The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

Wow! Such a good movie.

One of my all time favorites.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Top-heavy cruise ship The Poseidon is on its final voyage when it is hit by a freak wave that turns the vessel upside-down. A handful of survivors try to make their way to the 'top' of the topsy-turvy boat before rising waters cause it to sink to the bottom of the ocean.In the battle for best disaster movie of the '70s, top contenders The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure are fairly evenly matched: both are based on best-selling novels; both have big budgets and excellent special effects; both have an all-star cast; both boast scores by John Williams; both deliver in terms of nail-biting tension and excitement; and both end with an inordinate amount of luck and happenstance for the remaining survivors. So when choosing a favourite out of the two, it all boils down to one thing as far as I am concerned: hotpants!I don't seem to recall there being too many pairs of hotpants in The Towering Inferno (no jokes about characters' trousers on fire please); The Poseidon Adventure, on the other hand, features two pairs, as worn by brunette hottie Pamela Sue Martin and blonde babe Carol Lynley (who pairs her shorts with knee-high leather boots). With both actresses regularly called upon to climb up things (and to get thoroughly soaked), this small detail clinches it for Poseidon.Throw in Stella Stevens in her panties (and Shelley Winters for those who like 'em older and much fuller of figure) and that's men of most tastes catered for. The ladies of the audience aren't so lucky - they get Gene Hackman, Roddy McDowall and Ernest Borgnine - great actors but hardly hunks.9.5/10, rounded up to 10 for IMDb.

The so-called "Master of Disaster", Irwin Allen, was the genius behind this very early entry into that popular 1970s genre known as the all-star "disaster film". And "The Poseidon Adventure" is an acceptable bit of escapism. Based on the novel by Paul Gallico, and scripted by Stirling Silliphant and Wendell Mayes, it tells of a luxury cruise liner crossing the Atlantic on New Years' Eve. An underwater earthquake causes MASSIVE tidal waves to occur, including the one that causes the ship to capsize. It's up to a limited number of cast members to make it to the bottom (now the top) of the ship, and hopefully escape.As directed by Ronald Neame, who also guided "Meteor", a late entry into the genre, this is solidly entertaining, even with its flaws. Admittedly, the characters' introductory sequences ARE pretty bad, and there are too many of them here who are required to spend their time being annoying, or abrasive, or both. It does take a while for the film to grab a hold of its viewers, but once the wave hits, and the action kicks in (about a third of the way through), it becomes pretty watchable. Just don't spend too much time thinking about it, and it works fairly well.Kudos to production designer William J. Creber and cinematographer Harold E. Stine for creating a "Hell on Earth" vision for our survivors to endure. You're not always convinced you're seeing upside down sets, but you may be amused regardless. John Williams' music adds the right rousing touch.The cast is saddled with some bad dialogue and some characters who are ridiculous at times, but they do their best. Gene Hackman is the hero, an irreverent priest, and Ernest Borgnine, Stella Stevens, Carol Lynley, Red Buttons, Jack Albertson, Shelley Winters, Pamela Sue Martin, and Eric Shea play the imperiled passengers. Roddy McDowall and Leslie Nielsen are among the ships' crew. Nielsen, still a good eight years away from his career reinvention with "Airplane!", is solid as a rock as the too briefly seen captain.This is agreeable mindless entertainment that actually kills an hour and 57 minutes in a reasonably paced fashion. It can boast an Oscar winning song, in any event: "The Morning After".Followed by a sequel seven years later.Eight out of 10.

I love – and I truly mean LOVE – those typically bombastic and ginormous-scaled disaster movies from the 70s and early 80s, but admittedly they are all exactly the same… The setting and type of catastrophe are always different, of course, but the narrative structure, cast of characters and action sequences are practically always alike! When all hell breaks loose, there's always one atypical hero who stands up and mobilizes a small group of reluctant followers to do the exact opposite of what seems logical and of what everybody else is doing. The group exists of stereotypes that complain the entire time about the decisions that are being made, and several of them obviously don't make it until the end of the movie, but eventually the hero's choices naturally turn out to be only slim chances for survival they ever had! Of course, being released in 1972, "The Poseidon Adventure" was one of the very first big-budgeted disaster movies and one of the first enormous successes of producer Irwin Allen, so it's only logical that it spawned many imitations and that the formula blatantly got copied by Mr. Allen himself. Nearly 45 years later, the film is still very exciting, the sets & stunts still look very convincing (without any computer generated effects) and it's also still extremely realistic when it comes to illustrating what happens when blind panic breaks out. For all passengers and crew members aboard the SS Poseidon, the New Year couldn't possibly start off any worse… Caught in an immense storm, the luxurious cruise ship gets hits by a massive tidal wave and capsizes, only moments after midnight on the 1st of January. With the captain and most of the crew members dead, the slightly controversial but authoritarian reverend Scott (Gene Hackman) profiles himself as the leader and rescuer of as many people as possible. He guides a small group towards the bottom of the ship – since it's upside down – but since they were celebrating the New Year in the restaurant on the deck, they have to climb huge Christmas trees and squirm through narrow ventilation shafts in order to reach the engine room. "The Poseidon Adventure" is incredibly fast-paced, all the big names in the cast depict their roles very energetic and John Williams delivered a tremendously great score. The script contains a few horrible clichés in terms of character development (for example, dominant males and docile women) but luckily the multi-talented actors and actresses deal with it very well. Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters and many others deliver stellar performances, and even Leslie Nielsen is memorable in his (too short) role as the amiable captain. Along with "The Towering Inferno" and the original "Airport", this is the most iconic disaster movie of the seventies!

This did not have a very good story line. I do not knew why people like it. It is just boring. I do not knew why it got a 7.1. That is just overrating it. I give it 4 out of 10. Because it is pooh pooh. Stinky stinky pooh pooh. It is find of sad and not fun to watch. It is very slow. I can not believe the same man who wrote a great film like The Swarm wrote this pooh pooh adventure. There should call it The Poseidon Adventure they should call it the pooh pooh adventure. Good actors wasted there talent being in this awful movie. Do not wast your time. And do not wast your money. Do not see this awful movie. It very boring. There so many movie out there better then this one. Do not see it. It is not an adventure it is an argument between Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnie. The Poseidon Argument that is what they could have called it.