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"Poseidon"(2006) and "Psycho"

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
12 replies | jump to latest

I've been watching a fair amount of TV -- old movies in the main -- for obvious reasons in this strange year of 2000.

As the release of new movies is suspended, and as the makings of movies and TV series are as well...its time for a descent into the hundreds(thousands) of movies and shows already made. I've had some fun with it.

I came upon and watched "Poseidon" the other evening. Its a movie that I watched on release in 2006, for a few reasons.

One was that I had fond memories of the 1972 original, which truly launched the "disaster movie" craze of the 70's(1970's Airport was more of a soap opera, and the plane didn't crash, and only one person -- the sad bad guy -- got killed.)

Another was that my memories weren't THAT fond -- even as a teenager in 1972, i found something "corny" and clunky about the script for "The Poseidon Adventure," and producer Irwin Allen(the Master of Disaster) never quite seemed A-list to me. (Allen had done some big-cast B movies on the 50's/60's cusp like The Big Circus, The Lost World, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea which "morphed" into his disaster movies; when he finally got Steve McQueen and Paul Newman to star in one...he peaked.)

But I went into "Poseidon" a bit jazzed by what was promised. All the big budget, state of the art CGI spectacle that 2006 money could buy($160 million of it in budget); two "cult" actors who each had distinctive personalities and history -- Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss. Another actor of some distinction(Andre Braugher.) And...some other people.

But it was Russell and Dreyfuss that most drew my attention. Newman and McQueen, they were not. But each MEANT something -- Dreyfuss was a Best Actor Oscar winner, he's he suriviving lead of Jaws, he was also in American Graffiti and Close Encounters -- he's living 70's movie history. Russell's cred just seems to rise and rise - from John Carpenter to QT, Russell's a "go to" second tier leading man who somehow became a cult legend.

Equally exciting: the director was to be Wolfgang Peterson, a man who had one major foreign classic to his name ("Das Boot") and more recently, the exciting Big Wave vs Fishing Boat tragedy of The Perfect Storm(my favorite movie of 2000.) As some wags wrote at the time, Wolfgang Peterson was the perfect "water disaster director" to helm a new "Poseidon."

When I saw "Poseidon" in the summer of 2006, I excited the theater thinking, "well, that was certainly a bigger epic than the original -- its gotta be a hit even with only Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss in the leads." Not to mention: we'd had Titanic as a fine wind-up as well. So..big hit? Ah...no. Not at all. $160 million down the drain.

Watching it again the other night, I was as impressed as ever with the CGI sequence of the ship being capsized. What had been a Hitchcockian "cheat" of montage shots of people falling in close-up(until some FINAL long shots of people hanging from tables on a floor that was now a ceiling) became, in Poseidon, a sequence of long shots and thundering water(at one point, the wave picks up swimmers in a shipboard swimming pool and carries them along) and plummeting glass elevators(ala The Towering Inferno) and general destruction.

I'm reminded that for the original 1972 Poseidon Adventure, they didn't have the money in the budget for a long shot of the survivors getting rescued off the bottom/top of the ship. It was done with a close-up that followed Hitchcocks rule: show the audience PART of the scene and they will imagine the rest. Not so in the Peterson Poseidon: we get the rescue sequence along with a "Titanic"-style flipping rightside and sinking of the ship, and a rather moving final shot of twin helicopters training beams of light down on the survivors in their raft(its a night scene, the original ended with daylight and blue sky.)

For all of the above reasons, I still found "Poseidon" to be a solid modern-day action entertainment. But watching it this time, i realized why it wasn't a hit.

And I thought a bit about Psycho. And its remake.

Its a matter of timing.

Hitchcock's Psycho was made for about 1/80th of the budget of Poseidon. Its a low budget film with a cast of about 20, tops, and only five leads. But in 1960, it was a blockbuster that swept the world . And we know why.

Van Sant's Psycho actually cost a lot more than the original -- I've read reports from $25 million to $60 million. Must have been inflation. The remake doesn't look much more costly than the original -- though they did have to build a new house and likely the cast cost more. And Van Sant's Psycho barely played for three weeks and didn't earn much at all -- and hardly swept the world.

