IRWIN ALLEN MASTER OF DISASTER Blu-Ray Box Set from Shout Factory

[Eric Paddon]

I'm situated in a relatively isolated condo complex spread out over a wide area with no businesses nearby whatsoever. The only potential thieves would have been another resident which isn't likely because I'm situated at an angle that the only residents who could have filched it would have been the people next to and above me (and I know its not my next door neighbor). I think it was a delivery person who handled something in the same area over the weekend. Could easily have been an Amazon Prime delivery person or Fed Ex, UPS or pizza delivery or whoever who noticed it lying there after more than a day.

I arrived back in time yesterday to find my Amazon arrival of "Gorgo" there so at least I have that (and my mailbox had the OOP Tadlow recording of "Is Paris Burning". The demise of that label makes it imperative to go back and see what I missed!)

[AndyDursin]

I tried to buy some of those Tadlow recordings off their website, and I know James Fitzpatrick isn't well apparently, but they never shipped and I had to go through Paypal to get a refund.

It's crazy they spent so much money on those re-recordings and now they're as virtually unavailable as the film soundtracks themselves!

[Monterey Jack]

I'm situated in a relatively isolated condo complex spread out over a wide area with no businesses nearby whatsoever. The only potential thieves would have been another resident which isn't likely because I'm situated at an angle that the only residents who could have filched it would have been the people next to and above me (and I know its not my next door neighbor). I think it was a delivery person who handled something in the same area over the weekend. Could easily have been an Amazon Prime delivery person or Fed Ex, UPS or pizza delivery or whoever who noticed it lying there after more than a day.

Sucks. I'm lucky in that I've never had a package stolen from me, and they'll sometimes be on the porch (or just inside the doorway) of may apartment complex for the better part of a day before I pick them up. It helps that my building is the farthest from the road, which would discourage people from wandering down my (dead-end) street to even see anything worth swiping. My problem was, for the first few years I lived here, my delivery driver not actually delivering packages that shouldn't be shoved into my mailbox, leaving those obnoxious "We missed you!" pink slips attached to my door, which would necessitate a lengthy, arduous walk to the post office and back the next day to get my stuff. Thankfully, calling up the post office to complain managed to curtail that.

[Eric Paddon]

My Amazon copy arrived today and thanks to a new price drop and my discount my replacement was just $75 in the end. I did have a broken case alas, which I swapped out with an 8 disc case I had on-hand and I had one curious thing in that "Beyond The Poseidon Adventure" will not load on my computer Blu-Ray drive which I think is due to the excess size of the Disc to accommodate the TV cut. OTOH it played on my regular player and I found that I could rip files to the computer, I just couldn't get my Blu-Ray software to play it for some reason though that's not too big a worry. The quality of the TV cut doesn't seem as good as the boot version I had but I at least commend Shout for including it and also an extended TV version of "When Time Ran Out" which clocks at 34 minutes longer. I am going to have to study what these extra scenes from the extended version are and if they're not in the extended cut itself.

I got one possible answer to who took my original order from me. Now that I see the package is small enough to fit in my mailbox, I'm convinced my mailman stole it when he saw it was still in my mailbox after two days. A neighbor told me she has bad vibes about our particular mailman and if this was put in the mailbox and not left in front of the door that becomes the only explanation. I don't think there's anything I can do about it since I can't prove it but the next time I travel for as long as I'm away I'm going to make damn sure no package is ever shipped during that time.

[Eric Paddon]

I have managed to slog my way through the three TV movies in this set that I had never seen before and are the most unbearably boring pieces of tripe that Irwin ever put out. By contrast, "The Swarm" and even "When Time Ran Out" had some big-name pizzaz that makes watching them fascinating in a train-wreck (no pun intended!) way. But it's amazing how we have first "Hanging By A Thread" and "The Night The Bridge Fell Down" which are both two part miniseries that give us thin-gruel disaster set-up and are padded out with endlessly boring flashbacks and repetitive set piece jeopardy moments that just make one restless. A third, "Cave-In" isn't two parts but it's also equally boring. The thing that's amusing though is that 'Hanging By A Thread' (about being trapped on the Palm Springs Tram that we've seen in many TV shows) was so bad that consequently the other two projects, despite being filmed in 1979, were shelved and not aired until 1983. "The Night The Bridge Fell Down" was finally sacrificed in 1983 in a single night airing opposite the last episode of "MASH" which will tell you exactly how much everyone knew how bad it was. "Cave-In" likewise. Both ironically feature Leslie Nielsen in "serious" disaster roles filmed before "Airplane" but not aired until after both "Airplane" and "Police Squad". I'm beginning to think that the reason Nielsen was receptive to doing "Airplane!" was because it would have come just after he'd done both of these shelved projects for Allen (and also another lousy disaster film "City On Fire") that to do a broad send-up of them would really be a way of getting even with how he was becoming typecast.

