The Poseidon Adventure (1972 Movie)

[rachelmanija]

This movie came out the year I was born, but I didn’t see it until yesterday. It’s one of the big disaster movies which were popular in the 70s, and I’m now realizing that I don’t think I’ve seen any of the others either, though I did see the Airplane! parodies. Now I'm tempted to look some of them up. The Towering Inferno was the other really big one, right? It's about a flaming skyscraper?

I said all I wanted from the movie was Belle Rosen being awesome and lots of upside down-ness. It really delivered on Belle Rosen, but only somewhat delivered on the upside down aspects.

There was plenty of suspenseful, harrowing travel through difficult areas, but it didn’t hit on the upside down aspect as much as I’d hoped. I did really enjoy the flipping over sequence, and the bit afterward where Susan is trapped on an upside down table bolted to the ceiling. But I was really looking forward to seeing the grand sweeping staircase Gallico describes being upside down, but it’s not in the movie at all. I also was hoping we’d get a really good sense of what areas looked like right side up before we saw them upside down, but, again, the spatial elements were a bit lacking.

Some of the really spectacular action set-pieces in the book were very toned-down for the movie, in particular the staircase-climbing sequences and one where they climb a sort of tower of engine parts, girders, etc. I’m not sure if this was because they would have been practically difficult, too expensive, or just seemed too out-there.

Belle Rosen was great. Shelley Winters played her as a type of Jewish grandma we all know – sweet, funny, a bit up in your business — who at first seems like the comic relief, but turns out to be heroic and saves the day. That was very satisfying. Her dialogue was also 100% better.

I enjoyed the movie a lot. It’s definitely of its time, but I like accidental period pieces. I could have done with less bombastic yelling, especially when the two biggest bombastic yelling culprits, sexy young Gene Hackman (the Reverend and leader) and Ernest Borgnine (the argumentative cop) bombastically yell at each other. But the story was engaging and a lot of the action sequences were really tense.

The movie was more humane than the book, with far more likable characters. The book has two cheating husbands, a rape, domestic violence, the Reverend lying to a woman that he was going to marry her to get up her skirt, and a woman who’s madly in love with an alcoholic guy who leads her on when the only thing he enjoys about her is that she can hold a lot of booze. None of this is in the movie. While the cop’s wife is still a former prostitute, we know this from the get-go rather than it being a shock twist at the end. She’s also pretty likable in a brassy/bitchy way, rather than a vicious, racist, anti-Semitic harridan who’s mean to everyone. In the movie, her husband loves her and supports her. In the book, he beats her up. I see all these movie changes as huge improvements.

There was also a bit which was very sensibly cut from the book, which was that in the book pretty much everyone on the ship believes that the intense asshole cop must have gone on the cruise in order to investigate someone onboard, because it's totally impossible for a cop to go on vacation or have a personal life.

In the movie, nobody has sex while climbing for their lives against a ticking clock. In the book, this happens three times if you count the rape. This means that the movie did not have the extraordinary scene in which two characters foraging for food discover a gigantic pile of pastries and packaged cookies, push enough of them aside to make a space where they can lie down, and pluck pastries from the teetering mounds surrounding them before having sex there. I kind of wish that had been immortalized in Technicolor because it would have been a contender for the campiest scene ever filmed.

There were some other interesting differences which I’ll cut as they’re very spoilery for both movie and book, in case anyone has not yet been spoiled/still cares.



The Reverend in the book is cold and unfeeling, and abandons a bunch of people to their deaths. By the end of the book you realize that while he did shepherd his party to safety, he was a very shady character, possibly a lunatic or criminal, and they might have been better off staying where they were. He dies by screaming at God, offering himself as a sacrifice, and deliberately leaping to his death. This may or may not cause the ship to briefly stop sinking.

The Reverend in the movie is a good guy who’s just an iconoclast. He does lead them to safety, and tries hard to get others to join them. While he does make the same maniacal sacrifice speech, he does it while turning a valve to cut off some steam so the rest can pass, and falls to his death because doing that put him in a position where he couldn’t get back to safety rather than literally hurling himself to his death as a human sacrifice.

The ending of the movie managed to have way fewer survivors and still feel more upbeat than the book’s.

Robin, the know-it-all young boy, survives the movie. In the book he’s lost and we never find out what happened to him other than that he wasn’t among the survivors. The movie ends with the survivors getting on a helicopter in a last scene of togetherness. The book ends with the survivors separated and realizing that every single relationship that was forged on their journey is not going to work out.

In the book, the people from the main party are not the only survivors. A number of others also make it out, including people who our party had left to what they assumed was a certain death. As a result, they realize that their entire harrowing journey might have been totally unnecessary and cost the lives of those who died on it, as some people got rescued by staying put in the exact places they left. This casts an even darker light on the Reverend’s belief that God wants you to make the utmost effort by yourself, as they made that effort but it’s very unclear that God rewarded or wanted it.

In the movie, the five people who make it to the hull are the only survivors. This proves that they were right to do what they did, and their suffering and sacrifices were meaningful. So having only six people survive vs. fifty or so actually comes across as a happier ending.

