Teeth-gritting heroes in peril. Flop-sweat tension. Epic stakes. Widescreen set pieces. High (or potentially high) body counts. Terrorists, viruses, nature, transportation infrastructure run amok! What are your favorite powerhouses?
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I’m into pretty much any release from the height of the genre’s popularity - 70s-early 80s. From the MSTie catalog, I find SST: Death Flight, City on Fire, and Avalanche to be perfectly enjoyable examples of the genre.
Some of my top choices:
I mean, duh.
Let’s combine plague AND train crash disaster! And that cast!
Frankenheimer at his peak. Bruce Dern and Marthe Keller’s performances sign, deliver, and cash that script.
Aka Starflight One. It’s the plot of Airplane II played seriously… a year after Airplane II was released.
Honorable mentions to Airport '77 and The Concorde: Airport '79 as two of the more over-the-top Airports. I consider Phase IV (1974) to be kindred, but not an exact fit, to the genre. Of course, The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974), and Earthquake (1974) are the cornerstones. It also opens pathways to a whole universe of biblical and nuclear apocalypse movies, like Fail Safe (1964), Joel’s fave Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), The Medusa Touch (1978), and all the nuke thrillers named after lines from the Star Spangled Banner.
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If you’re a fan of Airplane!, track down this film. Aside from the names changing, all the non-funny dialogue was lifted straight from Zero Hour. Which makes Zero Hour incredibly funny. But it’s also a decent movie.
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The OG airport movie.
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Nothing can top a double feature of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Perfection.
But I gotta say, Independence Day gives so much bang for the buck. Things get blowed up real good!!
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YouTube has a few videos on this topic, but this one I find does the job well.
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The Mads introduced me to The Lost Missile. They seemed to genuinely enjoy it, too. It’s kind of the anti-Starfighters in that it’s an example of how to use stock footage effectively to create a sense of epic scope.
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I’ve always loved disaster movies. I enjoyed all of the classics, but the modern ones tend to go way too crazy with ultra-high stakes and overblown CGI. That said, I feel like Twister is a great modern take on the disaster subgenre.
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2012 called to say it resembled that comment…
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I am ashamed that I knew nothing about this.
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Exactly! I was thinking of 2012 and San Andreas when I made the comment.
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You are welcome.
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Avalanche.
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