The Night the Bridge Fell Down

Yep, this movie had the misfortune of airing opposite the final MASH episode, the two and a half hour movie, with Night The Bridge Fell Down covering three hours.

My brothers were MASH fans. Guess what we watched?

This was a 2 night event that was shown opposite the Finale of the TV Series MASH. Filmed in 1978, the studio decided to shelve it for 5 years. It was also Irwin Allen's last disaster flick for Warner Bros.

The character studies were decent and the flashbacks worked well. Of course the best part of the movie was the disaster, the set, and the after effects. To make the movie work well for you, all one has to do is sit back and imagine "What would I do in such a situation?"

Eve Plumb did a great role for as small as it was. Leslie Nielsen is great at comedy and also as a sleaze-ball.

I truly enjoy watching these old movies and seeing the stars of the time and go back down memory lane. This movie is now available uncut through Warner Bros official site.

Irwin Allen disaster about people stuck on a bridge that is falling apart.

These days this film gets almost no TV screenings, most people will get it on-line from Warner Archives like I did. It comes in two discs:

Disc One (aka Part One): This is about 100 minutes of backstory! The problem with that is that the characters in the flick are not that interesting and the actors playing them (James MacArthur, unknown guy playing bank robber, etc) are not that interesting, so you really don't care about the backstory of these people. You the viewer just want to see the titled disaster about the bridge! It is actually about 48 minutes into it that the bridge starts to fall apart. So my suggestion is this: unless you have a soft spot for unemployed 1970s TV actors from Hawaii Five-O and The Brady Bunch...totally skip Disc One and instead start at Disc Two. You will pick up the story without any problems!

Disc Two (aka Part Two): this begins with three or four minutes of footage from Part One, and yes, all the best bits are seen here! This is about 100 minutes of outstanding TV disaster. The bridge sets are rather cool and the Richard LaSalle score nicely captures the tragedy of the situation.

In a nutshell: if you only watch the second half of it, you will get a blast, and several bridge shakes, out of The Night The Bridge Fell Down.

Being an Irwin Allen aficionado, I went an purchased the DVD to this TV-movie. While the premise is a good one, the casting is a bit askew as Desi Arnaz, Jr. is grossly miscast as a bank robber (his acting is so forced it's pathetic). James MacArthur delivers his lines in a bored, detached, almost nonchalant manner. There was really no reason this movie couldn't have been done as a traditional 2-hour event. Instead we get loads of soap opera histrionics (in flashback) to fill-out the second-half, showing how the various characters -- now stuck on the collapsing bridge -- first crossed paths with one another. A similar script was done for the equally dull and excruciating, "Hanging by a Thread" (1978). The saving grace for this film was the physical and miniature effects. For TV in the late 70s, the effect of the full-scale bridge set coming apart was quite well done, as was the model-work showing larger spans breaking away and falling into the river below.

Irwin Allen was at his end with Warner Bros. at the time he made this (1979). It was his last TV project before moving over to Columbia Pictures the following year, and clearly, Warner Bros. had no real faith in the project, hence it's airing on NBC nearly four years after it was made(1983), and on a night when it was due to be clobbered in the ratings (aired against the final episode of M*A*S*H on CBS).

This movie ran on and on. Absolutely predictable plot which took forever to deliver. We watched it on late night TV in 1984 with some friends. This movie has been a running joke since that time.