Dipping into Rollercoaster

When Earthquake appeared in theaters in 1974 with the new sensation Sensurround (in which large speakers were installed that caused vibrations and enhanced audio, making the viewer feel that he was in the midst of the big shakedown), the creators looked for new opportunities to utilize the system, eventually presenting the 1976 WWII drama Midway with it. Next was 1977’s Rollercoaster, the Sensurround offering enhanced ride noises and vibrations. (The process would only be used once more, when the TV pilot for the original Battlestar Galactica was released to theaters as a feature film, before quietly fading away forever.)

Rollercoaster concerned a mad bomber who has an axe to grind with the owners of amusement parks in the U.S. (this fact is not actually spelled out in the movie, but, rather, is explored in the tie-in novel and in a scene that was cut from the final print in which the bomber discusses with his mother the way the big parks drove her and the bomber’s father into bankruptcy.) Playing the young man with a detonator is Timothy Bottoms.

After causing a violent and deadly accident on one of the coasters, he makes it known that he wants $1 million from the cartel of amusement park owners or he will continue to blow up their chief attractions. The clean-cut, demurely dressed guy couldn’t be any more docile or non-threatening looking, but that’s the point. Many 70s thrillers wanted to emphasize that killers could come in many shapes, sizes and types. For that matter, Alfred Hitchcock went that route in Psycho.

Speaking of Hitchcock, some of the posters for Rollercoaster contained the following blurb in large print: “ROLLERCOASTER is a suspense melodrama of the sort that Alfred Hitchcock does best.” Think about that. On their own posters, they are promoting the fact that the “suspense melodrama” they have crafted is one that someone other than themselves does best?? Ha! I’m guessing that this little gem caused people to go and watch something that was actually done well instead.

Anyway, taking an extreme interest in the extortion gambit is a ride inspector who had only recently checked out the coaster that derailed. Played by George Segal, he’s a divorced dad trying to quit smoking and who seems to catch hell from everyone from his superiors (one of whom is played by Henry Fonda, in a cameo appearance) on down. He draws attention to himself as the drama surrounding the incident swells and before long, Bottoms has decided to deal one on one with him, forcing him to deliver the money.

What follows is a cat and mouse game between Segal and Bottoms as Bottoms makes Segal go through a number of elaborate and seemingly pointless moves throughout a major theme park. He has to buy cotton candy (and I don’t even want to know what Segal’s moustache looked like after this chomp of the stuff!), ride rides that are dizzying and/or otherwise uncomfortable, purchase a goofy hat, have his weight guessed and just generally be run ragged all through the park as Bottoms watches amusedly through binoculars. He is then informed that he is actually carrying a bomb and isn’t allowed to let it go!
Complicating things for Segal is a belligerent FBI agent (Richard Widmark) who is used to calling the shots and is none too fond of having a civilian placed in the middle of the situation. He and Segal clash over the best way to handle things, though they also establish a begrudging respect for one another.

Segal’s current girlfriend Susan Strasberg has unwittingly chosen the same day, of all days, to bring his daughter Helen Hunt (!) to the amusement park, further complicating things and adding another layer of worry to Segal’s already crowded pile of them.
Rollercoaster is often placed into the disaster movie genre because of its sequence depicting the destruction of part of a coaster and the decimation that happens when the runaway car projects itself into a set of carnival booths. Unfortunately, that is practically the only sequence of its kind and, thus, the movie is action-heavy at the start and close to nonexistent as it proceeds. The film really has to be categorized more as a suspense drama, though opinions vary greatly on how much suspense there really is.

That crash, however, is pretty eye-opening. Yes, there are clearly mannequins riding in at least one of the coaster cars, but it’s still pretty neat to see it careening off its track and into the activity below. Allegedly, this sequence was initially far more graphic and visceral, but was pared down for a PG rating. If the script had allowed Bottoms just one more incident of destruction, it might have made the difference in the success of the picture. As it stands, the lack of pyrotechnics in the latter 7/8th of the movie gives the viewer a feeling of being let down. Universal tried to blame Star Wars, which came out around the same time, for the film’s poor performance, but they really needed to look at just how pedestrian a film they had on their hands!

