You know how Smokey Bear is always gravely intoning how only you can prevent forest fires? After watching Flood!‘s sweaty brother Fire!, another small screen entry from Irwin Allen’s disaster factory, we also know what else can prevent forest fires. Not letting convicts smoke cigarettes when they are on forestry detail! Continue reading “Fire! (1977)”
Category: 1970s
Flood! (1976)
The forecast for Brownsville is disaster! With a chance for various faces familiar to 1970s audiences to drown as a combination of murky model work and stock footage unleash a watery hell on the sleepy town renowned for its fishing and hotshot helicopter pilots!
As they are introduced one by one, the tension rises like the water behind the wimpy earthen dam, as you try to guess who will be swept away, inevitably prompting pained reaction shots from the survivors! (Don’t be sad – they’ll turn up again with guest spots on The Love Boat or Fantasy Island!) Continue reading “Flood! (1976)”
Witch’s Night Out (1978)
It’s the Halloween that almost wasn’t for Crybaby Town! Everyone has lost that spooky spirit, from the kids to the town elders all the way down to the local haunted house where the town’s resident witch lives out her days, remembering how great she used to have it, a veritable Norma Desmond, but with a mole and magic wand instead of houseguest William Holden. Continue reading “Witch’s Night Out (1978)”
Terror in the Sky (1971)
Terror in the Sky is the reason why I never eat airline chicken pot pies. Much like the dreaded “gas station burrito” or the “church social potato salad”, behind their tasty flakiness is only death by diarrhea!
But at least if you get hit with the burrito or potato salad, the worst that can happen is just the destruction of those facilities’ toilets before you are able to limp painfully to the ER for more long lasting relief. When you get a dose of the fiery brown eye due to food poisoning at 40,000 feet? Well, it’s like the great Doug McClure says as he frantically tries to learn to fly the plane, we could be looking at a “wagon load of corpses!” Continue reading “Terror in the Sky (1971)”
Satan’s Triangle (1975)
I’m not saying that you don’t pick up the priest found drifting by himself in the ocean, but when you do, you need to be smart about it. At a minimum, you probably shouldn’t keep fishing for that big marlin and the captain of the boat should be court-martialed or keelhauled or whatever it is they do to them when they are absurdly derelict in their seafaring duties.
You’d have to be suffering a bout of scurvy to think that letting a priest who looks like the crazed padre that killed himself and opened the gates of hell in City of the Living Dead taking the helm of you boat during a mysterious storm that has broken out while you are in the middle of the Devil’s Triangle is anything other than sheer lunacy! Continue reading “Satan’s Triangle (1975)”
SST: Death Flight (1977)
“Ladies and gentlemen. If I may have your attention please. At this time we will begin boarding the SST Death Flight at Gate 32b. Thank you for flying whatever fake airline was created for this TV movie disaster.” Continue reading “SST: Death Flight (1977)”
Mayday at 40,000 Feet! (1976)
Mayday! Mayday! Flight engineer Mike Fuller keeps striking out with the new stew! Experiencing a great deal of cock blocking by retiring mother hen stew! Preparing to make several more passes with good old boy charm to avoid crashing into a lonely night of drinking a the hotel bar!