The Poseidon Adventure Special Edition DVD Twentieth Century Fox Home Video The Towering Inferno Special Edition DVD Twentieth Century Fox Home Video Poseidon: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Music by Klaus Badelt Interscope/A&M Records     Reviewed by Tony Buchsbaum	It was 1972, at the Robert E. Lee Theatre in New Orleans. I was with my friend Andy Meyer and his father. We were there to have our world rocked by a little movie called The Poseidon Adventure. We knew nothing about it except that it looked like a lot of fun. And the Robert E. Lee was the place to see it, because it was a big theater and the seats were high in the front and back and low in the middle, which gave every movie a sense of grand importance. This was no mall theater, no matchbox. This was a big place, built for big movies -- and tickets were a couple bucks. And yes, the movie did rock our worlds. Two years later, at the same theater, with my mother and a friend of hers named Sylvia Sterne, I saw The Towering Inferno and had my world rocked again. The movie was good, and somewhere along the way Sylvia said something about Faye Dunaway's open-down-to-there gown that I'll never forget. She said, "Wow, that's quite a dress she's almost wearing." Anyway, these two films pretty much make up one whole corner of my boyhood moviegoing experience, and today they are personal touchstones. Big entertainments with big stars and even bigger special effects. And now both have been released in special-edition DVDs, to coincide with Poseidon, the unfortunate remake of The Poseidon Adventure. Both DVDs are brilliantly produced, and they return these two films to their rightful place at the front of the disaster film line. No one had ever seen anything like The Poseidon Adventure before 1972. From the moment it began, with wide shots of the ship at sea, with an early and epic John Williams score that only hinted at the grand career to come, it just felt impressive. It felt produced -- and this was producer Irwin Allen's specialty. Based on a novel by Paul Gallico, the movie featured unforgettable characters, classic set pieces and nonstop action through the capsizing of the ship, fire, flooding and climbing. Gene Hackman set the standard for disaster heroes and Ernest Borgnine was his perfect alter-ego: the break-the-rules survivor versus the by-the-book official. Their tension kept the whole movie afloat. But there were also Shelly Winters and Jack Albertson as the older couple, Stella Stevens as the ex-hooker now married to Borgnine's cop, Carol Lynley as the singer, Roddy McDowell as the waiter, Red Buttons as the bachelor... the list of talent went on and on. Written by Sterling Silliphant and directed by Ronald Neame, The Poseidon Adventure wasn't the first disaster film, but it sure set the bar for everything that would follow. It even created the need for a song called "The Morning After," which would go on to win an Oscar. The first of the follow-ups would be The Towering Inferno, which was based on two similarly-plotted novels published at the same time, The Tower and The Glass Inferno. This time, Allen got a bigger budget and even bigger stars, among them Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Dunaway, Fred Astaire and Jennifer Jones. And this time, the problem wasn't a huge tidal wave but a huge fire in the world's tallest building, in San Francisco. (Anyone ever hear of earthquakes? It must have occurred to someone, because that film was made too, but not by Irwin Allen.) Inferno upped the ante considerably. It was of course a hotter movie, and wonderfully made, though for my money it's not nearly as good as its damp older brother. One of the things that goes unnoticed with regard to these two films is how Allen built politics into them. The first was all about the speed of cruising and how it compromised safety. Like Titanic, which would come much later, The Poseidon Adventure's drama might have been avoided if the ship's new owners had been willing to slow down for a more leisurely cruise instead of all but racing the ship across the sea on her last voyage. Likewise, Inferno questioned the wisdom of building structures too tall for firefighters to reach should the unthinkable happen. In the former, the struggle is lost when the wave topples the ship; in the latter, McQueen's fire chief and Newman's architect come to an agreement about how future buildings will be made. Disaster film as political statement? You betcha -- but in both cases, it was handled so delicately that no one noticed. The two DVDs feature one extra disc each, filled with behind-the-scenes documentaries, filmmaker commentaries, photograph libraries and much more. They're superb packages for superb movies. To miss either would be the real disaster. Unless, that is, you consider the new remake, Poseidon. Talk about a disaster film. It's more accurate to call it a disaster of a film. Clocking in at around 90 minutes, director Wolfgang Peterson managed to spend $125 million on a film in which you don't give the slightest damn who lives and who dies. In the original, the film allowed for the audience to get to know the characters, to care for them. Allen and Neame understood that for the disaster to have any meaning, the characters had to be sympathetic. In the remake, the characters are just pathetic. Kurt Russell's ex-mayor/frustrated dad has almost nothing to do. The Borgnine type -- a gambler played by Josh Lucas -- is all action, little character (but for the occasional twinkly smile). And even the ever-wonderful Richard Dreyfuss has little to do but hold his breath and swim for his life. Who else is in the movie? I can't remember. I do remember the new film's score -- by Klaus Badelt -- because it is beyond terrible. While the composer is also represented this season by another film -- The Promise, which features a lush, gorgeous, melodic score, certainly the year's best so far -- his work on Poseidon sinks. It's all just bombastic sound design, with very little in the way of melody or pathos. If anything, the score simply dials up the film's special effects, which -- it must be said -- are jaw-dropping. The detail of the ship, the wave, the relentlessness of the danger, these are the only things that work. But as so many filmmakers have learned (the hard way), special effects and action do not make for good movies. Characters do. Petersen, who made Das Boot and The Perfect Storm, knows better. He knows very well how to wring drama from seawater. With Poseidon, however, he leaves us high and dry. | June 2006   Tony Buchsbaum is the author of Total Eclipse and a contributing editor to January Magazine and Blue Coupe. He and his family live in Lawrenceville, New Jersey where he is hard at work on an exciting new chapter in his life.	Both DVDs are brilliantly produced, and they return these two films to their rightful place at the front of the disaster film line.