THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE [1972 / 2013] [Blu-ray] [UK Release]
In One of the Greatest Escape Adventures Ever!
One of the most gripping disaster films of all time follows ten survivors as they struggle to escape from an ocean liner capsized by a tidal wave. Suspenseful terror and combined with the victims' intimate and personal stories - results in compelling and heart-stopping drama. Nine ACADEMY AWARD® Nominations and a win for Best Visual Effects make this film a true classic.
FILM FACT: Awards and Nominations: 1973 Academy Awards®: Win: Best Music for an Original Song for Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn for the song "The Morning After." Win: Special Achievement Award for A.D. Flowers and L.B. Abbott for visual effects. Nominated: Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Shelley Winters. Nominated: Best Cinematography for Harold E. Stine. Nominated: Best Art Direction and Set Decoration for Raphael Bretton and William J. Creber. Nominated: Best Costume Design for Paul Zastupnevich. Nominated: Best Sound for Herman Lewis and Theodore Soderberg. Nominated: Best Film Editing for Harold F. Kress. Nominated: Best Music for an Original Dramatic Score for John Williams. 1973 Golden Globes: Win: Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for Shelley Winters. Nominated: Best Motion Picture for a Drama. Nominated: Best Original Score in a Motion Picture for John Williams. Nominated: Best Original Song in a Motion Picture for Al Kasha (music/lyrics) and Joel Hirschhorn (music/lyrics) for the song: "The Morning After." 1973 BAFTA Film Awards: Nominated: Best Supporting Actress for Shelley Winters. 1973 American Cinema Editors: Nominated: Eddie Award for Best Edited Feature Film for Harold F. Kress. 1973 Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA: Win: Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing for Dialogue.
Cast: Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Carol Lynley, Roddy McDowall, Stella Stevens, Shelley Winters, Jack Albertson, Pamela Sue Martin, Arthur O'Connell, Eric Shea, Fred Sadoff, Sheila Allen, Jan Arvan, Byron Webster, John Crawford, Bob Hastings, Erik L. Nelson, Leslie Nielsen, Phil Adams (uncredited), Craig Barley (uncredited), Todd Bartlett (uncredited), Charles Bateman (uncredited), Jack Berle (uncredited), Eldon Burke (uncredited), Dusty Cadis (uncredited), Bill Catching (uncredited), Craig Chudy (uncredited), Ronn Cragg (uncredited), Jimmy Cross (uncredited), Fred Dale (uncredited), Paula Dell (uncredited), Ray Didsbury (uncredited), Connie Ducharme (uncredited), Dick Durock (uncredited), Jim Galante (uncredited), Bob Golden (uncredited), Bob Harks (uncredited), Orwin C. Harvey (uncredited), Francine Henderson (uncredited), George Holmes (uncredited), Larry Holt (uncredited), Chris Howell (uncredited), Kathryn Janssen (uncredited), Lorraine Keeling (uncredited), Bob Liddle (uncredited), Marco Lopez (uncredited), Maurice Marsac (uncredited), John Hugh McKnight (uncredited), Monty O'Grady (uncredited), Michael Omartian (uncredited), Ernie F. Orsatti (uncredited), Victor Paul (uncredited), Stuart Perry (uncredited), Bobby Porter (uncredited), Tony Regan (uncredited), Frieda Rentie (uncredited), Leoda Richards (uncredited), Lance Rimmer (uncredited), Elizabeth Rogers (uncredited), George Sawaya (uncredited), Sheila Scott (uncredited), David Sharpe (uncredited), Paul Stader (uncredited), Tom Steele (uncredited), Ron Stein (uncredited), Mark Tulin (uncredited), Waddy Wachtel (uncredited), Lori Williams (uncredited), Roseann Williams (uncredited) and Judith Woodbury (uncredited)
Directors: Ronald Neame and Irwin Allen (uncredited)
Producers: Irwin Allen, Sherrill C. Corwin, Sidney Marshall and Steve Broidy
Screenplay: Paul Gallico (novel), Stirling Silliphant (screenplay) and Wendell Mayes and (screenplay)
Composer: John Williams
Cinematography: Harold E. Stine (Director of Photography)
Image Resolution: 1080p (Color By Deluxe)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 (Panavision)
Audio: English: 4.0 HD-DTS Master Audio,
Spanish: 1.0 Dolby Digital Mono,
French: 1.0 Dolby Digital Mono,
Spanish [Castilian]: 1.0 Dolby Digital Mono,
German: 1.0 Dolby Digital Mono,
Italian: 1.0 Dolby Digital Mono
Polish: 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio
English: 2.0 Dolby Digital Stereo Audio
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Danish, Dutch, Filipino (Tagalog), Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Indonesian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Polish, Russian and Swedish SDH
