Deep Dive: Disaster Films of the 1970s

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Another reason, and I don't like to say it, is that people are observers of the macabre. It is a trait of all of us, to one degree or another. People are drawn to chasing a firetruck, or to seeing who's being put in an ambulance. It doesn't speak too well of us . . . but it's good for the box office

Irwin Allen, in a New York Times portrait, December 29, 1974

Disaster films are some of the most distinctive genre films of the 1970s, not because it is the only time they were made, but because it features some of its most iconic titles. It is an odd genre to be so popular, considering that these films are mainly about seeing things get destroyed that society was proud of and seeing people killed en masse. They are basically slasher films on an epic scale, as the audience keeps waiting for the next kill, the next fire, the next sacrifice. The difference is that they are expensive and full of stars, especially in this decade.

The Cold War anxiety of nuclear doom lead to sci-fi disaster films in which aliens or mutated insects made people think the end of the world as we know was here. As ideals slowly fell apart towards the end of the 60s, even big budget films dwelled in doom and gloom. Planet of the Apes (1968, Franklin J. Schaffner) works like predecessor to the disaster film craze, moving from expectations for a better future to complete hopelessness.

Then the 70s arrived and movies delivered various ways to show the end of all things. Compared to the ruined Statue of Liberty, most of these films were more sanitized, offering popular faces and heroic deaths. But under that shiny surface of starstruck heroism, ‘the reliance on science, traditional institutions, and governmental authorities proved no salvation from threat or peril.’ (Gateward 2007) No matter how technologically advanced or architecturally impressive, like an eternal cycle of Titanics crashing into icebergs, everything crumbled quickly once disaster arrived. David Cook (2007) describes it as

a genre that originated in the 1970s and was understood to reflect the country’s loss of faith in its institutions. In disaster films some man-made systems failure or force of nature, often monstrously perverted, threatens to destroy a group of characters brought together more or less by chance (as passengers on a jet or ocean liner, or as vacationers at a resort), many of whom die but some of whom prevail through their courage and resourcefulness.

Airport (1970, George Seaton) set up the formula: an array of well known stars, young and old (actually, mostly old) gets into a dangerous situation and has to talk, climb, fight or run their way out of it. In this first film, the peril was relatively small, a man with bomb on plane that then had to land on a snowy runway. The movie was one of the big success of 1970, so producers (especially Irwin Allen) rushed to make more, with more danger, more effects, more death.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972, Ronald Neame) used the template most effectively, winning more Oscars and making even more money. The effort was bigger, though, as a whole ship is turned upside down through a tidal wave and the characters (heroic priest Gene Hackman, hysterical Shelley Winters, an annoyed Ernest Borgnine, a wise-cracking Red Buttons and even Leslie Nielsen, long before he moved to the other side of the equation) have to go through water, fire and a christmas tree to get to the top (but actually bottom) of the ship. Hackman’s character is furious with God for putting them through this and while we are supposed to believe that the Lord himself helps these people survive, the ranting reverend falls to his death instead of being crucified. When producer Allen tried to direct the sequel Beyond the Poseidon Adventure himself in 1979, its absurdity (basically the same film in reverse, just much worse) marked the end of the disaster era.

Until then, a lot happened. The Towering Inferno (1974, John Guillermin) had a skyscraper on fire, with Paul Newman as the hero and Fred Astaire as the go-to Oscar nominee. Earthquake (1974, Mark Robson) had all of Los Angeles on fire and in shambles, with Charlton Heston and Walter Matthau taking over the expected roles.

The apocalypse had more horses, though. A malfunctioning submarine? Gray Lady Down! (1978, David Greene). A bomb on a cruise ship? Juggernaut! (1974, Richard Lester). An avalanche? Avalanche! (1978, Corey Allen). A rollercoaster for blackmail? Rollercoaster! (1977, James Goldstone). Bees? The Swarm! (1978, Irwin Allen). A city on fire? City on Fire! (1979, Alvin Rakoff). A meteor? Meteor! (1979, Ronald Neame). The Hindenburg? The Hindenburg! (1975, Robert Wise). A train with a virus being redirected to a former concentration camp over a collapsing bridge? The Cassandra Crossing! (1976, George Pan Cosmatos).

Listing all the stars in these films would fill pages. Did people come for the disasters or the celebrities? Well, seeing your favorite screen presences fighting for their lives, but TOGETHER and HEROIC and against EVIL CORPORATIONS or GREEDY INVESTORS made it worth the admission. If we did make a list of all the performers, we would notice something. There weren’t many black faces among these survivalists. Sure, there would almost always be an African American token actor but the representation of America in peril was mostly a white affair. Even in 1975, the New York Times film critic Richard Schickel couldn’t help but notice that ‘more recently, we have had the villainless (and dismal) disaster movies, in which either nature or inanimate things cause all the trouble, and in which the minority‐group actors are always precisely as brave as whichever WASP has top billing.’ (Schickel 1975).

When the disaster film returned in the 1990s, it was not for reflecting the insecurities of this decade but because computer effects suddenly made anything possible, from volcanoes to tornadoes to tunnels to aliens to rain (sorry, HARD rain) to forest fires to meteors to the Titanic. And when Roland Emmerich got a taste for the apocalypse, he kept the disaster all to himself to destroy the world again and again.

The 1970s disaster films are rarely and barely cinematic masterpieces but they stand for a unique time and a unique exploration of a genre, for better or worse.

Sources

  • Cook, David (2007). Movies and Political Trauma. In: Friedman, Lester D. (ed.). American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations. Rutgers University Press.

  • Gatesward, Frances (2007). Movies and Legacies of War and Corruption. In: Friedman, Lester D. (ed.). American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations. Rutgers University Press.

  • Klemesrud, J. (1974, December 29). He's the Master of Disaster. The New York Times.

  • Schickel, R. (1975, February 9). Why Indians Can't Be Villains Any More. The New York Times.