FIRST LOOK: Poseidon Adventure & Towering Inferno SE DVD

[Eric Paddon]

The AMC Backstory is a nice reminder of what that channel used to be like before its sad, pitiful fall.

The most illuminating revelation in the cast commentary was Carol Lynley's description of what was Irwin Allen's original idea for "Beyond The Poseidon Adventure", which was having the surviving cast members reassembled in a new disaster pic where they'd be in a train on their way to testify in the hearings regarding the owners negligence in the disaster, and their train gets caught in an avalanche and they go through a whole new set of travails all over again! That certainly would have been a more interesting idea than the godawful sequel that finally got made.

[Eric Paddon]

The F.X. Feeney commentary on Towering Inferno is proving to be a tedious drag to sit through, at least through the first 100 minutes. A lot of meandering boring stuff about symbolism of scenes and colors and darned little about the actors or the production, and even worse NOTHING devoted to the matter of how the movie effectively combined the plots of two different source novels. He also keeps getting the name of the song wrong everytime he refers to it, and also is wrong when he says at one point that McQueen wanted the part of the architect but it was taken. In fact, McQueen was offered the architect role, but insisted on the part of the fire chief!

[AndyDursin]

The F.X. Feeney commentary on Towering Inferno is proving to be a tedious drag to sit through, at least through the first 100 minutes. A lot of meandering boring stuff about symbolism of scenes and colors and darned little about the actors or the production, and even worse NOTHING devoted to the matter of how the movie effectively combined the plots of two different source novels. He also keeps getting the name of the song wrong everytime he refers to it, and also is wrong when he says at one point that McQueen wanted the part of the architect but it was taken. In fact, McQueen was offered the architect role, but insisted on the part of the fire chief!

Ugh. I don't have the time to listen through all of these commentaries (there aren't enough hours in the day for me to do so!), but I do sample each one...that's the kind of thing that drives me batty, though. You'd think some of these historians would at least get their facts straight!

[Carlson2005]

I'm sure Feeney can't be worse than one woman who invented a bizarre feminist theory hat she insisted on explaining at length. Basically it boiled down to the tower being a phallic symbol "enflamed and engorged" by wimmin, and the only response from the typically insensitive male of the species was to extinguish it with a huge ejaculation.

O-kay...

[AndyDursin]

I'm sure Feeney can't be worse than one woman who invented a bizarre feminist theory hat she insisted on explaining at length. Basically it boiled down to the tower being a phallic symbol "enflamed and engorged" by wimmin, and the only response from the typically insensitive male of the species was to extinguish it with a huge ejaculation.

O-kay...

Was that the woman on Criterion's PEEPING TOM? I still shudder at that memory...

[Eric Paddon]

For sheer tedium no one will ever top Marian Keane on the Criterion DVD of "Spellbound." That's the only time I stopped listening to a commentary I'd ever started!

This Feeney commentary fell more into the dud category that the "Ben Hur" commentary track was.

[Jedbu]

These are extremely nice packages, and the price cannot be beat. If only Fox would go this route with other films in their catalog (how about THE ROBE? There's a film that deserves this same kind of treatment-you haven't lived until you've seen the teaser trailer for that film that tells all about CinemaScope WITHOUT TELLING YOU ANYTHING!-an absolute hoot!). Nice repro of the TOWERING INFERNO program as well.

I know F.X., and he might not be the most sparkling speaker, but he can be entertaining. There was one interesting mistake, which he tries to correct but not quite: Warners owned THE TOWER, and Fox owned GLASS INFERNO, and since Allen was currently working at Fox, GLASS INFERNO was his baby and most of the plot for this film comes from that book (THE TOWER ends with everyone dead, the other does not).

Is Guillermin dead? If not, why was he not on the commentary?

As far as commentaries go, my favorite "true" revelation on any disc is the creative team on the SPEED double disc venting their hatred of the end credit song-priceless!

[Eric Paddon]

I can pretty much handle commentary of the "oh, that was neat" or "He's going to die!" variety at various moments if it's a cast member who's largely being surprised again at what they're seeing, but when it's a "film historian" I think I'm usually anticipating more of the nuts and bolts details of production. I'm familiar with the plotlines of both novels, and would have liked to have heard a discussion on which parts of the film came from Tower (the dedication of the world's tallest building and faulty wiring by a greedy son-in-law) and which from Glass Inferno (the San Francisco setting, the Astaire and Jones characters etc.) because that shows the kind of challenge Stirling Silliphant had to tackle. And sorry, but you can't do a commentary on Inferno and try to blatantly avoid talking about O.J. Simpson when he's on-screen.

