A Preview of Coming Afflictions

In Los Angeles, the Big Quake finally happens, sundering the foundations of the giant Hollywood reservoir. In San Francisco, the world's tallest building, a 136-story glass tower, explodes in flames. Vast armies of ants relentlessly eat their way across the great southwest desert. Billions of giant bees swarm malevolently through the steel canyons of New York City, and somewhere underground the survivors of nuclear warfare find their cavernous retreat invaded by hordes of vampire bats.

The dire warnings of some street-corner Cassandra? No, just a list of coming attractions at U.S. movie theaters, as the industry enters a cycle of disaster. At least seven such films are scheduled for release before Christmas, and another six are in the planning stage. For the moviegoer, at least, the Apocalypse is at hand.

Real Rumble. The disaster cycle was triggered by the recent success of The Poseidon Adventure, a star-laden epic of escape from an ocean liner turned upside down by a capricious tidal wave. Poseidon has grossed $141 million so far, bringing its studio, 20th Century-Fox, $72 million in profit. Such success does not go unimitated in Hollywood, and the studios have now flung themselves into a lemming-like race for the quintessential cataclysm.

Universal Pictures has just completed Earthquake, starring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner, which scission will be offered complete with enormous loudspeakers installed in the theater to ensure a seat-shaking rumble for the audience. Universal will also release Airport 1975, a sequel to its earlier high-and-mightily profitable Airport. In this terminal picture, Earthquake Survivor Heston attempts a mid-air transfer from a helicopter to aid Stewardess Karen Black in landing a disabled and pilotless 747. Later the studio will re-create the burning of the Hindenburg, with George C. Scott and a specially built 60-ft. demidirigible.

Other producers have put their millions into reviving the time-honored disaster-film-subcategory-pestilence. In addition to Phase IV, the saga of the marching ants, Paramount will present The Haephestus Plague, a double whammy in which another earthquake disgorges thousands of carbon-munching giant cockroaches from the bowels of the earth. "We are breeding and training real South American bugs," says Producer William Castle. Reminded, perhaps, of the "feelies" of Huxley's Brave New World--in which audiences were electronically tuned in to experience the physical impact of every love scene and head-bonking shown on the screen--Castle is planning a floor-mounted windshield-wiper device that will softly brush across moviegoers' feet and ankles at crucial moments.

There will be both bats and booms from Columbia: the just-released Chosen Survivors traps its heroes between nuclear radiation and those vampire bats; Snowbound will be a resounding study in avalanche survival.

The reigning champion of the disaster film is 20th Century-Fox Producer Irwin (Poseidon Adventure) Allen. Allen's current schedule includes $33 million in new projects, most of them disaster films. Towering Inferno, a skyscraper-fire tale starring Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Fred Astaire, is Allen's most ambitious effort. He is constructing a seven-story model of the top floors of an office tower for the film's climactic scene, in which 400,000 gallons of water in tanks on the roof are exploded to quench the conflagration.

Incessant Action. Allen will also produce The Swarm--the big bees, deadly stingers all--and The Day the World Ended, the story of the devastating 1902 volcanic eruption in Martinique. And finally, in the inevitable sequel, the few who survived The Poseidon Adventure will be forced to endure a catastrophic train wreck in the world's longest mountain tunnel on their way home.

Most of these films feature big-name faces in type-cast roles. "You don't want to have to spend too much time explaining personality in a disaster movie," notes Universal Production Head Jennings Lang. The main box office attraction is not stars, however, but incessant action. Whatever the nature of the calamity, the disaster film is just one damned thing after another--the same formula that has captivated audiences since The Perils of Pauline. Catastrophe's appeal, says Allen, "is to the Walter Mitty in everybody. We show ordinary people becoming superheroes. The average guy comes out of the theater wringing wet and wearing a satisfied grin--he thinks he did it." If film companies survive this self-generated onslaught on the box office, they will be wearing a Cheshire grin.

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