Swim For... Run For... Climb For Your Life! It's Irwin Allen Again!

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!”)
  

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.

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!)

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!)

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!