Running Time: 117 minutes
Region: All Regions
Number of discs: 1
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Andrew's Blu-ray Review: An opening title card informs us that the ship Poseidon was lost at sea on a voyage from New York to Athens; "only a handful" survived. Now, instead of just being introduced to the main characters, the viewer begins to wonder which ones will be alive at the end. Mr. Rogo [Ernest Borgnine] is a New York cop taking his first real vacation with his wife, Linda (Stella Stevens), who's self-conscious because she's a former hooker and thinks she spotted a former client among the ship's crew. Belle Rosen [Shelley Winters] and Manny Rosen [Jack Albertson] used to run a hardware store, but now they're retiring to Israel where a two-year-old grandson awaits their doting attention. Another shopkeeper, a haberdasher named Martin [Red Buttons], is obsessed with staying healthy and living a long life, but has never found the time for a relationship. A teenaged girl named Susan [Pamela Sue Martin] is traveling with her younger brother, Robin [Eric Shea], to join their parents; the kid is a nautical enthusiast who keeps bugging the crew for tours, thereby picking up information that will shortly prove useful. A ship's steward, Acres [Roddy McDowall], is taken with a singer, Nonnie [Carol Lynley], who will be performing at the New Year's Eve bash later that night, where Acres will be on duty.
The rest of the film is nothing more than the struggle to reach their destination past increasingly hazardous obstacles, as tempers flare, the doomed ship continues to break apart and the onrushing sea pursues them like a predator. Without ever reaching Africa, Rev. Scott has found his calling. "I've seen it!" he exclaims to the others, after he's returned from a scouting mission to locate the engine room, and Gene Hackman delivers the line with messianic fervour and his performance is a key ingredient in ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE,’ because Rev. Scott could easily have been a caricature. Ultimately, though, ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ works because of the simplicity of its nightmarish scenario. There are no conspiratorial subplots about building codes, cost-cutting, greed or other human elements in the disaster. Even the brief argument between the ship's captain and the owner's representative about safety measures is a red herring, because nothing could have secured the ship against the wall of water that capsized it. The film inflicts an unimaginable, unforeseeable disaster on a random group of individuals, and then we watch how the survivors react. Forty years later, it's still scary stuff.
THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE MUSIC TRACK LIST
THE SONG FROM THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972) (Words and Music by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn) (Orchestration Alexander Courage) [Performed by Carol Lynley and dubbed by Renée Armand] (uncredited)
LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDOR THING (1955) (uncredited) (Music by Sammy Fain) [Played softly offscreen by the band aboard ship]
OLD LANG SYNE (1788) (uncredited) (Traditional Scottish 17th century music) (Lyrics by Robert Burns) [Played by the band on New Year's Eve and sung by the passengers]
FOR HE’S A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW (uncredited) (Traditional) [Played by the band on New Year's Eve]
Blu-ray Image Quality – 20th Century Fox's 1080p encoded image quality of ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ looks absolutely terrific and totally amazing. The source materials are in excellent shape and faithfully restored, and the image is beautifully detailed with rich, saturated colours, deep and solid blacks, and a sense of depth that is essential to conveying the sheer scale of the production. Compression artefacts, banding, artificial sharpening and other defects that would militate against a recommendation were nowhere to be seen. Fox has been on the front lines of experimenting with ways to make the appearance of older films acceptable to a generation used to contemporary "cleanliness" in their video experience, and the results have often been controversial. Overall it has stood the test of time and Fox has done a brilliant job and any youngsters viewing this Blu-ray will think it has been made with modern filming techniques, especially with CGI technology.
