We’ve been culturally “disaster”-ing for the past couple of weeks — new Poseidon out Friday, old Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno just out on DVD, two 9/11 disaster movies in theatres (one now, the second in August). And nobody ever seems to mention or remember in articles about ’70s disaster flicks that only one, Richard Lester’s Juggernaut (1974), was truly satisfying. This modestly proportioned British-produced film was ten times the film that The Poseidon Adventure tried to be. The irony is that the producers thought they were paying for just another piece of schlock (or so I read somewhere), but Lester managed to make something fairly good and clever and adult and underplayed.
