Avalanche - 1978

 I've reviewed Earthquake and Towering Inferno and Airport?  I'm guessing?  Nope.  I just watched Airport.  And I believe the sequel as well...

I do love this era in epic disaster film from yesteryear.  The formula was very well established by Avalanche, and this was in the latter end of this era.  It was a bomb, losing in the battle to Roger Corman's Piranha at the time of release.  This was about when the genre as a whole would be satirized by Airplane as well, just two years after this.  Much like Scream which hurt horror movies for a while I do think that satirisation hurt this genre significantly.

Avalanche follows the formula, like I said, which had by this point been cemented for films of this ilk.  Establish a few different characters and their "game", and lets get really into their love lives, their job stress, their interpersonal drama.  Waste about an hour on that before the disaster happens.  Then queue the disaster, which will be cool and be an effect fun 30 minutes.  15 minutes of plot resolution and tolls, end of movie.

Rock Hudson, Mia Farrow and Robert Forster are the main actors in this one.  Hudson is David, the owner of the new ski resort and ignorer of the warnings that this is in an avalanche zone.  Forster is the one who's the expert, warning people when he can about the avalanche, and presenting a new fling for David's love affair Caroline played of course by Farrow.  A plane crash starts an avalanche and we're off.

I have to say, with the styrofoam snow chunks and the miniatures, this movie's disaster does look cool.  It's a long and fun segment where we get to watch the happenings and see people getting these things dumped on them.  Then cut to a miniature and it gets destroyed....extremely, extremely fun.  

Then there's the aftermath sequences.  There's people trapped under snow and one guy stranded on a ski lift.  Thats a personal favorite sequence.  There's also, oddly, nudity in this movie, which I really didn't expect and certainly is a difference from most movies like this one.

I am a fan of these for what they are and the era.  These are formulaic, but isn't you know?  I give this like a good view rating of 3.5, check it out if you like this kinda stuff.