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15:37 After "The Swarm", who ever thought that disaster movies could get any worse? |
| Well if you witness this cinematic monstrosity, you will see existing proof that bad disaster movies were indeed churned out after "The Swarm". This movie was encouraged to be filmed at the time because Irwin Allen still had one film left on his contract to be directed and the film studio wanted to get their money's worth while they could. I for one could not believe that William Holden and Paul Newman would agree to star in this rubbish. I read William Holden's biography and I read that both Newman and Holden were contractually obliged to star in one more film to be directed by Irwin Allen, and unfortunately, this was it. With Holden and Newman on board, it seemed like a logical idea to jump aboard this turkey. Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Jacqueline Bissett and James Franciscus climb on for the ride. Somewhere in there, Burgess Meredith and Italian film veteran, Valentina Cortese also signed on. Unlike Olivia De Havilland who onced admitted that she made a huge mistake in turning down the role of the mayor's wife in "The Towering Inferno", I'm sure these actors were thinking exactly the opposite once filming started. What I find most extraordinary is how these veteran actors couldn't see this bad career move they were about to get themselves into after reading the script. Olivia De Havilland admits that she only signed on to "The Swarm" after her good friend Henry Fonda joined the project. Unless the actors were all great friends with each other (which I know for a fact was not the case), then they had some serious issues to sort out. Problems first arose on the set of this movie when William Holden discovered Paul Newman was to get top billing for the project. Holden, already a heavy drinker at the time this movie was being filmed, abruptly walked off the set many times during the filming process. Only when the film studio guaranteed that Holden would share top billing with Newman did he agree to come back and finish his scenes. The film basically takes place on a ridiculous looking island that resembles the set of "Fantasy Island". It is basically a shot of a hotel with a papier mache volcano behind it. Paul Newman plays an oil driller. Jacqueline Bissett is his love interest. William Holden again plays the ignorant owner of the hotel who refuses to evacuate the premises once the so-called "disaster" is foreseen. Red Buttons plays an ex-con and Ernest Borgnine again plays the hardened P.I. who has been hired to track him down and bring him back for justice. Veronica Hamel spends most of her five minutes on screen either in her night gown or in front of the vanity mirror hamming it up as the poor old wife who knows she's being taken for granted by her cheating husband. Burgess Meredith plays the 'Jack Warden' role from "The Poseidon Adventure" as the husband of the elderly vacationing couple with his wife, Valentina Cortese. Alex Carras and Pat Morita play two barflies who hang around with some Shelley Winters-wannabe at the local town bar. When strange tremors rock the site where Newman is drilling oil, he senses something is not quite right. He decides to pay a visit to the volcanic monitoring outpost which is basically a cardboard box at the top of the papier mache volcano. To add to the insanity, there's a "gondola"-like box that can be lowered into the volcano for further testing (!!!). If you've already guessed that a man goes down in this clap-trap contraption whilst a tremor occurs and the cable snaps and he falls into the lava below, then you are dead set correct. If that seemed unconvincing, you should see the red lights the film crew strategically placed on the ground to make it look like the heat of the lava is being reflected off the casts' faces while being sprayed with water bottles to make it look like they're sweating. One of the most hilarious scenes actually happens in the town after the volcano erupts. A flow of "lava" is oozing down the main street, engulfing everything in sight. The patrons of the bar make a hasty escape right before the red lava eats it up. It looked like a scene from "The Blob", but then I remembered that Steve McQueen wasn't in this garbage. When the volcano erupts, it is up to Paul Newman to lead the "willing" group of resort patrons to safety on the other side of the island. Staying behind is William Holden and Veronica Hamell in one of the most awful scenes displaying terrible special effects. Huge "balls" of lava are spewing from the volcano into the resort. They're actually just huge papier mache balls covered in red and purple cellophane, but the naked eye isn't supposed to notice that. The resort explodes like something from the set of "The Thunderbirds" and you're left wondering if the bulk of the budget was spent on that one shot. Newman leads the survivors through a jungle of potted plants and palm trees. It doesn't take long for them all to be covered in "black soot" and sweat as if they just performed a steeplechase marathon down the stairwell in "The Towering Inferno". The group of survivors is basically the "big names" of the cast. Borgnine, Buttons, Meredith, Bissett, Morita, Cortese and the Shelley-Winters lookalike from the town bar. If you thought the scene where the resort exploded was laughable, wait till you see the roped bridge suspended across a chasm filled with flowing lava. For starters, anything that was exposed to temperatures radiating off flowing molten lava would be singed and burned within seconds. But pure logic for this movie basically went out the window from about the very second the opening credits flashed on the screen. Newman leads the group across the bridge. Pat Morita tries his best 'Stella Stevens' impression as he tumbles 'slow-motion'-style into the flowing lava below. Valentina Cortese tries her best 'Shelley Winters' impression as she tells Burgess Meredith she can't go on and dies from a heart attack. Newman leads the group to safety. They basically reached the other side of the island in 5 minutes, but who really cares. That's basically the movie. Upon reading William Holden's biography, I discovered that none of the actors would agree to help campaign this film or attend the premiere. I can easily understand why if they even caught five minutes of the finished product. This movie was simply awful. While it didn't have half the big names that starred in "The Swarm", it was twice as bad. Whilst "The Swarm" was laughable in parts, this movie only made you wonder why $5.00 of the film's budget was spent on special effects and the rest was paid for catering and bad make-up. This movie was the final stake to be driven through the heart of the disaster genre. It was also Irwin Allen's final film that he directed. I was too young to see this movie when it was released theatrically, but I can just picture the audience throwing popcorn at the screen before walking out in both confusion and disgust. Try to avoid this movie at all costs - watching it will only make you wonder where your favourite star's career went wrong. |
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