I learned a lot more about the film in the Backstory program (which I remember being shelved by AMC because it was originally scheduled to air post-9/11), especially regarding the tensions involving Holden and Dunaway. Speaking of which, it's amusing that Dunaway's most risque scene in the film was only used in the TV cut!

[DavidBanner]

My only regret with these new SE's is that during the numerous sequences in both movies where something really unfortunate happens to one of the primary characters (say, falling out the window or falling into a fiery yet flooded engine compartment), the characters never say anything memorable on the way down. In multiple cases during both movies I am unfortunately forced to voice the "Wa-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-etc" yells or exclamations of "Oh NO!" during the various plummets, crunches and flambes.

To be honest, I really have no interest in seeing a new version of either film. I see them as creatures of their time. And I think that time really ended with "When Time Ran Out" - if anyone here has actually seen that, they'll know what I mean. At a certain point, Irwin Allen ran out of menaces to throw at the usual gang of stars. ("The Swarm", anyone?)

I agree that FX Feeney's commentary really doesn't go into the detail or the dirt that you would hope for. He does spend a bunch of time talking about the rivalry McQueen felt with Newman, but he misses a lot of golden opportunities to talk about where, how and why things were shot. This is surprising, as Feeney has long been an eloquent film critic - a brief look at his work at the LA Weekly in the mid-1980's is quite instructive.

[Monterey Jack]

My only regret with these new SE's is that during the numerous sequences in both movies where something really unfortunate happens to one of the primary characters (say, falling out the window or falling into a fiery yet flooded engine compartment), the characters never say anything memorable on the way down. In multiple cases during both movies I am unfortunately forced to voice the "Wa-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-etc" yells or exclamations of "Oh NO!" during the various plummets, crunches and flambes.

Don't forget the Wilhelm Scream

[DavidBanner]

There is an NPR show on Wilhelm that mentions a bunch of unlikely places it has been used. They interviewed one rather adventurous sound mixer who was trying to sneak it into places like love scenes and in one case, an auto safety primer. (Not during an accident - during things like "How to buckle your safety belt" kind of thing, if I'm remembering it right) When the director then heard the bloodcurdling scream, the mixer then acted dumb and insisted that the sound was an integral part of the mix and it would be impossible to remove it. I think somebody may have tried to put Wilhelm into a rock video at some point too.

Regardless, Wilhelm is sadly unused in any Irwin Allen movie I know. (I could be wrong, but I've never heard it) Instead, we're lucky to hear a strangled "Yaaaahhhhhh" as some pour sap falls a million floors. So I am forced to add the verbal color, as it were, of say, Goofy jumping off the hot fudge sundae... It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it, right?

[Carlson2005]

I got through most of the extras on The Towering Inferno yesterday, though I had to give up on the commentary because it played more like an audio description ("Here we see the secretaries talking and Robert Wagner having the outside phone line turned off. And here we see the pretty secretary with the glasses walking through the door.."). I did dip in and out where I wanted to know more about certain scenes, but on the few occasions he was talking about the making of the film, it had no relevance to what was happening onscreen.

The AMC backstory is the best behind the scenes feature despite running only 22 minutes. The new featurettes are more sort of sidebars - interesting and occassionally gossipy fun (Richard Chamberlain's enthused fascination for Irwin's outrageous weave, Irwin taking Stella Stevens out to lunch at Jack in the Box). The NATO presentation was hokey as hell - shame they couldn't find the script for the onstage bits - and the unedited interview footage of Irwin and his incredible hair was fun if only to see his attempts to be a dignified serious figure quickly give way to the carnival sideshow barker side of him!

Still a great fun disc.

[mkaroly]

I'm sure Feeney can't be worse than one woman who invented a bizarre feminist theory hat she insisted on explaining at length. Basically it boiled down to the tower being a phallic symbol "enflamed and engorged" by wimmin, and the only response from the typically insensitive male of the species was to extinguish it with a huge ejaculation.

O-kay...

Was that the woman on Criterion's PEEPING TOM? I still shudder at that memory...

The woman on the PEEPING TOM commentary was Laura Mulvey- I think at one time I actually owned a book she wrote or edited. The only feminist book I have now is Tania Modleski's THE WOMEN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH: HITCHCOCK AND FEMINIST THEORY. I don't read it very much.