Customer Reviews

Disaster Movies: A Loud, Long, Explosive, Star-Studded Guide to Avalanches, Earthquakes, Floods, Meteors, Sinking Ships, Twisters, Viruses, Killer ... Fallout, and Alien Attacks in the Cinema!!!!

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

In meantime there exists more Disaster Movies on the screens, than stars on heaven. For the fan it becomes harder and harder to keep the overview. It seems that the autors had the same problems. They write about all sub-genres from water, lava, earthquakes,to airplanes, snow till radioactivity and fire. They even have chapters about swarms of killeranimals, parodies and invasion from outer space, but they only grat on the surface. For a reference-work this book is far too incomplete. Not a must for the filmbuff but ok for a beginner. For a filmbook they could have included more pictures !

Movie fans who have either marveled or groaned their way through the likes of 'Earthquake,' 'The Swarm,' 'Beyond the Poseidon Adventure,' 'A Night to Remember' or 'Towering Inferno' should enjoy this amusing look at Disaster Movies.

Disaster movies are one of life's guilty pleasures. You can turn off your mind, grab the bucket of popcorn and enjoy. OK, the special effects may be cheesy and the dialogue awful - not to mention the one-dimensional characters and the holes in the plot a mile wide - but it's a disaster movie, for Peter's sake, so enjoy!

Key and Rose take the reader through the world of disaster movies, beginning with flicks from the '30s. They divide the films into categories like "Sinking Ships," "Hot Molten Lava," "Those Darn Aliens," etc. and devote 2-5 pages on each film, giving potted plot summaries, highpoints/lowpoints and cracking wise. The book has a five-tier rating system, ranging from "Highly Recommended" to "So Bad it's Good" and also includes lists such as the greatest disaster movie stars, highest-grossing disaster films, disaster movie love themes and so on.

Frankly I enjoyed the book. It's funny, informative and dishes out some well-deserved criticisms about its subject.

For disaster-movie fans like myself, there aren't many choices among books devoted to the subject. In that regard, "Disaster Movies" functions as a treasure trove of commentary on well-worn classics like "Earthquake" and "The Towering Inferno", as well as some more esoteric selections, notably the camp classic "Kingdom of the Spiders".

Aside from the fact that the commentary is light on serious criticism, my primary problem with the book is how some elementary facts get mangled. For example, in reviewing the feature film "Deep Impact", the authors incorrectly refer to Elijah Wood's character as an amateur astrologist as opposed to an amateur astronomer. A slip-up like that might have been overlooked had they also not made the same mistake in describing Annabella Sciorra's character in the made-for-TV mini-series "Asteroid". (She was a professional astronomer in that movie.) And I was really disappointed that they didn't at least mention the best movie from the death-from-above sub-genre, the 1978 made-for-TV drama "A Fire In The Sky".

Understand that if you decide to pick up this book you're not going to get the same level of criticism that you would if you were reading a pro like Roger Ebert or Michael Medved. "Disaster Movies" is what it is--a fun, if error-riddled, book about the terrible things that happen when Hollywood star power and crazy screenwriters collide.

For any serious fan of the disaster movie genre who,probably like me,is looking for the ULTIMATE GUIDE to this very unique type of
film genre in books,you will not find it in this one unfortunately.
Especially,if you're looking for professional film reviews.Sadly,
both Glenn Kay and Michael Rose drown us to death with such lame
and inane Canadian humor that one feels like begging them to make
them stop.If you are a fan of such disaster flicks like: THE DAY
AFTER TOMORROW,DANTE'S PEAK,ARMAGEDDON,DEEP IMPACT,VERTICAL LIMIT,THE PERFECT STORM,INDEPENDENCE DAY,WHEN TIME RAN OUT,THE DAY
AFTER,BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE,AIRPORT,METEOR(1979 VERSION),
CITY ON FIRE,AVALANCHE,THE SWARM,THE HINDENBURG,CRACK IN THE WORLD,
GRAY LADY DOWN,THE CONCORDE:AIRPORT'79,AVALANCHE EXPRESS,K-19:THE WIDOWMAKER,RAISE THE TITANIC,S.O.S.TITANIC,TERROR ON THE 40TH FLOOR,BURNING RAGE(1984),CAVE-IN!(1983),CONDOMINIUM(1980),HANGING BY A THREAD(1979),THE ELEVATOR(1974),HEAT WAVE!(1974),SMASH-UP ON INTERSTATE 5(1976),FLOOD!(1976),HURRICANE(1974),HURRICANE(1979),THE LAST DAYS OF PLANET EARTH aka: THE GREAT PROPHECIES OF NOSTRADAMUS(1974),ROLLERCOASTER(1977),KINJI FUKASAKU'S epic film: VIRUS(1980),STARFLIGHT ONE aka: STARFLIGHT THE PLANE THAT COULDN'T LAND(1983),TURBULENCE(1997),then more than likely you'll find yourself groaning throughout as Canadians,Glenn Kay and Michael Rose,do everything within their poking fun of powers to try to make us snicker and laugh throughout,though completely-failing miserably!And to make matters even more worse,you can actually drive a Mack truck through all of the mistakes and inaccuracies that they have literally scattered throughout their so-called reviews.And it's even more sad,that they even failed to mention such disaster films like: ADVENTURES OF THE QUEEN(1975)DEADLY HARVEST(1977),A FIRE IN THE SKY(1978),DEATHQUAKE(1980),THE LAST SONG(1980),UNCOMMON VALOR(1983),and AVALANCHE ALLEY(2002).Not quite what it needs to be,or really should be,for the serious disaster movie fan/collector!

This book reads like the author sat down, watched each film once and then tried to write up a "funny" opinion. No research (beyond maybe IMDB), no insight, no context, no behind-the-scenes information, no interviews --- nothing. In other words, anyone could have written this book. What's worse is he gets a lot of information wrong -- it's so lazy. For example he delights in describing how confusing the TV movie "Flood!" is, but he is clearly reviewing it from the old edited VHS release, not the original movie. This information is so easy to locate, but I suppose research might have gotten in the way of the "jokes". Maybe it would be forgivable if the jokes were funny, but they're not -- just boring and obvious. If you've ever been trapped standing in a movie line and forced to listen to some "know-it-all" guy's self-absorbed and wrong-headed yammering about movies he feels superior to -- that's exactly what reading this book is like. A real shame.

What a huge disappointment! Really boring infantile reviews and some Really throwaway extras. I would love to have my money and time back. It's written by 2 Canadians and their choices are really lame. The color posters in the middle are the biggest disappointment. What kind of Disaster genre book wouldn't include The Poseidon Adventure (the greatest disaster poster of all time), Titanic or any of the good movies. Save your money!!!