SNAKES ON A PLANE (2006)

               "I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!"

  I know I'm almost 20 years behind everyone else who's seen this already but I had so much better stuff to watch first. This might have been a bit better if every snake didn't look like a cartoon CGI thing but then again maybe not. I'm more of a horror film fan and this is more of a thriller/action movie with some slithering killer snakes thrown in for a few gross-out thrills. OK for a one-time watch but pretty mediocre overall. 

SKYJACKED (1972)

  This is one of the disaster movies from the 70s that no one ever brings up when talking about these films. You can sorta figure out why since it's similar to the better-known AIRPORT series which started off in 1970. It even stars Charlton Heston who was also in AIRPORT '75. In addition to Heston's star power you get Laurie Partridge(Susan Dey), Sheriff Lobo(Claude Akins) and Roosevelt Grier among others. Well done though probably pretty forgettable.

THE BULLET TRAIN (1975)

  This is the only movie I've seen where Sonny Chiba doesn't play an ass-kicking martial-artist of some sort. Instead he's the driver of a train with a bomb on it that will explode if the train goes under a certain speed. Who knew that the movie SPEED with Keeanu Reeves was a remake of a Japanese disaster film? I remember liking SPEED well enough back in the 90s but this version makes it look like a cartoon in comparison. They do that thing here where you start out hating all the villains but by the film's end your sympathies are, at least somewhat, changed. There's also a pretty big downer of an ending (because this was the 70s) giving everything an epic feeling. 

 The original Japanese version of this is over 2 and a half hours long. The dubbed version I watched is a little shy of 2 hours, apparently they removed some of the character's backstories which I'm not sure diminished my enjoyment. In some other countries they cut it down to around 90 minutes which seems crazy short for this story. 

 

                                        Released in France as SUPER EXPRESS 109:

Released in Germany as PANIC ON TOKYO EXPRESS:

THE POSEIDON EXPLOSION (1973)

 For a disaster film this one is kinda dull. I mean it's supposedly based on a true story of a big ship that caught fire off the coast of Romania so perhaps if you live there it's pretty exciting, I just found it to be a bit of a letdown. Of course with the title you expect a rip-off of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE which this isn't at all. It's closer to THE TOWERING INFERNO really, except that movie hadn't come out yet. So you basically get a bunch of people running around on a boat and things explode once in a while for variety. This might be the first movie I've watched from Czechoslovakia though so at least that's sorta interesting.

EARTHQUAKE (1974)

 Charlton Heston has got to be the king of  end-of-world cinematic. While this film isn't necessarily the apocalypse, during certain scenes of earthquakin' nastiness it at least seems comparable. It's hard for me to pick a favorite from the vast amount of 70s disaster flicks because they are all pretty similar in terms of quality(even the made-for-T.V. ones). This one follows the formula pretty closely with a bunch of guest stars, Ava Gardner(as the bitchy wife of ol' Chuck H.), George Kennedy(as a badass cop), Richard"SHAFT" Roundtree(as a black version of Evel Knievel!) and my personal favorite, Walter Matthau( as a perpetually drunken barfly!). Lots of destruction porn ensues after about 40 minutes with lots of debris taking folks out. Unfortunately the movie then drags on for an over 2 hour runtime which was a bit much. You do get a somewhat nihilistic 70s ending though if you tough it out.
 When this played theatrically it was shown in SENSURROUND which was a new sound system that shook the audience up to recreate the quake experience. It made a few people sick so it wan't used on too many movies after this. 

CYCLONE (1978)

 This is definitely one of the better made exploitation films from Mexico. You can see that director Rene Cardona Jr., who was one of the most well-known low-budget Mexican directors, was working with a decent budget with with this one. There's even a sort-of all-star b-movie cast with Arthur Kennedy as a priest, Mexican action star Hugo Stiglitz as a pilot, Carrol Baker as Ginger from GILLIGAN'S ISLAND with a dog, Olga Karlatos(the chick who gets the splinter in the eye from ZOMBIE) as a pregnant lady, and Lionel Stander(that old gravely-voiced guy from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST) as an old gravely-voiced guy in a suit.
 What starts out as a disaster movie slowly morphs into a tale of survival(and then dips into JAWS-territory towards the end) as three different groups of people try to stay alive floating out in the middle of the ocean while sharks try to eat them. Things do get a little slow watching people float around for almost 2 hours but there are enough conflicts and horrible events to keep the average viewer interested. You get the expected sharks-eating-chunks-of-meat scenes(they also seem to enjoy pulling guys pants off and playing with intestines), violence towards a little dog, which I've read in a few places might have been real but after watching the film I'm gonna say that's probably a bunch of bullshit(at least the blood they used doesn't look real at all and is of the super-neon bright 70's variety), and finally things are rounded off by some human butchery and cannibalism which seems like the way things would go down if you're floating in a boat with a bunch of starving people long enough.
 So just for the realistic aspects melded with the more crazy scenes of violence(also a soundtrack by Riz Ortolani who is most well-know, at least by me, as the guy who did the music for CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST) I'd say this one is worth a watch for slightly higher-end trash lovers.