Blu-ray Audio Quality – The 4.0 DTS-HD Master Audio track appears to contain the film's original "four-track stereo" mix, which predates Dolby Surround and its variations (which wouldn't be available until the following decades). Almost all of the sound occurs in the front three speakers with only occasional effects or reinforcement from the mono rear channel. The discrete centre channel aids in preserving the clarity of dialogue, especially as the noise of the ship's deterioration increases, and the stereo separation between the front mains contributes a welcome sense of dimensionality as the survivor's work their way through the various spaces and past increasingly challenging obstacles. The dynamic range is respectable but limited at both the bottom and the top; so that explosions that routinely rock the capsized vessel won't do much for your subwoofer and the high notes of John Williams' memorable score. Still, given the vintage of the production, the track sounds quite good.
Blu-ray Special Features and Extras:
Audio Commentary by Director Ronald Neame: Ronald Neame was in his early 60s when he directed ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ and his early 90s when he recorded this audio commentary, sadly passed away in 2010 at the age of 99. Still, you would never have guessed his age from the quality of this presentation, which is sharp, insightful and full of interesting detail. Ronald Neame's memory was no doubt kept fresh through invitations to address biennial conventions of the Poseidon fan club that met aboard the Queen Mary, where he and his wife would be put up in the Royal Suite, but his critical faculties are equally sharp, as he routinely points out lines of dialogue he wishes he'd changed, edits he would do differently today and directorial choices about which he's had second thoughts andnotably, he'd like to tone down the intensity of the conflict between Gene Hackman's Scott and Ernest Borgnine's Rogo. Ronald Neame's observations on the relation between producer and director and on the changing role of the camera's "eye" in 20th Century cinema is totally invaluable.
Audio Commentary by Actors Pamela Sue Martin, Stella Stevens and Carol Lynley: As is often the case with group audio commentaries, the three actresses seem to have too much fun reminiscing about the film ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ and talking over each other to provide an informative audio commentary. In the latter half of the film, annoyingly very long pauses become far too frequent. So all in all this was a pointless exercise and the audio recording should have been mysteriously erased.
Special Feature: Hollywood Backstories: ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ [2000] [480i] [1.37:1] [25:09] The AMC series produced some excellent features on classic films, and this particular episode on ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ is a fine example. Using both contemporary footage and new interviews from 1995, it describes how ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ was green lit, it was nearly cancelled, rescued at the last minute and went on to become a classic Hollywood film. This special type documentary is basically just a behind-the-scenes documentary explaining various aspects of the production. This one is certainly one of the better AMC series episodes seen as we get a good number of the cast members interviewed and there's some nice behind-the-scenes filmed of the special effects being done. It's amazing to see how much was actually done on such little money. Contributors include: Rino Romano (Narrator), Irwin Allen (archive footage), Paul Zastupnevich (archive footage), Jak Castro (Adtor), Roddy McDowall (archive footage), Sheila Allen (wife of Irwin Allen), Ronald Neame (Director), Ernest Borgnine (Actor), Red Buttons (Actor), William J. Creber (Art Director), Stella Stevens (Actress), Shelley Winters (Actress) (archive footage) and Al Gail (Assistant to Irwin Allen).
Special Features: The Cast Looks Back [2006] [1080p] [1.78:1] [5:42] The interviewees each discusses their respective character, and offers a few words on working with the special effects on the film ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE.’ Contributors include: Sheila Allen (Irwin Allen's widow, who played the ship's nurse), Red Buttons, Carol Lynley, Pamela Sue Martin, Roddy McDowall, Stella Stevens and James Radford (consultant).
Special Feature: Falling Up With Ernie [2005] [1080p] [1.78:1] [4:10] Ernie Orsatti recalls how he was hired on ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ film as an actor, but was suddenly plucked from the crowd by director Ronald Neame to perform the film's most famous stunt: the fall into a huge pane of glass and of course we get to see scenes from ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ especially the scene where Ernie Orsatti performs the famous stunt.
