cheech

Some people might already know Im a fan of the 70s disaster movie, in general. Earthquake and The Swarm were a couple I saw back then as new releases, and made a big impression. As I told Jilly via phone, my fave moment in The Swarm, watching recently on AMC, was when Michael Caine was observing whether the killer bees were eating poison pellets. from a helicopter, using binoculars. With eyes that strong, Im surprised he didnt just kill the bees with laser beams shooting out of them.

So AMC, American Movie Classics, showed that and Airport 75, another pretty amazing one. Seventies disaster movies have some very strong selling points: huge casts of stars, ridiculous special effects. well, thats about it. Theyre also a video-game-like sadistic thrill, seeing a bunch of folks slaughtered en masse and I think thats maybe why, lately, they make me sadder than they used to. Im not mean enough to totally get my rocks off on that anymore.

Like last night, I watched an hour of Meteor, a movie Id wanted to see since reading its bad reviews in 1979. Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Martin Landau, Brian Keith, Karl Malden, and, it says here on Amazon, Natalie Wood huh, I thought she was just some generic 70s chick from the Logans Run TV show. It appeared to be a total blueprint for the plot of Armageddon (although I wouldnt know exactly as I didnt go see that piece of junk [Im an Impact fan, myself!]) minus the guys going into space (the Cold War allusion is that the US and USSR [for you younger kids, that means Russia] already had these missile satellites up in space aimed at each other, but now they will aim em at The Meteor and save the day).
The thing that separated this disaster movie from others though, a brilliant idea on someones part, was to follow individuals in the disaster areas, focusing on some random characters in the extras. Whereas most disaster movies just show you the kill-shot, turning the extras into so many props to wipe out (as I say, video-game-like), the director focused on particular people in the Switzerland avalanche and Hong Kong tidal wave sequences. An interesting decision too, was not translating their dialogue (in German and Chinese, respectively), which sorta paradoxically brought home the idea that non-English-speaking folks are just like you and me, as you could understand the gists of their lives in a snap; the Swiss chick was on a romantic skiing holiday, the Hong Kong family simply being nice, modest proletarians.
Sadly, the Swiss chick, and her beau, are smashed by the chalet roof, itself being smashed by 10 billion tons of snowbut the Hong Kong family is even sadder. You see the panicked guy run in their tiny, crappy apartment, his wife yells something, and he yells something back (I imagine along the lines of Whats going on? Theres a 600-foot-motherfucking tidal wave comin is whats fuckin going on!!), and then she grabs their baby (aww) as they run out and, just as hes about to go out the door, he see their whimpering puppy (aaawwwww) and grabs it before he runs outbut you, the viewer, know that there aint nowheres to run at, and they have but a 30 celluloid seconds of life left. As I said, brilliant move by the writer/ director; it puts a human face on the disaster-movie mob, makes it a more saddening momentbut now Im gonna have to find a different disaster movie for my silly-fun carnage thrills. I guess maybe the Omen movies. Now theres some silly, outlandish deaths for you.
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edit ps - I finally did it... I bought an Atari 2600 and a bunch of cartridges!