation point! Now
I'm off to recover from all this disaster... till next time!
15 comments:
Wow! how could I forget the once ubiquitous Susan Sullivan? I seem to remember her on lots of commercials. Big laugh on the empty purse, that is hilarious. I will always look for it now.
p.s. Poseiden, found "Amazons" on youtube and one of the Villainesses was Lori Caswell's Mom on "Paper Dolls"
Did you watch these back to back to back? I sure hope not. It sounds intolerable. I wish I could say that one of these sounds better than another, but they really kind of blend together into a bunch of blah.
So Dennis Cole and Erik Estrada kept their shirts on throughout? How ridiculous. Why else hire them? Seriously.
Donna Mills looks quite a bit like Jenny McCarthy in those photos. Sorry Donna!
Cave-In sounds the best and Flood! looks extremely lame, but really, they all sound not even bad enough to be enjoyable.
I love disaster movies, even campy ones, but this trio sounds terrible. I would watch Flood! though because of the cast. I've always liked Robert Culp. Robert Culp was very handsome and sexy, and Teresa Wright was one of my favorite actresses, very underrated. And I wouldn't miss anything with Barbara Hershey, Carol Lynley, and the blond guy with the broken arm in the picture of the Bun Lady.
Gingerguy, SO MANY '80s TV series, daytime soaps, too, had the women carrying these huge, flat purses that couldn't possibly have even a tube of lipstick in them. My roomie would just go crazy about it in the middle of a screening! LOL And THANK YOU for the heads up on "Amazons" - I'll be checking that out soon! BTW, Susan Sullivan had a long run of Tylenol ads on TV, which you may be thinking about?
Dave and Armando, I am a '70s disaster FREAK, so even if these are bad, they are essential viewing every so often! LOL I watched them over the course of 4 or 5 days, so not quite back-to-back. I love anything with water, all-star casts and catastrophe, so it's a sort of pleasure-pain to view these. Of course I agree about the lack of beefcake, one decided deficit when it comes to all these movies, TV or feature. It's pretty bad when you have to single out background extras for their good looks!! ;-)
"Flood" looks/sounds disastrous. Frankly, I would much rather do lunch with the Donner Party than sit through it!
The Dennis Cole pictures are amazing. I'm going to dredge up "Cave-in" if just for that. A few glasses of wine and Dennis Cole and I'll be happy for a while.
As to "Fire," Ty Hardin and Erik Estrada do have their charms. I might just dig that one up too.
Thanks for the hard work, and I love the picture layout. It's loads of fun reading your work.
Oh, I do find it hard to believe Donna Mills is still so beautiful after all this time.
NotFelix, I would count "Flood!" as the dullest simply because it takes about an hour for anything to happen of note. "Fire" at least features a fire almost throughout. As for "Cave-In!," apart from Cole's looks and physique, his character is really considerate, heroic and diligent, which is quite appealing. I think you would enjoy him in it. And I have always been in awe of Donna Mills. "The Eyes Have It!" LOL
My life would be complete, and I could die happily, if you did something on "City Beneath the Sea," another Irwin Allen masterpiece. The character who has been surgically altered so he can breathe underwater is still stuck in my brain more than 40 years after seeing that one.
It's kind of surprising how long Irwin Allen tried to squeeze that "disaster film" lemon. Reading about three of his cookie-cutter opuses in a row really makes you feel his biggest contribution to the arts was supplying employment for actors on their way to lucrative careers in celebrity autograph conventions.
I've never heard of any of these films, and I'm indebted to you for making reading about them much more enjoyable than the films seem themselves.
As questionable as they seem as serious drama, I still wish someone would come up with a TV-movie network and air some of these turkeys. They do look like they would be fun to watch in mixed, jaded company.
LOL on the term "mixed, jaded company!" Good times..... As a lover of so many discarded stars, you may have stumbled upon why I seem to crave and enjoy even the crappiest Irwin Allen '70s fare!
On that score, Craig, I do hope to see "City Beneath the Sea" sometime. It has evaded me to this point, though I feel like I saw it on TNT or TBS back in the early-1990s. Hold on the best you can till then! ;-)
In the picture with the blonde guy with broken arm...the woman to the far right in a pale blue suit and long grey hair looks like Rosemary De Camp but she is not listed. Is it the titanic actress ? Thanks.
Sorry, didn't read carefully. It's bun lady, but she does kind of look like Rosemary de camp in that one shot. Thanks, again.
Fasicnating. I l also LOVE these 70's disaster flicks. Indeed in France, Flood and Fire had a brief theatrical run, both with disastrous results. Flood has sold 21 510 tickets over its 3-years run and Fire ("Horizons en Flammes") 33 931 over its 6-years run. Yet, i have fond memories over those TV-produced thingys. My love goes to Flight to Holocaust, and not just because of Chris Mitchum. Oh well.
Francis, hi and thanks for commenting! I'm happy that you found this post captivating. I recently got "Cave-In" out again for a guilty pleasure re-watch. Sometimes I just need to... I really, REALLY want to see "Flight to Holocaust" but it's next to impossible to find or view here in the wake of the 9/11 World Trade Center attack. Maybe someday.
*** More interconnectedness:
1. Susan Sullivan played a ghost on Dark Shadows (Episode #1.156).
2. This connected her to David Selby (Quentin Collins), her co-star on Falcon Crest. (
==> The two performed The Share (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm7mFA_VF6c).
3. It also connected her to Mitchell Ryan (Burke Devlin, first casting), her co-star on Dharma and Greg.
==> (Back to Selby, he and Ryan voiced A Christmas Carol (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyHVM2Wl2no&t=10s) along with other Dark Shadows original cast members.
*** Cave-In has two Bracken’s World connections: Leslie Nielsen (season 2) and Dennis Cole (season 1).
*** Cave-In & back to Dark Shadows: Julie Sommars (Cave-In) starred in The Governor & J.J. (1969-70). The Governor & J.J. featured a guest appearance by Joan Bennett (S2.E8 “Check the Check”) incidentally wearing the signature yellow dress that she so often wore on Dark Shadows as well as in the movie “House of Dark Shadows (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPuth3rdmGQ at 15:21)).
More trivia (ref. point 3, above):
Dharma and Greg reunited Sullivan with actor Mitchell Ryan (who played her husband Edward), with whom she had worked on Having Babies (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077019/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2).
So, Sullivan and Ryan are a three-fer: Dark Shadows, Having Babies, and Dharma & Greg.
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