Which is a little unsettling if you think about it. We care so much more about the people whose stories we know that we'd rather have their efforts matter than have their efforts be meaningless but many more people survive. All the same, I still prefer the movie ending.

The Poseidon Adventure on instant video.

Comments

[kore]

Which is a little unsettling if you think about it. We care so much more about the people whose stories we know that we'd rather have their efforts matter than have their efforts be meaningless but many more people survive. All the same, I still prefer the movie ending.

That is a really interesting point.

(I think Jaws was similarly toned down for the movie, although at this point I don't really remember.)

[sovay]

Shelley Winters played her as a type of Jewish grandma we all know – sweet, funny, a bit up in your business — who at first seems like the comic relief, but turns out to be heroic and saves the day.

I mean, this makes me want to see the movie, which absolutely nothing previous had suggested. I'm also glad to hear about the cop's wife. Thank you.

[rachelmanija]

I would enjoy your review if you do! Shelley Winters actually being Jewish helped a lot, I'm sure.

I was just editing to add the lack of the sex in a pastry pile scene when you commented, BTW.

[sovay]

I was just editing to add the lack of the sex in a pastry pile scene when you commented, BTW.

I do regret the loss of that scene, even though now all I can think is "$240 Worth of Pudding."

[rachelmanija]

Oh, darn, paywalled. Can you copy it?

[sovay]

Oh, darn, paywalled. Can you copy it?

Phooey! If the video itself is still paywalled, here's the equivalent sketch on Dailymotion. It was performed by Michael Ian Black and Thomas Lennon on the MTV sketch comedy series The State (1993–95).

[roadrunnertwice]

I saw Towering Inferno a few years back, and was like... “that was very competently done, but I’m still a little confused about why you wanted to do it??” Which is my reaction to many kinds of antique fad. Worth a watch, I think. It had Paul Newman as a two-fisted architect! And what’s his name, Bullitt... oh right, Steve McQueen!

[rachelmanija]

Paul Newman as a two-fisted architect

SOLD.

[starlady]

I tried to watch The Towering Inferno a year or two after 9/11 and had to turn it off. I'd be interested to hear what you think!

[grayswandir]

Thanks for posting your thoughts on this. I've been thinking about rewatching this movie for years, and based on your review, it sounds like it'd be worth seeing again. I think in some ways the book ending (with everybody separated, the newly-formed relationships already dissolved, and the existence of other survivors suggesting that all the efforts of our heroes might have actually done them more harm than good) actually sounds more thought-provoking (and more credible) than the movie ending, at least to me. But everything else sounds like it was infinitely better in the movie, which is quite interesting -- not usually what I expect from movie adaptations! Except for the upside-down-ness, which I'm sorry to hear wasn't filmed in any very memorable way. :P

[scioscribe]

This definitely sounds right up my alley in a ridiculously endearing kind of way. I really love disaster movies--ensembles! peril! unexpected character collisions!--and the seventies era plus the humaneness and silliness make for great bonuses.

[rachelmanija]

Let me know what you think if you see it!

[ckd]

I consider there to be a set of four canonical 70s disaster movies, one for each of the classical elements:

Water: The Poseidon Adventure
Air: Airport
Fire: The Towering Inferno
Earth: Earthquake

[rachelmanija]

Hahahaha. Have you seen them all?

[ckd]

Yep. I think I have all of them (and the Airport sequels) on DVD, too.

[rachelmanija]

Tell me about them!

[carbonel]

I think Airport was the ur-disaster movie. There's a blizzard going on as a flight to Italy takes off from Orchard Airport (a thinly disguised O'Hare -- it used to be named Orchard, which is why the call sign is "ORD").

Aboard are a guy with a bomb who plans to blow up the plane for insurance money, an elderly serial stowaway (played by Helen Hayes, who won an Oscar for the part), a charismatic and married captain, a stewardess (this was before flight attendants) who is pregnant with his child), and an obnoxious twit -- plus many others. (Actually, the pregnant stewardess plot may just be in the book, which I also read a bunch of times.)

On the ground is the guy who runs the airport, who's trying to cope with everything.

Suspense and hilarity ensues.

(Part of the reason I found the book fascinating as a teen was that there wasn't a lot of sex in the book, but there was a lot of thinking about sex, and the varying perspectives were so interesting.)

[ckd]

In release order (based on the TV Tropes page):

Air: Airport

The first of the 1970s boom, very much the model for those that followed. These days, mostly overshadowed by Airplane! which was directly modeled on Zero Hour but took many elements from Airport and its sequels as well. (It even imitated the Airport franchise by having a worse sequel.... :-)

Most memorable to me for George Kennedy's Joe Patroni as the guy on the ground doing all the hard work to make "Lincoln International Airport" (actually MSP) ready for the incoming plane despite snowstorms and other problems. His character continued to appear in the sequels, eventually becoming a Concorde pilot in one of many implausible events of the final, movie.

Water: The Poseidon Adventure

The first of Irwin Allen's contributions to the genre. Gave us the original "let's try to get an Oscar for a song" attempt, and probably helped Leslie Nielsen wind up in Airplane! later.