What appeals to me about the movie is the kitschy, frozen-in-time aspect of the park in which most of the action takes place. Kings Dominion in Richmond, VA is very, very much like Kings Island in Mason, Ohio and I went there as a child. (So did The Brady Bunch, if you ever caught that episode.) The rides, characters, décor, the simplicity of it all, it is all gone forever. When I watch Rollercoaster, which isn’t that often because it’s a middling movie really, I find myself paying closer attention to the background action and the people rather than the stars! The sign for the singing mushrooms above notes that they have to rest every fifteen minutes or their throats will get "spore!"

As for the stars, Segal gives one of his quirky sort of portrayals with his patented brand of tormented haplessness. He’s a matter of taste. If you like him, it’s well worth watching this. If you don’t, it could become pretty tiresome rather quickly. I find that I don’t usually mind George Segal movies much, occasionally even like them, but always need a buffer of other ones in between them. In other words, there will be no George Segal Film Festivals in The Underworld! Note that he is wearing an Izod polo shirt with the requisite alligator on the chest. Within a couple of years, these would be the hottest shirt possible to own.

Timothy Bottoms (for whom, you ask? LOL) He is a peculiar presence to me. There was a time when he seemed like he was going to be a really major film actor. He had significant roles in several notable movies such as his debut in the disturbing Johnny Got His Gun and then The Last Picture Show and The Paper Chase. It never quite happened for him, though. He is unforgettable to me because, as a child (isn’t everything here about my childhood?! How annoying!) I watched him in the 1976 miniseries Arthur Hailey’s The Moneychangers. He played a thieving bank teller who was sent to prison and immediately raped by a sadistic fellow inmate. So I guess that answers the question at the beginning of this paragraph.
I never paid much attention to Richard Widmark until a while back when I realized how dependable he was as an actor and how undervalued he is as an antagonist. He was very adept at playing hard-assed authority figures who are still either sympathetic (usually thanks to a level of sarcasm) or multidimensional. I love his work in Coma, of course, and he is one of the few people in The Swarm to have some life in him. He made a huge impact in his first film Kiss of Death (in which he laughed as he sent a wheelchair-bound woman hurtling down a flight of stairs) and it gleaned him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. He worked steadily thereafter in many films, but remains strangely unappreciated.

At this stage in his career, Fonda was working in crap, crap, crap. Just look at some of the gems he did from ‘77 –’79: Tentacles, The Great Smokey Roadblock, The Swarm, City on Fire and Meteor. Even Dionne Warwick and her Psychic Friends Network could not have predicted that in 1981 he would finally win the coveted Academy Award for his role in On Golden Pond. Apart from a TV movie that same year with Myrna Loy, it was the final thing he did before his death. I always say go out in a winner and avoid “The ‘Trog’ Trap.”

This was really a nothing role for Strasberg, too. Perhaps the makers thought it might be too clichéd to have her or her young charge Helen Hunt be on the threatened rollercoaster, but in just having them present in the park, there’s nothing much at stake and they are merely uninvolved bystanders bordering on filler. (By the way, look at the ignorant lady in the tan hat next to Helen who has no clue where to focus her attention!) The year after this, Strasberg would appear in the camp howler The Manitou as a woman with an Indian shaman growing out of her neck!

This was Hunt’s first film role and it would be 1985 before she did another one, so busy was she in TV movies and series. Again, only a mind reader could know that she would also one day have an Oscar to call her own, though she was a significantly successful child actress. Like Strasberg, her role here is insubstantial.

Busy character actor Harry Guardino, who often played cops, has a role (and decent billing) in the film as a police detective. What’s interesting about him is that in some of the movie posters, his photo appears alongside everyone else’s, but in some (like the one at the top of this post), he was taken out!