Special Feature: The Writer: Stirling Silliphant [2005] [1080p] [1.78:1] [9:15] Recollections of, and tributes to Stirling Silliphant (1918 – 1996) screenwriter for ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ and lots of anecdotes by assorted friends and colleagues. Among the numerous Film and TV writing credits for Stirling Silliphant was ‘Route 66’ (TV Series) ‘In The Heat Of The Night,’ ‘The Poseidon Adventure,’ ‘Towering Inferno,’ ‘Village of The Damned’ and ‘Naked City.’ Contributors include: Don Kopaloff (Former Agent), David Morell (Author of First Blood and Brotherhood Of The Rose), Christopher Vogel (Author and Story Consultant), Stella Steven (Linda Rogo), Joseph Musso (Production Illustrator), Dan Goozww (Production Illustrator), Nikita Knatz (Production Illustrator), Charles Matthau (Director),
Special Feature: The Heroes of the Poseidon [2006] [1080p] [1.78:1] [9:53] A quasi-allegorical interpretation of the film that pushes every possible Christian element in the story to the breaking point and beyond. Contributors include: Christopher Heard, Stella Stevens and John Vogel.
Special Feature: The Morning After Story [2005] [1080p] [1.78:1] [9:00] Co-writer Al Kasha with Joel Hirschhorn describes writing the film's Oscar-winning theme song. Additional observations are supplied by Maureen McGovern, whose recording became the standard edition, Carol Lynley who performed the song in the film, and Renée Armand who recorded the demo and ended up dubbing Carol Lynley in the finished film.
Special Feature: R.M.S. Queen Mary [2006] [1080p] [1.78:1] [6:25] A brief overview of the majestic ocean liner, which both inspired Paul Gallico's original novel and provided a template and locations for the film. Contributors include: Courtney Silberberg (Narrator), Jack Albertson (Actor) (archive footage), Red Buttons (Actor) (archive footage), Eric Shea (Actor) (archive footage) and Stella Stevens (Actress) (archive footage).
Special Feature: Conversations with Ronald Neame [2006] [1080p] [1.37:1] [7:47] Director Ronald Neame talks about the different special effects for the film ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ that includes the “Sinking Corridor” and how the shot of Reverend Scott and Robin running along the flooding corridor was done, and how the film negative ended up submerged in water and was nearly ruined. Also included is items on the Generations of Fans and his Fan mail and Turning Over the Ship: Combining hydraulics with camera angles. This is totally fascinating.
Special Feature: Galleries: Marketing Posters and other assorted ads, Publicity: Publicity stills, Behind-the-Scenes: On-set photos and many featuring director Ronald Neames, plus concept sketches for costumes.
Special Feature: Storyboard Comparisons: Here we get to view rough storyboards of The Ship Capsizes, The Vertical Shaft and Saving Reverend Scott.
Special Feature: Vintage Promotional Material: Original 1972 Feature that includes Teaser Trailer [1972] [480i] [1.78:1] [1:38] This is very short and to the point and also the Original Theatrical Trailer [1972] [480i] [1.78:1] [3:17] This is over twice the length of the teaser but slightly less effective.
Finally, ‘THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE’ has definitely aged well both in its technical attributes and its storytelling perspective. Its admirable screenplay, direction, and acting performances allow its long list of potential survivors to really grow as significant characters in a disaster tale that is straightforward but challenging to assemble. Its human elements and action-packed presentation justify both its box office success and critical acclaim and that is why I am so glad I have now added this classic blockbuster movie disaster to my Blu-ray Collection and of course they could not be able to make this type of film today, especially without all the CGI effects, as it would cost double the amount of money to make today and if you have not seen this film, then you will be missing something that is totally unique and you will be stunned by what you view and you will be a nervous wreck by the end of the film. Highly Recommended!
Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado
Le Cinema Paradiso
United Kingdom
