film - Disaster film
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Robinson). Three of the genre-defining Disaster films of the 1970s were based on best-selling novels: Airport (based on the novel by Arthur Hailey), The Poseidon Adventure (based on the novel by Paul Gallico), and The Towering Inferno (from the novels The Tower by Richard Martin Stern and The Glass Inferno by Thomas N.
G. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, winning for Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing and Best Music, Original Song. Earthquake was also honored with four Academy Award nominations for its impressive special effects of a massive earthquake leveling the city of Los Angeles, winning for Best Sound and receiving a Special Achievement Award for visual effects.
The film, concluding with the dramatic sinking of the ship, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Additional precursors to the popular Disaster films of the 1970s include The High and the Mighty (1954), starring John Wayne and Robert Stack as pilots of a crippled airplane attempting to cross the ocean; Zero Hour! (1957), written by Arthur Hailey (who also penned the 1968 novel Airport) about an airplane crew that succumbs to food poisoning; and The Doomsday Flight (1966), written by Rod Serling and starring Edmond O Brien as an airplane passenger with a bomb wired to explode. The Golden Age of the Disaster film began in 1970 with the release of Airport. With the 1972 release of The Poseidon Adventure, another huge financial success notching an impressive $42 million in rentals, the Disaster film officially became a movie-going craze. The British action/adventure film The Last Voyage (1960), while not about the Titanic disaster but a predecessor to The Poseidon Adventure, starred Robert Stack as a man desperately attempting to save his wife (Dorothy Malone) and child trapped in a sinking ocean liner.
In 2007 Sunshine was released, depicting a group of astronauts attempt to restart a dying sun. The genre had its greatest box office success during the 1970s with the release of Airport (1970), followed in quick succession by The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974) and The Towering Inferno (1974). Disaster themes are almost as old as the film medium itself.
Directed by Ronald Neame and starring Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters and Red Buttons, the film detailed survivors attempts at escaping a sinking ocean liner overturned by a giant wave triggered by an earthquake. Scortia and Frank M.
The drama San Francisco (1936) depicted the historic 1906 San Francisco earthquake, while In Old Chicago (1937) recreated The Great Chicago Fire which burned through the city in 1871. It was noted as the first film to utilize Sensurround, where heavy bass speakers were installed in theaters to recreate the sounds of an earthquake. The trend continued on a larger scale with The Hindenburg (1975) starring George C.
and was produced by Irwin Allen (eventually known as The Master of Disaster , as he had previously helmed The Poseidon Adventure and later produced The Swarm, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and When Time Ran Out.). In many cases, the novels were bestsellers or critically-acclaimed works.
Knowing sees Nicolas Cage as a teacher who discovers a set of numbers on an ordinary piece of paper that are actually the dates, death tolls and locations of disaster events, both in the past, and in the near future, while 2012, an ultimate disaster film based on the real life supposed doomsday prediction by the Mayans, sees various ultimate disasters bring the world to an end. Movies from the Disaster film genre are often based on novels. This was followed by the blockbuster hit Independence Day (ID4), which is about a hostile alien invasion of Earth, and the Poseidon Adventure-esque Daylight.
The Perfect Storm achieved surprising success in 2000, followed by The Core in 2003. This trend would continue with The Deadly Mantis (1957), The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) and Crack in the World (1965). As in the silent film era, the sinking of the Titanic would continue to be a popular disaster with filmmakers and audiences alike.
Directed by John Guillermin and starring Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden and Faye Dunaway, the film depicts a huge fire engulfing the tallest building in the world and firefighters attempts at rescuing occupants trapped on the top floor. Scott; The Cassandra Crossing (1976) starring Burt Lancaster; Two-Minute Warning (1976) starring Charlton Heston; Black Sunday (1977) starring Robert Shaw; Rollercoaster in Sensurround (1977) starring George Segal; Damnation Alley (1977) starring Jan-Michael Vincent; Avalanche (1978) starring Rock Hudson; Gray Lady Down (1978) also starring Charlton Heston; Hurricane (a 1979 remake of John Ford s 1937 film) starring Jason Robards; and City on Fire (1979) starring Henry Fonda. Skyjacked (1972) was a lessor entry into the Disaster film canon, following on the heels of Airport, though preceding its sequel Airport 1975.
The Poseidon Adventure was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress for Shelley Winters and winning for Best Music, Original Song and receiving a Special Achievement Award for visual effects. The trend reached its zenith in 1974 with the release of The Towering Inferno, Earthquake and Airport 1975 (the first Airport sequel). In 1997, two films about volcanic eruptions debuted, Volcano and Dante s Peak. Also in 1997, inspired by not only Hollywood s continued fascination with the Titanic disaster but the 1985 discovery of the ship s remains by Dr.
These films typically feature large casts of well-known actors and multiple plotlines, focusing on the characters attempts to avert, escape or cope with the disaster and its aftermath. Also in 2007 Comet Impact was released, about realistic scenario of comet impact. 2009 brought two apocalyptic films.
Some critically-acclaimed novels that were turned into Disaster films include On the Beach (by Neville Shute), The War of the Worlds (by H. Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck starred in the 1953 20th Century Fox production Titanic, followed by the highly-regarded United Kingdom film A Night to Remember in 1958.
The competing films enjoyed staggering success at the box office, with The Towering Inferno earning $55 million, Earthquake $36 million and Airport 1975 $25 million. Arguably the greatest of the 1970s disaster films, The Towering Inferno was a joint venture of 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. The Poseidon Adventure was followed by the sequel Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979). The genre began to burn out by the late-1970s when the big-budget films The Swarm (1978), Meteor (1979) and When Time Ran Out.
A disaster film is a film genre that has an impending or ongoing disaster (such as a damaged airliner, fire, shipwreck, or an asteroid collision) as its subject. The Airport series would continue with Airport 77 (1977) and The Concorde .
The silent film portrayed a burning house and the firemen who arrive to quench the flames and rescue the inhabitants. John Ford s The Hurricane (1937) concluded with the striking sequence of a tropical cyclone ripping through a fictional South Pacific island. Carol Reed s 1939 film, The Stars Look Down, examines a catastrophe at a coal mine in North-East England. Inspired by the end of World War II and the beginning of the Atomic Age, Science fiction films of the 1950s, including When Worlds Collide (1953), The War of the Worlds (1953) and Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), routinely used world disasters as plot elements.
In 2005, the genre went back to Poseidon, a 2006 remake of The Poseidon Adventure, which proved to be a failure with both audiences and critics. One of the earliest was Fire! (1901) made by James Williamson of England.
Robert Ballard, James Cameron produced, wrote and directed the most recent version of the epic story Titanic. The Day After Tomorrow did strong business in 2004, building upon fears of global warming and climate change with a varied assortment of disasters.
Applying 3D computer graphics to special effects in films, producers and directors had the ability to create increasingly spectacular disasters in less time. The revival began in 1996 with the release of Executive Decision, an action thriller about the hijacking of an airliner and a team (led by Steven Seagal and later Kurt Russell) attempting to take control of the plane before an onboard bomb can explode over the U.S. The film combined romance with special effects to become the second greatest box office success in motion picture history earning $1,845,034,188 worldwide. The revival continued in 1998 with the summer releases of the two comet/asteroid-impact films Deep Impact and Armageddon.
Wells), Failsafe (by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler) and A Night to Remember (non-fiction by Walter Lord). . The film was directed by Mark Robson and starred Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy and Lorne Greene.