There are several notable names among the rest of the cast, most of whom appear only briefly. Craig Wasson, who would later star in Body Double and Ghost Story, plays a hippie. The trashy looking chick next to him was used again by this director (and to no good effect - it was her last screen credit) when he made When Time Ran Out. She bagged way too much screen time in that one. Jean Rasey, who was in The Hindenberg and later played Pamela Sue Martin’s sidekick for one season on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, has a bit as a girl in line to ride a coaster. There’s also a messenger played by the then-unknown Steve Guttenberg, making his film debut

Then we have Miss Monica Lewis. I’ve spoken of her here in The Underworld before because of her tendency to pop up in the film projects of her producer husband Jennings Lang. She had substantial roles in Earthquake, Airport ’77 and The Concorde: Airport ’79, but here she was relegated to one quick scene as a tourist who interacts briefly with Bottoms. Lang probably got cold cereal for breakfast for a month after that slight!

Pre-production plans called for The Bay City Rollers to perform in the film, but this never happened. Instead, a group called Sparks was used. Sparks had (and still has) a considerable career in the music industry, but they considered their appearance here to be one of their biggest regrets! It must be said that they don’t come off particularly well here. They are part of a show emceed by the famous L.A. disc jockey Charlie Tuna.

Also with regards to music, prolific composer Lalo Schifrin (the man behind the themes for The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible and Starsky and Hutch along with many film scores) created a waltz for the score called Magic Carousel that is pretty hard to shake off once you’ve heard it. Though his score for the film is repetitive, some of it does help build suspense where the director James Goldstone sort of failed to provide it.
I never got to experience Sensurround, its chief years being when I was 7 through 11 years of age and it being used on only four films. If anyone reading this went to see a movie with it, I’d love to hear your thoughts. I understand that some theaters experienced cracked plaster and that, generally, the public didn’t care for the notion.

Wake Up and Watch This!

In the mid-70s, it was rare to go anyplace relaxing, like to a beach or a swimming pool, and not find someone reading a paperback copy of Robin Cook’s bestseller Coma. The (then) sort of provocative cover of a nude, muscled figure, dangling from wires, always caught my attention. I didn't read the book until quite a few years later after a friend reminded me of the film version and I had enjoyed that so much the first time I'd seen it.

The story concerned a female intern at a major hospital who starts to question the number of patients who wind up comatose in the wake of supposedly minor procedures. Naturally, this being prior to or on the cusp of The Women’s Movement, she can’t seem to get anyone to go along with her suspicions and, in fact, runs into considerable opposition from a collection of stubborn, sexist, male doctors, including her own boyfriend who works at the same hospital. Eventually, she investigates on her own, leading her on a suspenseful ride from which she may not return!

Adapted into a film in 1978, the creepy, paranoid story transferred well to the screen and remains a pretty good nail-biter even now. Not for those who fear the medical profession, this creepy thriller takes its time getting started, but later kicks into high gear. It creates a mood and builds suspense to an almost unbearable degree.

It’s sort of a statement in itself of going against the expected grain that, for the film version, the heroine, long-haired, blonde Susan Wheeler, was instead portrayed by elfin, brunette, less conventional looking Genevieve Bujold. Whether intended or not, this decision gave the film another layer of tension and despair as seeing such a petite, almost frail-looking person such as she taking on the big guys is far more effective than if a taller, stronger-looking actress had been cast. (Her spunky determination goes a long way in helping me to forgive a wretched hairstyle that is occasionally augmented by a heinous little barrette!)

Appearing as her boyfriend is Michael Douglas, at the time a known personality for his work on TV’s The Streets of San Francisco, but not yet the A-list actor he would become in the 1980s. It’s almost odd now to see Douglas in a role that’s rather peripheral to the main action (almost the “girlfriend” part), but he invests it with conviction and even a certain amount of threat and malice.

The rest of the supporting cast is top-notch. Craggy-faced Richard Widmark is perfect as the confident, condescending and curt Chief of Staff. He manages to expertly represent the “glass ceiling” sort of attitude that women faced then (and sometimes do now) while slathering onto it an “I’m here for you” smarminess.

