A ship called the Poseidon encounters a giant wave on New Years Eve. The wave flips the entire ship upside down and kills hundreds of people inside. Some of the passengers managed to survive. If they want to be rescued they must go to engine room which is now at the top.
Blaine: In 1969, Irwin Allen was a popular tv producer for producing hit shows like “Lost in Space”, “Land of the Giants” and “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”. Irwin was really into fantasy, sci-fi and special effects. He decided to go into making films because that was his first love. He wanted to make a movie with a lot of special effects just like the tv shows he produced. He went through the book shelves to find a novel that hadn’t been made into a movie yet and he found Paul Gallico’s best selling novel, “The Poseidon Adventure”. Irwin read through it and felt that something like “The Poseidon Adventure” could live up to his love for special effects. Irwin thought “The Poseidon Adventure” should be an epic movie with an all star cast.
No one believed in “The Poseidon Adventure” at the time because a movie like that hadn’t been done before, but Irwin had huge hopes for the project and knew they could do it. Two years had passed and Irwin got a green light from 20th Century Fox. “The Poseidon Adventure” had gotten a five million dollar budget and the first thing Irwin desired was for storyboards to be made of how this movie was going to look and how they were going to pull off the special effects. Irwin then put together the ensemble of actors. He wanted veteran actors like Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters, Roddy Mcdowell, Jack Albertson and Gene Hackman.
Ronald Neame became successful thanks to his movie “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and the Fox President felt that he should direct “The Poseidon Adventure”. Ronald was brought in to take a look at the storyboards they had done and he and Irwin got along just fine, so Irwin felt comfortable with Ronald directing “The Poseidon Adventure”. Ronald had never directed a movie this big with stunts and special effects, but he loved actors and he thought this would be an interesting new thing for him. Stirling Silliphant was then brought in to write the screenplay. Stirling was the type of guy who loved to write and he always said “The secret to writing is to write, write and then write some more.”
The cast, the script and the director were all put together and that made Irwin Allen believe that “The Poseidon Adventure” would be a hit. But all of a sudden he gets called into FOX studios and they said that they were planning to cancel the project. Some of the previous movies FOX had made were disappointments and they felt they wasted a lot of money on these movies so they thought about cutting the 5 million dollar budget for “The Poseidon Adventure”. Irwin Allen wouldn’t allow it because he had so much passion for this project and they already started building the sets. They also put together a group of people who would be involved with it. They came this far and Irwin wasn’t going to have it all be for nothing. Irwin made FOX agree to pay only 3 million of the budget and he would find the other 2 million somewhere else. Irwin went to another studio where two of his friends worked and asked them if they would help finance the 2 million dollars for “The Poseidon Adventure” and they were nice enough to say yes.
After getting the other 2 million, principal photography began on April of 1972. The scenes that happen outside the ship on the deck were shot in Long Beach, California on a ship they rented called the Queen Mary. At the beginning of the film it shows the Poseidon going through this storm. That scene was shot on the Queen Mary and the camera was on a crane that could move in any direction which was a big help for that shot where it looks like the ship is tilting a bit to the side. Production moved to the FOX lot after that to shoot a lot of the disaster scenes that happen inside the ship. The special effects department built a full sized miniature model of the ship for when the wave tips it over and it’s upside down.
Ronald Neame had to imagine how disastrous something like a whole room with people would look if everything flipped upside down. He didn’t know what it would look like at first because it had never been shown before. He thought people would be falling on the side, huge and heavy objects would be falling crush some of those people and then other people would be hanging on to the ceiling holding on for their lives and then fall. They built a set that had to be turned by people from the outside and inside all the actors would be falling on the side.
Irwin Allen would be on set a lot and he got to direct a scene from the movie when the disaster happens and everyone falls to the side. One of the extras used to be a stuntman, but then he became an actor and his job for “The Poseidon Adventure” was to hang onto one of the tables that is attached to the floor. He would have to hang onto that table with his life after the room has been turned upside down, then he would have to fall and hit the skylight.
The production designer looked through blueprints and detailed photographs of the Queen Mary to design all the sets. The sets seemed so real to everyone that they just couldn’t believe it. Back then there weren’t any digital effects so the fire, the water and the explosions were all real. It was a physical and tiring thing for the actors to move through sets with steam and fire. The actors were wet and dirty a lot of the time because the makeup department sprayed water on them. There were firemen to put the fires out whenever they were done shooting a scene.
There was one day where Robert made sure the set was safe. He demonstrated it by walking up through the set and everyone felt it was ok to climb and walk through. Most of the actors did their own stunts and they learned everything from the head stuntman. Roddy McDowell’s character dies by falling off the stepladder in the ventilation shaft. Roddy saw the stuntman fall 40 feet and it was terrifying for him to watch. Shelley Winters wanted to do her own underwater scene because she was a dedicated actress. She gained 35 pounds to become more believable in her role. She spent two months with a scuba diver learning how to hold her breath and learning how to swim like her character does in the film. It was a tough scene to shoot, but Shelley did everything.
They were able to finish shooting scenes two days ahead of schedule. One more scene was required and that was the ending which shows a view of the capsized of the ship as the survivors fly off in a helicopter. It looked awful the first time they shot it so they did a re-shoot of it and production wrapped after that.
“The Poseidon Adventure” premiered on September 12,1972 and it was the biggest thing anyone had seen at the time. It became a very popular movie and there was huge lines outside the theaters. It became the top grossing movie of 1972 by making $100 million at the box office. Irwin Allen’s career became something new after that. He became one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood after that. Irwin was known as the master of disaster after his second feature film “The Towering Inferno” was another success. His movies became an inspiration for future disaster films like “The Hindenburg”, “Avalanche”, “Earth Quake”, “Independence Day” and “Titanic”.
My rating on “The Poseidon Adventure” is five out of five stars.
Song: The Morning After
The Simpsons
Plot: The Simpsons decide to have dinner at a seafood place. Problem is the food is taking forever to arrive. To pass the time the Simpsons tell different sea stories. Homer’s story resemble “The Poseidon Adventure”.
