1995 – Ron Howard – Ron Howard's film about the 1970 Apollo space mission documents the near-tragedy of the mission 200,000 miles above the Earth when two oxygen tanks exploded, and the subsequent successful return of the astronauts. The launch takes place amid the growing indifference of the general public who have become blase over trips to the moon; one of the live telecas…
1963 – Alfred Hitchcock – About halfway through The Birds, Mrs. Brenner (Jessica Tandy) tries to recover from the grisly sight of discovering a neighbor's corpse with pecked-out eyes. She sits at home propped up in bed and reflects on the death of her husband three years earlier by quietly describing the way he could enter the world of their children and become part of them. …
1975 – Robert Wise – A prediction of disaster from an American psychic sets off fear and suspicion as the famous zeppelin starts its transatlantic trip to Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937. True to the formula started with The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, this film brings together an odd assortment of passengers who are observed by a Luftwaffe colonel (George C. Scott) …
1935 – Ernest B. Schoedsack, Merian C. Cooper – Marcus (Preston Foster) is a gentle giant of a blacksmith whose top priority is his family. After his wife and infant son are run down in the streets of Pompeii by a reckless chariot driver and die as a result of Marcus' inability to pay for a doctor, obtaining wealth becomes his obsession. He turns to fighting in the arena in o…
1958 – Roy Baker – William MacQuitty was six years old on May 31, 1911, when he watched the launch of the Titanic in Belfast. He was also on hand when the ship started its fateful first voyage on April 10, 1912. For years he tried to produce a film about the sinking of the ship, but it was not until Walter Lord's 1955 bestseller that interest was renewed once again. MacQuitty…
1972 – Ronald Neame – An oceanic earthquake creates a monster tidal wave that capsizes the cruise liner Poseidon, and a New Year's Eve celebration turns into a struggle for survival. The story follows a group of ten passengers searching for safety through the labyrinthine passages of the ship (the Queen Mary for the exterior shots). Some may give credit to Alfred Hitchcock fo…
1936 – W.S. Van Dyke – Somehow scriptwriter Anita Loos brought together the hodgepodge of many story elements and blended them effectively as a backdrop for the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. The film features saloons, opera, boxing, politics, religion, and romance. Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy play boyhood pals, one of whom becomes a priest (Tracy) while the other ends up…
1997 – James Cameron – The story of the demise of the unsinkable ship of dreams in April 1912 has been told so many times that Titanic director James Cameron had to draw audiences in through a solid storyline as well as the obvious disaster. The end result is an epic of gigantic proportions, a combination of spectacular special effects and a love story marred by schmaltzy dialogue. …
1974 – Irwin Allen, John Guillermin – Titanic in a skyscraper? On the night of the gala opening of San Francisco's 138-story The Glass Tower, the world's tallest building, the electrical corner-cutting of the builder's assistant (Richard Chamberlain) leads to a monster fire. The many parallels between this successful film and Titanic suggests that a big part of …
During the emphasis on disaster films in the 1970s, a few others followed in the wake of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Earthquake (1974), adhered to the recipe of using a large cast and contrasting human dramas with a disaster, but the characters (played by Charlton Heston, Lorne Greene, and Ava Gardner, among others) are much less compelling than those in the classic San Franci…