Also performing effectively in just a couple of scenes (one of which is wordless) is Rip Torn. Like most others in the film, he has an aura of mystery and untrustworthiness that adds to the general unease of the hospital. Neither Bujold nor the audience knows who she can trust. Our own hesitance and fear of such places and situations help create a feeling of unease.

Best of all is the brief, but unforgettable, appearance of Elizabeth Ashley as the world's most intimidating nurse. In her opening scene she blinks exactly once! (Yes, I counted…) Her voice is a monotone terror and her stare is up there with Medusa's. The section that contains her is surreal, but arresting, and very campy! As a film viewer, I have a tendency to grab on to one performer in a movie and obsess about him or her. Miss Ashley, even with her limited screen time, earned a place in my own (imaginary?) Cinema Hall of Fame for her hysterically bizarre, haughty, intimidating performance as Nurse Emerson. That voice, always a distinctive one, is divinely rude here.

The film (directed by former medical student Michael Crichton, who wrote many sci-fi novels and directed several other films) has a blatantly frank point of view. People eat sandwiches while they are examining cadavers. Brains are sliced like deli meat. It's all very clinical and unsettling to non-medical viewers.

Though the big set piece is a visit to the austere and forbidding Jefferson Institute, there are several other highly charged moments including a duct hole exploration and a chase through a seemingly abandoned hospital. The chase contains several creepily creative aspects along the way. Hit-man Lance LeGault makes a sinister pursuer as well. In an unusual move (but one which adds to the clinical feel of the early scenes), Jerry Goldsmith's clanking score doesn't take center stage until late in the film, but it’s wonderfully nerve-wracking when it needs to be.

Adding to the fun is a series of small appearances by people new to the business like Lois Chiles, Tom Selleck and Ed Harris. The first two portray patients and acquaintances of Bujold’s while Harris is a technician. Most viewers spotting him in this exclaim their surprise that he has (some) hair. Another striking thing about the film is that it is rated PG and yet contains some fairly graphic imagery and even fleeting nudity. I think we were generally less uptight about the body in those post flower-child/pre-AIDS days. Until PG-13 came along in 1984, PG films were allowed a little more leeway than they probably would be now (see also Mommie Dearest’s famous, “Don’t fuck with me fellas!” line in the PG rated biopic.)

Buzz Off!

In what was probably meant to be the pinnacle of Irwin Allen’s stint as The Master of Disaster, the opposite came true and it became close to the nadir of his career. (I say close to the nadir because, believe it or not, my beloved showman actually tried two more times after this to put another successful disaster epic out there and both of them were dismal failures as well! Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and When Time Ran Out.)

In 1974, Arthur Herzog published a novel about the catastrophic events that occur after a gigantic swarm of African killer bees makes its way to North America. Seeing it as prime material for a disaster movie, Allen eventually turned it into the all-star spectacle The Swarm. Perhaps the greatest example of a “box movie,” this film’s poster had thirteen name brand stars splayed across the bottom!

Headlining this disaster of a movie was Michael Caine. Caine frequently cites this and Ashanti as the worst of his screen repertoire, though the 70s were not a good time for him in a variety of ways including The Hand, The Island and the aforementioned Beyond… Poseidon. He plays a noted scientist who comes upon a US Air Force base in which most of the soldiers are dead from a surprise bee attack. Alternately wooden and over-the-top, he sports a wavy crown of hair that is at once pressed down and unruly and is bedecked in a series of tacky leisure suits.

He’s immediately set upon by a curmudgeonly General played by Richard Widmark who wants to take a direct approach and poison or otherwise destroy all the bees while Caine seeks more sensible means of problem-solving because “the American honey bee is our friend!” Also on board is Katharine Ross as a doctor who inexplicably keeps dressing up, despite all the harrowing goings on, and coming up with elaborate up-dos for her near Crystal Gayle-length hair. In the course of the film, she fails to save so many as one patient!