Timing.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Irwin Allen's "The Poseidon Adventure," for all of its clunkiness (like Gene Hackman having to say "Some call me a rebel!") was a first of its kind and -- in the year 1972 -- hungrily pounced upon by an audience that wanted some big scale action back in a year of gritty, low budget semi-entertainment. Hey, remember 1972 is the year of Hitchcock's Frenzy -- and though it got comeback rave reviews - it was NOT a fun movie to watch, and hardly on the big scale of North by Northwest. Or this.)

I remember how they promoted "The Poseidon Adventure" -- "Finally, a movie-movie -- the way that they used to make them." The cast boasted a bunch of Oscar winners -- Hackman only months earlier for The French Connection but also Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Red Buttons, and Jack Albertson. Even with rather hackneyed roles, these pros inhabited their roles and -- importantly -- moved audiences. (Shelley Winters' death scene got her another Oscar nom.) Stella Stevens -- a great unsung talent to go with her va-va-voom body -- brought the moving-funny reality of being a sexpot past a certain age to a role that was funny and sexy and tragic(playing the ex-hooker wife of Big Ernie Borgnine - they almost had a Wallace Beery/Jean Harlow thing going.) And Roddy McDowall taking a tragic plunge as an ill-fated waiter.

"The Poseidon Adventure" had too hackneyed a script to really matter as a great movie in the year of "The Godfather" -- but it sure was a pop classic and that early flip of the ship was something very exciting and terrifying in '72 -- I remember watching it with a full-house audience (at Xmastime, near New Year's Eve as in the movie) that went nuts. (Oddly, the movie rather winds down from that early spectacular moment, but the suspense and sad deaths along the way kept it interesting.)

And there's the irony: a much bigger, much more expensive "Poseidon" that spared no expense in delivering "Titanic"-like spectacle(directed by a talented auteur, and not by a hack) -- went nowhere.

Timing.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

There was this, too, to "Poseidon" -- and against it. The survivors surrounding Russell and Dreyfuss weren't a very interesting bunch. They were, largely, new, young and untested actors with none of the history of Shelley Winters and Ernest Borgnine.

And the biggest mistake was to give the real lead(ahead of Russell and Dreyfuss) to a new prospect named Josh Lucas. It was his "big break" after playing villains in movies like "The Hulk." He was handsome enough -- he strikes me as a guy whose career was given to Bradley Cooper, instead. They looked rather alike(and Cooper had played some villains, too.) Anyway with Lucas kinda/sorta in the Gene Hackman role(though he isn't a preacher)...fail. Indeed, except for a waiter played by Freddy Rodriguez (in the old Roddy McDowall part), NOBODY is playing the same character here from the original. Gone is Borgnine's cop and Stevens' ex-hooker wife. And nobody felt like putting "old people" in jeopardy -- Shelley Winters and Jack Albertson -- and hence, that pathos is lost in the new one.

Its one of my thoughts that "every movie has a special scene," something that makes it unique, and "Poseidon" has a doozy.

At a certain point in "Poseidon" we reach a re-do of the scene in the original in which the characters are climbing up a tall shaft. Most of them are off the ladder and safely onto the floor above(really "below") but two are stuck -- Richard Dreyfuss and a waiter(one of the few nods to a character from the original film; Roddy McDowall then, Freddy Rodriguez now), are hanging over the abyss below them and a malfunctioning elevator.

Freddy is losing his grip and pulling hard on Dreyfuss's legs. "Alpha males" Kurt Russell and Josh Lucas -- the leaders of this group -- can see what is happening: The waiter will end up taking Dreyfuss down with him, two will die unless immediate action is taken.

Russell and Lucas make the call, yelling to Dreyfuss: "Kick him off!"

Its a stunning moment, unmatched, I think , in any of the famous disaster films of the 70's(Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, Airport 75...The Poseidon Adventure.)

Its ruthless. Its not Self-sacrificing(as so many heroes and heroines usually do in disaster movies.) Nor is it villainous -- Richard Chamberlain's cowardly villain in The Towering Inferno threw a few men to their deaths trying to escape with him on an overcrowded breeches buoy(and then falls to his own death when it collapses.)

Its..pragmatic. One man dies instead of two. There's dark irony: Freddy let the older man go first(Dreyfuss), the older man's inability to climb with Freddy attached leads to the horrible decision.

And this is more horrible still: before kicking Freddy to his gruesome death(impalement), Dreyfuss cries: "I'm so, so sorry."

