To assist brother blogger Jaybird, I’m offering this (without an edit cycle) to entertain you, the gentle reader on an otherwise slow Thursday.
In my welcome post I listed movies from 1971 to 2008 that I found of interest to my own cinematic tastes. This is a genre-specific post. If you read though my list and clucked your tongue at the addition of The Towering Inferno, you probably aren’t a fan of the genre. I’m talking about disaster movies.
I love these movies. I can’t help it, they speak to something deep inside the psyche that relishes the idea of “the normal rules don’t apply…” but instead of ending that sentence with “… to me” (Death Wish, Die Hard, Unforgiven, most other Westerns) or “… any more” (The Road, The Road Warrior, Omega Man, all other post-apocalyptic movies), disaster movies end that sentence with, “… because it’s hit the fan, and we need to get stuff done to save everybody!”
Disaster movies all have commonalities. An event (usually natural) occurs, which has consequences which were foreseen by a small number of protagonists, ignored by a small number of powerful but shortsighted people who made everything much worse than it should have been, and usually remedied or at least lessened by a sub collection of those two groups of people. Additions are made for useful dependents (children or dogs, or both), crotchety old relatives, someone who is helpless, someone who is attractive, and occasionally a member of the local police force.
Death of characters is common, and occasionally a particularly sympathetic character is axed early on to let the audience know that Things Are Really Serious. Comeuppance usually comes to some (but not necessarily all) of the shortsighted folk who made things worse; those deaths can be either/both redemptive or the Hand of Fate.
They’re almost always cheesy, often melodramatic, and usually require a decent amount of disbelief suspension to enjoy. They are close cousins to another favorite genre of mine, the Monster Movie, but are different enough that they deserve their own category.
Here’s a list of some of disaster movies I’ve particularly enjoyed:
The Devil at 4 O’Clock (1961)
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)*
The Andromeda Strain (1971)
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
The Towering Inferno (1974)
Earthquake (1974)
The China Syndrome (1979)
Meteor (1980)**
Virus (1980)
Twister (1996)*
Dante’s Peak (1997)*
Volcano (1997)**
Deep Impact (1998)
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)**
Those marked with an asterisk have a very high quotient of cheesy, or have moments that require extreme suspension of disbelief. Be warned. Post-apocalyptic movies and monster flicks will warrant their own post in the near future.
Have you seen Sylvester Stallone vehicle “Daylight”?
No, I haven’t.
Would it rate one asterisk, or two?
Given the lack of asterisks (asterices?) by Poseidon, Inferno, and Earthquake, I’d say that this fits nicely in with them.
I did see it and I’d give it one asterisk, as roughly equivalent (although not as well-acted) as Twister.
Daylight and Dante’s Peak were ones I enjoyed of the disaster films. Volcano gave me suspention of disbelief problems because you needed a whole lot of them.
No list of cinematic disasters is complete without “From Justin to Kelly” (2003).
But seriously, you left off “Outbreak.” That movie was amazing. It stars four Academy Award-winning actors, and features a scene in which the outbreak is fomented by a lab worker accidentally sticking his hand in a moving centrifuge. Thankfully, *spoiler (as though a movie this awful could be “spoiled”)* the monkey that introduced the virus is eventually caught, allowing them to isolate the virus and whip up a vaccine tout suite and sparing the quarantined town from imminent immolation.
From Ruben to Clay improved upon the formula but also failed to achieve commercial success.
I was very touched by the scene in which Clay Aiken finds his singing career has been derailed after he sticks his hand in a moving centrifuge.
That was, of course, an homage to Kingpin.
I didn’t leave off Outbreak, I haven’t seen it.
Two disaster movie fans I know saw it before I did and said, “You like Virus, right? And The Andromeda Strain? You’ve already seen this movie. You’d like this if Rene Russo showed up in a Lakers sweatshirt like she does in Get Shorty, but she doesn’t.”
This is an egregious lacuna in your life experience. I demand that you find a way viewing it immediately. As much as I may admire your spiffy new gravatar, I simply cannot abide your not having viewing this masterpiece of American cinema.
Also, if I recall correctly, Cuba Gooding, Jr. vomits inside his Hazmat suit.
I’ll get on this… as soon as you write your guest post about Cyd Charisse.
Bribery!
No discussion of The Day After Tomorrow is complete without this classic review by my online (and occasionally real-life) friend, climatologist Bill Hyde.
That’s hilarious.
This made my day, thanks!
That review is fantastic.
Very good review.
(smacks forehead) I can’t believe I forgot to mention George Kennedy in the OP.