Beyond The Poseidon Adventure (DVD)
APPROX. 114 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1979 - MPA RATING: PG
" Some movie sequels, like sunken boats, are better left at the bottom of the sea.
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Some movie sequels, like sunken boats, are better left at the bottom of the sea. But with the impending DVD release of Warner Bros.' 2006 "Poseidon" remake, the studio must have felt it was time to dredge up its 1979 sequel to the original 1972 "Poseidon Adventure." One "Poseidon" was more than enough; "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" is every bit as bad as most sequels can be.
The 70's were big on disaster movies, what with sinking ships, crashing airplanes, and burning buildings all the rage. "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" can fairly be called a disaster movie without anything actually happening to the ship; the movie itself is an unqualified disaster.
If you remember, in the original "Poseidon Adventure," a ninety-foot Mediterranean tidal wave struck a luxury liner on New Year's Eve. The sequel takes up the next morning while the ship is capsized and ready to sink.
The movie stars Michael Caine, who seemed at the time bent on sinking his own career with bad film choices. Here he plays Captain Mike Turner, a tugboat owner and salvage operator who plans to board the Poseidon before she goes down, find the purser's office, and lay claim to whatever money and jewels he can find. "There could be a fortune in there," he says, "and if there is, it's mine!" Like several other fine actors who have had their fair share of bad films--Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman come to mind--Caine is the best part of an otherwise dreary picture.
His shipmates are Karl Malden as Wilbur Hubbard and Sally Field, of all people, as Celeste Whitman. Why Sally Field on a tugboat? Well, it seems that the boat needed another hand, and the cute, little airheaded Celeste had just helped out Wilbur the night before by saving him from a mugger in a barroom brawl. Trust me: Nothing in this movie makes sense.
Now, at the exact moment Turner and his two companions are about to enter the ship, a Fig Newton drops by. It's none other than Mr. Evil himself, Telly Savalas as Dr. Stefan Svevo. We know he's evil because until Kojak, Savalas played mostly evil characters. Plus he's dressed almost entirely in white, even his sleek boat is white, and he behaves like Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Besides, his name is Stefan. Remember the old "Mission Impossible" series? Every time they had a really evil villain, his name was Stefan. Svevo and his crew of thugs announce they are a medical rescue unit, and somehow Turner and the others buy it. Obviously, Svevo has his own plans for the luxury liner, but we don't find out what they are until late in the story.
They all enter the ship through a convenient hole they find in the bottom of the hull, a hole made by the French Coast Guard hours before in helping to evacuate the survivors of the wreck. It's unclear how any of the newcomers figured they would enter the ship if the hole wasn't there.
So, that's the setup: Two crews go in for their own personal reasons, they get trapped inside, they find a few more survivors overlooked by the French, they do a lot of talking, walking, crawling, jumping, running, swimming, and falling down before it all comes to an end when the ship sinks.
Among the survivors they find are Gina Rowe (Shirley Jones), the ship's nurse; Frank Mazetti (Peter Boyle), the ship's chronic complainer; Theresa Mazetti and Larry Simpson (Angela Cartwright and Mark Harmon), Mazetti's beautiful daughter and a young man who saved her from harm the night before; Hanna and Harold Meredith (Shirley Knight and Jack Warden), a woman and her blind husband; and Dewey Hopkins (Slim Pickens), a rich, drunken, Texas oilman. The movie claims an "all-star cast," but as you can see, except for Caine, these folks are pretty much second-tier "stars."