The film moves on from this moment with a residual "sting." Dreyfuss knows what he has done. Russell and Lucas know that they urged him to do it. The movie never quite recovers from this ruthlessness -- probably another reason folks didn't like this as much as the original.

Nonetheless, it is a shocking scene that generates thought("What would I do in the same situation?) and it gives "Poseidon" its one unique and memorable moment.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

There are a few other good moments in "Poseidon." The funny, almost Hitchcock-ironic moment when Richard Dreyfuss - playing a gay man who has learned he's been dumped, via cell phone -- goes to the railing of the ship to commit suicide, but sees the huge wave coming his way and runs back in. (It adds "sting" to the scene where he sacrifices the waiter -- he'd wanted to die anyway.) And though Kurt Russell doesn't get a match for Gene Hackman's memorable, angry sacrifice ad the end of the original -- he gets to make his own very graphic and sad sacrifice.

I liked "Poseidon." Then (2006) and now(2020 on review.) Peterson's direction, the CGI spectacle, Russell and Dreyfuss(a reminder that stars come in all types)...the "kick him off!" scene.

But, it was not a hit. It wasn't its time.

The 1960 Psycho was a far, far bigger hit and better movie...and made on a dime.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A little bit more on the original Poseidon Adventure, as juxtaposed with Psycho and Frenzy.

1972 was part of that "Golden Age of the 70's" at the movies, and early in the decade when the films were a mix of the nostalgic (What's Up Doc with its roots in Hawks' screwball) and the sexually graphic(Deliverance with its groundbreaking male-on-male rape.)

Hitchcock's Frenzy rather sounded in both types of movie -- nostalgic(wrote Richard Schickel," if Hitchocck is personally capable of imitating himself, why leave the job to a man like Peter Bogdanovich) and sexually graphic(a male-on-female rape, and strangling.)

The big movie of the year -- The Godfather -- rather played on Frenzy's turf: using classical style to tell a tale with a LOT of ultraviolence, and a smattering of sex.

But Frenzy was nowhere near the epic event that The Godfather was; Frenzy was rather a grim, stylish expression of the year. Still, Frenzy got great comeback reviews and was a small hit.

1972 had a lot of movies that had a gritty, neo-documentary look to them, from Frenzy(at least in some scenes) to Peckinpah's Junior Bonner(a rodeo tale with Steve McQueen and nary a murder in it) to the Lee Marvin/Gene Hackman country crime piece "Prime Cut"(it was sold like Hitchcock but played like a cheapie) to The Hot Rock(Robert Redford and George Segal in caper film set in the wilds of urban New York City) and back to Peckinpah and McQueen again in The Getaway.

Into this environment at film year's end (Christmas) and pitted against other Xmas movies as The Getaway and(in some late markets) Deliverance, came The Poseidon Adventure.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Despite the truly spectacular (for then) early ship-flipping sequence, The Posedion Adventure wasn't very well reviewed. Yes, there were Oscar winners in the cast, but for the most part , they weren't given Oscar level material. Some of their lines were silly. And the presence of Leslie Nielsen as the ship's captain (long before he switched to comedy) felt comic EVEN THEN. (As he sees the tidal wave bear down on his ship, Nielsen intones "Oh my God" with a deadpan lack of concern, it seems.)

I remember this: two of the female stars, the nubile Stella Stevens and the waifish Carol Lynley, HAD been stars in the 60's but already felt like...hasbeens. The movie biz could be rough on women, and Stevens in particular already had an "aged" face. Red Buttons -- who had starred for Irwin Allen in "The Big Circus" and "Five Weeks in a Balloon" in the 50s/60s cusp -- felt a bit hasbeeny, too (Gene Wilder had been penciled in it for this role, THAT would have given The Posedion Adventure a new star.)

