THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) ¢ ¢
D: Ronald Neame
Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons,
Carol Lynley, Stella Stevens, Shelley Winters,
Jack Albertson, Pamela Sue Martin, Arthur O'Connell
Just moments after midnight on New Year's Eve, the mother of all tsunamis smashes into an ocean liner and turns it upside down. Ignoring the advice of the crew, a daring band of passengers try to make their way up through the bowels of the ship to the hull, where they hope somebody will rescue them. A really terrible movie that's fun in a junky kind of way. It made a ton of money and helped launch a decade's worth of big-budget, all-star disaster films. The producer, inevitably, was Irwin Allen, and the picture won Oscars for best song and special effects. An early stage in the unlikely route to survival involves scaling a tall artificial Christmas tree, which requires both the retired prostitute (Stella Stevens) and the teenage hottie (Pamela Sue Martin) to discard their skirts, something the solidly built Jewish matron (Shelley Winters) is not asked to do. Carol Lynley, sporting a sporty pair of shorts, gets by without a wardrobe adjustment.
