In 1970, Universal Studios kicked off a franchise that would set the tone for the disaster movies of the 70s and the decades to come; based on Arthur Hailey’s popular novel of the same name, Airport would become one of the studio’s top earners that year and its formula of personal stories intertwined with horrific events…
Tag: disaster movie
Zero Hour! (1957) – Review
Before author Arthur Hailey wrote his bestseller novel Airport, which was later turned into the movie of the same name, he had penned a teleplay for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called Flight into Danger — starring James “Scotty” Doohan — that Hailey then adapted into the screenplay for Paramount Pictures under the title Zero Hour! and…
Flood (1976) – Review
Movies such as The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure marked Irwin as “The Master of Disaster” with these big-budgeted disaster theatrical releases, but he also brought some of his movie mayhem to the small screen, case in point, his 1976 made-for-television movie Flood. Of course, the problem with taking the disaster genre to the…
Deluge (1933) – Review
Presumed lost for years, the 1933 film Deluge, released by RKO Pictures, but produced by a small company called Admiral Productions Inc, is a film that could be argued as to be one of Hollywood’s earliest true disaster films, preceding such films as The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), and the big earthquake movie San…
City on Fire (1979) – Review
By the late 70s, the golden age of the disaster film was coming to a close – Irwin Allen’s 1980 commercial bomb When Time Ran Out would be the nail in that particular coffin – but in 1979, a joint American/Canadian venture released a movie about an entire city ablaze, a film called City on…