Fire: The Towering Inferno

More Irwin Allen, and IMO the best of the four. Notable for behind-the-scenes dualities: two novels bought by two studios (which joined forces to make one movie instead of splitting the market) and two leads with exactly the same amount of screen time and lines. (Invented diagonal billing, too, so they could both be "first billed" depending on whether you read top-down or left-right.)

Notable smaller parts include OJ Simpson as a security guard (that aged poorly) and Fred Astaire (who brings a lot to his role).

As noted by other commenters, much tougher to watch after 2001.

Earth: Earthquake

LA gets hit with the Big One! In theaters, this featured "Sensurround" (really big subwoofers) to shake theater-goers. Not bad, but has a few really terrible parts (including an animated blood splatter for an elevator failure). Part of the building collapse footage was used for Galactica 1980 and then, from there, in a Tom Petty music video.

[sholio]

This means that the movie did not have the extraordinary scene in which two characters foraging for food discover a gigantic pile of pastries and packaged cookies, push enough of them aside to make a space where they can lie down, and pluck pastries from the teetering mounds surrounding them before having sex there.

This sounds like the kind of quality life choices that I expect from PNR, but not usually from a disaster movie!

Which is a little unsettling if you think about it. We care so much more about the people whose stories we know that we'd rather have their efforts matter than have their efforts be meaningless but many more people survive.

Oh, hmm, that's a really interesting point! Both the desire for meaningfulness in the characters' choices, and the way that we don't really care much about the deaths of a whole bunch of characters we aren't invested in, but care A LOT about the ones that we are. There are a lot of implications about human mental wiring in that.

[mildred_of_midgard]

There's a whole TV Trope about that. A Million is a Statistic.

[davidgillon]

I've just remembered there's a sequel, 'Beyond the Poseidon Adventure', in which Michael Caine, Karl Malden and Sally Field turn up in their tugboat to try and salvage what they can, being joined by Telly Savalas and his Greek Orthodox mercenaries medics. They find the gold, find a few passengers (Veronica Hamel, Slim Pickens, Mark Harmon), but then the mercenaries find their lost plutonium and it all ends in tears.

[twistedchick]

As far as I remember, the first disaster movie was Earthquake!, which I don't remember anything about. The next, the one that went big, was Towering Inferno -- which had both younger and older actors in it to pull a diverse audience, as well as a whole lot of suspenders of disbelief being snapped on the firefighting techniques. I saw it with a firefighter, whom I was dating at the time, and got the *whole* story on what would really have been done and what would not.

Towering Inferno is also the movie that gave Fred Astaire his one and only Oscar.

I did not see The Poseidon Adventure because movies about people possibly drowning make me ill.

[legionseagle]

I recall one of my school friends summarising the Fred Astaire bits, "He finds love at last, she plummets to her death, but it's OK because she leaves him her cat."

[minoanmiss]

*reads this in fasciantion*

[vicki_rae]

We care so much more about the people whose stories we know that we'd rather have their efforts matter than have their efforts be meaningless but many more people survive.

All of what you wrote but this especially. We want things to mean something. That's probably why disaster movies were so huge back then. The special effects sure, but people cared about the characters, and even though a lot died, the survivors mostly earned it and the audiences were rooting for them along the way.

I also read the book first and the movie is much better. That's pretty much the whole of why disaster movies were so popular back in the 70s. This movie made us care about the characters in ways the book didn't, and made all of it meaningful. The whole cast was quite good and Shelley Winters was amazing. I saw it in the theater and the special effects were spectacular and believable.

Airport was an excellent disaster movie and Helen Hayes was glorious. Her 2nd Oscar and she earned it. It's a guilty pleasure for me, saw it several times in the theater and I own it. Dated but worth watching. The plane and the airport are settings instead of special effects extravaganzas competing with the characters.

The Towering Inferno was good but post-9/11 would be really tough to watch. Some of the characters know they're going to die and that would be ... too real now. Good movie though, for what it was. It also probably benefited from the way it was made. There were two popular burning skyscraper books and the production company sensibly bought both books and hired a screenwriter to merge them into one script.

[swan_tower]

Depending on how fond you are of the Rock, you might enjoy the recent Skyscraper movie. A reviewer that totally missed the point was all "ugh, it's so much like The Towering Inferno" -- well, duh, they're not exactly trying to hide that fact. :-P And it's the only action movie I've seen where the hero is an amputee; the Rock's character has a prosthetic leg, which comes into play a couple of times without being a major hindrance to his ability to protag.

Edited to add: since other people mentioned this regarding The Towering Inferno, I should say that Skyscraper does *not* hit too many 9-11 buttons. It isn't set in the U.S., and the building is almost completely empty when it catches fire, so there isn't really any of the "oh my god these innocent people are trapped and will inevitably die" thing.

[derien]

My husband says there's a sequel movie (that isn't near as interesting) about treasure hunters trying to get valuables out of the wreck. (Also, his memory of the end of the movie was that he couldn't say for sure that nobody else survived, because he thought it ended when the main group were picked up by the helicopter. But I'm not saying his memory for movies is perfect, since he keeps telling me we have watched a movie which I'm sure we haven't, and when I press him for details about it he says it was 'forgettable.')