And what of Ernest Borgnine. The famous villain of From Here To Eternity(Fatso Judson), the gentle man of Marty(his Oscar win) and then..a few years as a sitcom star(McHale's Navy) and then...amazingly...Borgnine came BACK, as a big over the marquee star in the violent New Wave classic The Wild Bunch, but also in Ice Station Zebra and Willard(the "rat movie") and, climactically, The Poseidon Adventure. Ernie had quite a run for an EX sitcom star...but McHale's Navy was always hovering over his screen persona, and did here in The Poseidon Adventure. Me, I could never quite "get" Borgnine's stardom -- he filled the screen but lacked true charisma. (And in 1972, the year he made the big "Poseidon," he played a grungy outlaw in Hannie Caulder, more "his kind of role," with Jack Elam and Stother Martin as his Two Stooges brothers -- the goofy threesome raped Raquel Welch and were killed by her in return. THAT was a 1972 movie.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

For Gene Hackman, The Posedion Adventure delivered the second part of a one-two starmaking punch. The French Connection won him the Oscar, Poseidon won him middle America.

The Poseidon Adventure was a big hit and launched the disaster movie, and Irwin Allen had the chance for one big score. It came two years later in 1974 when Allen managed to hire "the best of the best" for his next disaster feature: Steve McQueen AND Paul Newman, AND William Holden(a great star of the 50's and The Wild Bunch) AND Faye Dunaway(THE hardest working actress of the 70's, with Chinatown the same year AND Fred Astaire(a great star of his era, too) AND a bunch of TV leading men(Roberts Wagner and Vaughn; Richard Chamblerain.) "The Towering Inferno" stands as the peak of "the disaster movie being taken seriously" and yet -- the "cheesier" Poseidon Adventure seems to get more love. Probably because of the "ship upside down" premise and the sadder deaths of more major characters.

If , for me as a Hitchcock fan, 1972 is the year of Hitchcock's Return to Relevance with Frenzy -- there can be no doubt that audiences did not flock to it (as they had to Psycho) -- they flocked to The Godfather for blockbuster art, and to The Poseidon Adventure for blockbuster commerce.

Psycho and The Poseidon Adventure have gotten remakes that did no business. There's no point to making the rather sick and small-scale Frenzy. And we can doubt that ANYONE will ever have the cajones to try to remake The Godfather.

But then that's what we said about Psycho...

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Borgnine... in 1972, the year he made the big "Poseidon," he played a grungy outlaw in Hannie Caulder, more "his kind of role," with Jack Elam and Stother Martin as his Two Stooges brothers -- the goofy threesome raped Raquel Welch and were killed by her in return.

I'd never heard of Hannie Caulder before....so I tracked it down. It was worth seeing I suppose. It has a kind of flat, self-aware, jokey and episodic quality to it that evidently influenced QT's post-2000 output... That said, QT's dialogue is far superior; on all sides, but beginning with Raquel & also the 3 Stooges, HC's dialogue is stilted & unmemorable. I'd have to say too that compared to QT or Peckinpah or most of the most memorable 1971-3 stuff, HC 'pulled its punches' over both sex and violence (and the action beats we wait the whole movie for aren't special enough). So HC doesn't really succeed as an R-rated or exploitation piece. On the other hand, it's not polished (esp. dialogue-wise) or 3-dimensional enough (esp. character motivations wise) to be a proper A-picture let alone a broad family entertainment a la True Grit or Butch Cassidy or Mag 7. I do, however, *love* HC's Almeria, Spain locations, and the gunsmithing sequences with Christopher Lee & training sequences with Robert Culp *are* fun.....

As for Borgnine, he's given some special knife play a la Coburn in The Mag 7 (1960), but it always feels a little silly & cheap here. Never mind, he'd bounce back with brutal sweaty charisma intact for Aldrich in Emperor of the North (1973).

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I'd never heard of Hannie Caulder before....so I tracked it down. It was worth seeing I suppose.
. It has a kind of flat, self-aware, jokey and episodic quality to it that evidently influenced QT's post-2000 output..
--

Its currently on streaming(May 2020), and I've watched it with warm memories of seeing it at the drive-in in the summer of 1972. We knew then what we still know now -- it was that kind of cheap, sloppy "international" 1970s movie that we had a LOT of along with all those heralded classics.

With this recent re-watch, I've found on the net, the QT quotes about Robert Culp being "magnificent" as the bounty hunter who helps train Welch for vengeance and -- its clear now -- that Culp and Welch are a rough draft of sorts for Waltz and Foxx in Django. (Plus evidently QT grafted Welch's quest for revenge into Kill Bill.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Two things I remember from the 1972 viewing were (1) Robert Culp WAS great in his long stretch of the film and (2) a "stretch within Culp's stretch" put him and Welch in the company of a bearded and sympathetic Christoper Lee as a "seaside gunsmith" which led to one of my favorite scenes in Westerns: a big ol' gunfight (Culp, Lee, and Welch against "banditos") BY THE OCEAN. I always remembered this stretch of Hannie Calder with warm memories.