All three of these films have the same director, Georg Fenaday, who proves he's incredibly one-note. And then there is the music by Richard LaSalle. If I'm not mistaken he always had a reputation of sorts for plagiarizing other composers and when you watch these three films you'll REALLY come away with deja vu hearing steals from "Vertigo", "Creature From The Black Lagoon", "Planet Of The Apes" and I swear even the Friendship theme from "Ben Hur" at one point! All done in melodramatically bombastic fashion that makes the on-screen action all the more ludicrous.

By contrast the first two TV-movies, "Flood" and "Fire!" were at least much more competently done and are the two best items in the set as films. The bonus TV versions of "Beyond The Poseidon Adventure" and "When Time Ran Out" are great from an archival standpoint. WIthout those, the set IMO would not have been worth it.

[AndyDursin]

The thing that's amusing though is that 'Hanging By A Thread' (about being trapped on the Palm Springs Tram that we've seen in many TV shows) was so bad that consequently the other two projects, despite being filmed in 1979, were shelved and not aired until 1983. "The Night The Bridge Fell Down" was finally sacrificed in 1983 in a single night airing opposite the last episode of "MASH" which will tell you exactly how much everyone knew how bad it was. "Cave-In" likewise.

I've never seen any of these either, but I was struck by the '70s copyrights because I thought a few of them were from the early '80s. Guess my recall is slightly on the level! I did not remember one being a mini-series though...that's hilarious they dumped it in a single night, and opposite the end of MASH!!

There really are few "falls from grace" like Allen's. From producing 2 mega hits with POSEIDON and TOWERING INFERNO -- in the same year -- to making a bomb with THE SWARM that led Warner to a) reduce the budget on BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and basically give up on it and b) shelve a few of these TV movies for literally YEARS afterwards, it's quite remarkable. What a disastrous deal that was for Warner because they must've paid him a fortune to move away from Fox.

I do remember watching his ALICE IN WONDERLAND mini-series on CBS in '85 (or '86, can't recall) which Columbia bankrolled. That one was at least watchable in a "spot the guest star" type of manner and some of Steve Allen's songs were appealing -- I was in 5th (possibly 6th) grade at the time so I was the core audience, but I'm sure it was better than THE NIGHT THE BRIDGE FELL DOWN!

[Eric Paddon]

Yeah, his post-Warner non-disaster TV movies are much better. "Memory of Eva Ryker" was a decent adaptation of an interesting novel (though it has the disconcerting element of seeing Natalie Wood, in a dual role where she plays her own character's mother in a flashback sequence, face-down dead from drowning) and a 1986 courtroom movie "Outrage" is notable for being the last performance of Robert Preston.

I think what happened with "Bridge" is that when they finally decided to dump it opposite MASH they edited it down for a single night airing and that the video releases go back to the source element which is the original two part edit that was never aired or may have aired in later syndicated showings. What makes it and "Hanging By A Thread" really hard to slog through is that there is no break between parts and you have to watch it all in one setting! (because these Shout releases I've noticed if you stop always default back to the beginning and don't have a "resume play" ability).

[AndyDursin]

I was about to say, if they burned it off in one night, it must've been in a 4-hour Sunday slot OR had to have been cut. The more I think about it, the more I vaguely remember TV Guide mentioning that fact because I was an avid reader even in grade school! I always loved Judith Crist's column which mentioned how many minutes were cut from theatrical movie broadcasts (and at times how much was added back in!).

Did they shoot all of those Allen "shelved" TV movies in the same season and then leave them dormant because they were so bad -- or did they switch networks at some point? It's funny they were on the shelf for years.

[Eric Paddon]

"Hanging By A Thread" aired in May 1979 in two parts and got scathing reviews for terminal boredom and lame F/X. Then "Bridge" would have come next since James MacArthur was the lead and this would have been just after he quit "Hawaii Five-O" and didn't take part in its last season so it would have been shot summer-fall 1979 for probably an early 1980 airing. "Cave-In" was shot same year, and maybe the negative reaction to "Thread" was why it would only get a regular two hour thing. I think all of them were NBC projects. "Bridge" did air in a three hour slot so at least a half hour would have been cut from the originally shot version. It's amazing though that the originally intended version still existed! The last episode of MASH and "Bridge" was a Monday night in late February 83 and "Cave-In" was burned off in summer 1983.

I know of one other TV-movie that suffered a similar fate. When Raquel Welch did a TV movie as an American Indian called "The Legend Of Walks Far Woman" NBC kept it on the shelf for a year and when it aired, a half hour was cut from the originally shot version specifically all of the material showing Raquel as an old woman in her 90s (reduced to just one shot in a voiceover epilogue at the end). I remember a Raquel bio talking about the conflicts with the network that caused that and that she was furious because she thought the full version was one of her best performances and it was never shown (and the home video version is what was broadcast meaning the original cut doesn't exist).