It was in this film that I realized the fact that Ross needs a very, VERY strong director in order to register even the slightest amount of expression, variety or emphasis in her performance. Needless to say she doesn’t have that in Mr. Allen. Courtesy of (sleep-walking?) screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, she gets to deliver the howler of a line, “The entire Durant family has been killed besides Paul!” when the family consists of Paul and his parents…

While Widmark provides the rare apportion of screen charisma and acting interest in the film, Miss Olivia de Havilland supplies entertainment for a whole other reason. As the principal of a nearby school, she finds herself caught in a love triangle with senior citizen lotharios Fred MacMurray and Ben Johnson. She’s also outfitted in a putrescent series of bland but gaudily colored dresses that do nothing for her by now questionable physique. She gets the screaming, howling highlight of the film when she gets on the public address system and announces that “a swahm of killah bees” is heading towards the school when, even as she’s speaking, the bees are offing children on the playground, offended as they are by the 70s clothing and oversized lollipop that one child carries everywhere! As she discovers this massacre, she galumphs through the classroom, peers out the window and releases a guttural, slow motion groan. This classic bad movie moment must be seen to be believed!

Many other stars appear for seemingly no other reason than the fact that they were free that day and/or needed a quick buck or two. Jose Ferrer filmed all of his few moments in one day by merely crossing the studio lot where he had already been positioned in an Irwin Allen produced TV movie! Chamberlain, looking scruffy and having no purpose other than to grouse at a few people, is thoroughly wasted. Worst of all is Lee Grant. Not an actress who could often be accused of under-acting, she plays a field reporter and delivers all of her lines in a somnambulistic drone for the scant time she appears.

Patty Duke plays a pregnant coffee shop waitress whose husband was one of the soldiers killed in the initial assault. If you think she makes it through the film without going into labor, you’ve never seen a movie or a TV show. Despite the fact that he husband’s barely cold, her doctor Alejandro Rey seems to like what he sees.

Henry Fonda has a reasonably substantial role as a fellow scientist, desperate to concoct a vaccine before the bees to everyone in. Oddly enough, Caine seems more interested in Fonda at times than he does in Ross.

Bradford Dillman seems to be onhand solely smart off or to take abuse from Caine or Widmark, whoever’s handy.

Slim Pickens has a vignette as the country-fried father of one of the fallen soldiers and manages to dredge up some genuine emotion. Sadly, such talent is wasted in dreck like this.

One hysterical aspect of the movie is the conceit that whenever a person is stung by fewer bees than it normally takes to kill a human, he or she begins to hallucinate that a massive, buzzing bee is hovering before them in their hospital room! Caine gets one of his more lunatic moments as he emphatically barks, “There is NO bee in THIS room!”

Anyone who happened to be slightly interested in the ridiculous triangular love story of de Havilland and her men will be sorely let down by its resolution.

The film was released to theaters in a 116 minute cut. If people hated that (and they did. The movie barely lasted two weeks before being pulled!), just imagine if the extended 156 minute version had been put before them! That version is the one on DVD and it’s hard to know what is extra and what is original because the original version hasn’t really been seen since it premiered. It’s safe to say that the many scenes of Ross and Caine driving and chatting and the lengthy (and fiery) climax were shortened in that first cut. Whose idea was it to give people more of something they never liked to begin with?!

Naturally, in the Underworld the whole lengthy mess is revered. Poseidon loves few things more than all-star casts floundering through a tacky, cheesy, idiotic epic. The pounding Jerry Goldsmith score tries in vain to pump an ounce of excitement into the DOA proceedings. Amazingly, the film received an Oscar nomination for its mostly deplorable costumes. The DVD contains a featurette in which some of the stars express concern for the real life oncoming mass of killer bees and this is sort of sad. Even sadder is the fact that one of the menu selections shows a picture of Laurence Olivier (!), some poor sap with the manufacturer apparently not even able to realize that he isn’t in this movie!