Movie #11 - The Poseidon Adventure

I was watching this movie on the AMC channel the other day. I had originally seen this film back when I was 14, renting movies from our local video store (Queen Video) in Streetsville, Ontario during their awesome rental deal, 5 old movies for $5.

The reason I rented this movie back in 1994 was because of the cover. It showed a flipped over boat, with a ton of cast members who at the time, were famous in their own right. By 1972 production standards, the Poseidon Adventure was considered a major blockbuster film with a tremendously large budget. To create a relative example, this film would rank up there in cost as Titanic. Ironically, also a ship disaster movie.

The cast is filled with A and B list celebrities. Everyone's favourite loud mouth, Gene Hackman. A very rough and tumble Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons (for comic relief of course - although he didn't really achieve it here) and Shelley Winters. Winters received an Academy Award nomination for this film for Best Supporting Actress... something that is almost unheard of nowadays in a so-called action movie.

There is also a very brief cameo of Leslie Nielsen... see if you can spot him. He makes a Janet Lee-esque appearance in this film... so don't blink if you are expecting to see him in the latter parts of this movie.

Related to my commentary for this movie is the fact that this film was recently remade in 2006 starring Kurt Russell in the Hackman role. I didn't bother seeing this film when it was released because I actually didn't really like the first one.

My personal rule with remakes - if I don't like the first one... why waste another 2 hours of my life to see the next one. It probably isn't any better if they used the first one as a template or foundation for the story.

The adventure itself is quite fantastic in the sense that a band of passengers struggle to live while the sinking ship continues to throw obstacle upon obstacle at these characters. There really isn't any character development beyond Hackman and Borgnine and I am quite surprised why Winters got this Oscar nod. This movie was ground breaking in the sense of giant set design and stunts and action sequences... however, beyond that, it is a sinking ship from beginning to end!