La vera storia del Poseidon

Talk about a misleading title! Given the sensational English title and the fact this is a European-produced early 70's disaster flick, naturally everybody assumes it's a shameless imitation of the popular Gene Hackman classic "The Poseidon Adventure". But it's not, in fact, in any way related to this movie except that the ships have the same name. This production actually has a lot more story elements in common with "The Towering Inferno", but that movie didn't get released until 1974 so you can't call it a rip-off of that one, neither. "The Poseidon Explosion" re-enacts the supposedly true events that occurred near a Romanian harbor in the year 1970. An all-ravaging inferno breaks out on board a massive cargo ship carrying thousands of bags of explosive fertilizer. Despite of the devoted labor of professional fire-fighters as well as multiple courageous volunteers, the immense fire can't be extinguished and the inevitable explosion is guaranteed to destroy the entire harbor town of Galati as well. It was quite a surprise to find this movie in the Grindhouse Collection box-set. Granted it's an exploitation feature, but primarily this is a genuine and full-blooded 70's disaster movie. Everything that could possibly go wrong on board the Poseidon does go wrong, there's a realistic diversity between heroic characters and people that just intend to save their own butt, there's barely any time for sentimental sub plots and certain people you root for die a horrible death! That's simply the way it should be in this type of films. Superficially speaking, "The Poseidon Explosion" appears to be a poorly produced movie, but that's simply because the transfer to DVD looks cheap and the English dubbing was done by a bunch of illiterate amateurs. If you look beyond these aspects that are typical for Grindhouse flicks, you'll notice an eminent Romanian film with astounding special effects (the fires are menacingly real), devoted actors (Gheorghe Dinica is superb) and convincing set-pieces. Director Mircea Dragan maintains an atmosphere of non-stop suspense and the fire-fighters face a new type of deadly ordeal in every new scene. Now, that's cinematic excitement! "The Poseidon Explosion" is probably one of the most misunderstood movies ever made.

Surpringly good obscure movie about a ship catching fire off the coast of Romania. The ship is carrying hundreds of tons of fertilizer and oxygen tanks, which, if ignited, would explode and take out the entire coastline shipping community. A small band of people (including an oil well firefighter) board the ship to try and put out the fire, but when it proves to be burning out of control, a group of about a dozen local dockworkers join in and try to unload the cargo before it ignites- three of them, however, are merely petty thieves out to loot the ship.

This is a surprisingly well done movie, most under-appreciated and unrecognized. I was happily surprised after watching this in the "Grindhouse Collection" DVD box-set. It's a great action/ suspense movie, with a bit of well timed comic relief. The pacing was good, it moved along well, and even the effects showing the ship engulfed in flames with plumes of thick black smoke pouring out were well done. The climactic explosion looked good, especially for a presumably lower budget movie like this.

True story of a cargo ship filled with fertilizer that catches fire while anchored in a river near a Romanian city. The sip has to be moved and extinguished before the ship explodes (think the fertilizer bomb that took out the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building a hundred fold fold).

Surprisingly good action drama that unfortunately has been titled to catch in on the Irwin Allen disaster film. This is not the piece of trash you think it is. This is actually a very good, far from typical (how could it be since its essentially true) story of a large number of people trying to come together to prevent their city from being leveled by an accident. Its one of those movies where you begin to wonder why, since its so good, you've never head of it before. Frankly its one of the few films I've seen in the past year that has actually made an impression on me.

Definitely worth a look

This movie is based on real events, placed somewhere in the '60. For sure, as it was created in the communist era, the facts are 'modified', more than a bit... Actually, the cities of Braila and Galati was really affected by that explosion. I'm pretty sure that a previous comment here was made without knowing the facts; the link between this movie, and 'poseidon adventure' is not existent - even for the small reason than in communist Romania, copying a 'decadent occidental' movie was strictly prohibited. After all, this movie was one of my childhood's greatest; good acting (as the cinematographic culture was in that era; probably, if Bruce Willis was acting also, he could be saving all of them), alert plot (even for now), good-written dialogues (i don't think if dubbed in other languages, the quality will remain)

A movie before times. A real drama was source of inspiration. A good script and catchy acting. Too bad is a real lose to listen the voices dubbed because you lost o lot of acting. Story from movie is an opening picture for a lot of other movies involving accidents and dramas. For 1973 this was a misunderstand and undrafted movie and he foreseen what future has rezerve to humans.