Other Titles • The Poseidon Adventure • Die Höllenfahrt der Poseidon (1973) • Poseidon Inferno (1973) • L'Avventura del Poseidon (1972)
Synopses for The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
1.
It's New Year's Eve and the luxury ocean liner Poseidon is on a magnificent voyage from New York to Athens. Unfortunately, disaster befalls passengers and crew when the cruise ship is capsized by a huge tidal wave brought on by a submarine-induced earthquake. Though the casualties are many, 10 passengers survive to make a harrowing journey up to the overturned ship's bottom where they try and escape to safety.
2.
One of the most griping escape films of all time follows ten survivors as they struggle to escape from an ocean liner capsized by a tidal wave. Suspenseful terror, combined with the victims' intimate and personal stories, results in compelling and heart-stopping drama. The distinguished talents of 15 Academy Award® winners, along with the incredible special effects, make this film a true classic.
3.
Hands down, this is the best movie (and was one of the first) to come out of the seemingly endless cycle of disaster movies that dominated box offices during the 1970s. It could even be argued that Titanic owes some of its success to the precedent set by this 1972 blockbuster starring Gene Hackman as a priest who leads a small group of survivors to safety from the bowels of a capsized luxury liner. From its stellar cast to its cheesy, Oscar-winning theme song, The Morning After, the movie has all the ingredients of a popular classic, beginning with a New Year's Eve celebration aboard the ill-fated Poseidon and ending as a pop allegory when the Hackman character becomes a Christ-like martyr. Filmed on spectacular sets where everything down is up and the ship's thick hull points in the direction of salvation, this is "a waterlogged Grand Hotel" (in the words of New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael) that is as entertaining as it is unabashedly brainless. The Poseidon Adventure is filled with performances that rise above the limits of the screenplay. It's also the only movie--unless you count her underwater corpse in Night of the Hunter--that lets Shelley Winters strut her stuff as an aquatic heroine. Who could ask for anything more? --Jeff Shannon
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