Culp was an odd bird. Handsome enough, but he had an "over-arch," strange way of reading his lines, and he was always more of a TV actor than a movie guy. I expect that's why he got his good role in Hannie Caulder -- nobody bigger wanted it. And Culp brought his weird, deadpan, atonal line readings from I Spy to this movie. While training Welch near the ocean, Culp even breaks into a ...I swear...BILL COSBY imitation, evidently in honor of his old I Spy co-star.

Culp spent the 70's playing the "Columbo killer" three different times(eyeglasses and moustaches were used to differentiate him)..and I always thought that William Devane in Hitchcock's Family Plot had "the Robert Culp part," but the semi-unknown Devane was more "special" than TV guy Culp.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I'd have to say too that compared to QT or Peckinpah or most of the most memorable 1971-3 stuff, HC 'pulled its punches' over both sex and violence (and the action beats we wait the whole movie for aren't special enough).

--

Its odd. The summer of 1972 had the disturbing rape scenes in Deliverance and Frenzy( those were "summer movies" in 1972!) Hannie Caulder has one , as well -- flashbacked to as the film goes on -- but its not that disturbing; we don't believe it, Welch overacts it, thrashing about, and frankly, the idea of the bozos played by Borgnine, Strother Martin(hot off of his 1969 Butch/True Grit/Wild Bunch trifecta) and Elam(known for the comedy "Support Your Local Sheriff") DOING this -- you couldn't take anybody seriously , here.

---

So HC doesn't really succeed as an R-rated or exploitation piece. On the other hand, it's not polished (esp. dialogue-wise) or 3-dimensional enough (esp. character motivations wise) to be a proper A-picture let alone a broad family entertainment a la True Grit or Butch Cassidy or Mag 7.

---

Its just one of those weird 1972 type of films. Neither here nor there, and unable to sustain a tone -- again, Borgnine, Martin, and Elam are just too goofy to match the bad things they do.

---

I do, however, *love* HC's Almeria, Spain locations, and the gunsmithing sequences with Christopher Lee & training sequences with Robert Culp *are* fun.....

---

Me, too, as noted above....

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

As for Borgnine, he's given some special knife play a la Coburn in The Mag 7 (1960), but it always feels a little silly & cheap here. Never mind, he'd bounce back with brutal sweaty charisma intact for Aldrich in Emperor of the North (1973).

--

I suppose that, as opposed to Strother Martin and Jack Elam, Borgnine had at least SOME "bad guy bona fides" given his work in better films like From Here to Eternity and (recently) The Wild Bunch. He's the class of the Stooges.

And boy did he WORK in the 60's/70s cusp. A movies(The Wild Bunch, Ice Station Zebra), B movies(Hannie Caulder) and somewhere in between(The Poseidon Adventure.)

Borngine and Lee Marvin were willing to lose what sex appeal they had(and Marvin had a LOT) to play the hardscrabble bum and train conductor in Emperor of the North. Ugly, dirty middle-aged men fighting to the near death...box office? Nil.

And this: ALSO in 1972, Ernest Borgnine re-teamed with his Wild Bunch co-star, William Holden , in a run-of-the-mill has-been Western called "The Revengers." Frankly, its what a lot of people originally thought "The Wild Bunch" was going to be (before that one was revealed as high level art and horror-Western classic) and...nothing. It just goes to show you : great actors need great movies sometimes, but a lot of the time they don't get them.

And also this: Borgnine ended up in The Wild Bunch because the producer wanted him in it, and Peckinpah caved. The character went from being Holden's young, surrogate son to being Holden's age peer(and competition with Robert Ryan in Holden's "affections.")

I haven't gone to look it up, but although Borgnine worked well into his 90's(!) ("Red") , I think he declined from that peak 60's/70's period. I just don't remember him being in big movies in the 80's and 90's -- TV series, yes, movies, not so much.

But what a run when he had when he was "hot." And I even think in his tan, dusty close-ups in The Wild Bunch...he's finally a handsome man.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

"for obvious reasons in this strange year of 2000."

nice.