Avalanche - Inferno no Alasca

After starring in a movie such as Vampires one would expect Thomas Ian Griffith to not make a movie like this. It's about an evil company that builds an oil pipeline thru a snowy mountain town and causes an avalanche when it goes haywire. The avalanche FX and the terribly interwoven stock footage are the worst I've ever seen. You'll have a hot seeing how awful it is and how anyone involved with the film could allow them to be so poor. See this on TV like I did. Don't rent it. It's seriously bad. 1/10

The official, and indeed most accurate title of this film is "Avalanche", but approximately two dozen of other movies have the same title. It's also available as "Escape from Alaska", but that's a rather incorrect title because people are not trying to escape out of the state, just out of a little Alaskan town named Juneau. My point? Everything starts with a good, strong and accurate title.

I honestly don't want to sound too harsh. I really love disaster movies, the bigger the better, and "Escape from Alaska" is a fairly amiable - albeit lacking - attempt. Throughout of the 90s, there were several large-budgeted productions revolving around natural disasters, including pandemics ("Outbreak"), volcanic eruptions ("Dante's Peak", "Volcano"), meteorites ("Deep Impact", "Armageddon") and heavy storms ("Twister"), but yours truly always preferred the true magic of the 70s. I detected a bit of that seventies' spirit in "Escape from Alaska", but unfortunately not enough.

For starters, nobody was ever able to raise humongous budgets like producer Irwin Allen could. I wasn't expecting blockbuster standards, but the special effects in "Escape from Alaska" were truly poor. The miniature sets, the washing power (or whatever it was they used as snow) and the unfitting stock footage of avalanches makes the film look really pathetic. The cast isn't exactly impressive, neither. Fallen-stardom actor Thomas Howell and R. Lee Ermey are the only noteworthy names.

What the film does quite well, however, is splitting the characters into two camps with completely opposite ideals and/or initiatives. The environmental activist and her guilt-ridden helicopter pilot boyfriend form one camp, against reckless oil-industry tycoons (you can practically see the $-signs in their eyes) and middle-class Alaskan workers for whom no refinery means no income. This results in the heroic duo having to embark on clandestine pipeline inspections, rude press-conference and board-meeting interruptions and (pitiable) barfights.

Last but worst, the disasters in "Escape from Alaska" aren't disastrous enough, and there are far, far too many sentimental moments. Another unwritten rule of disaster movies is that the misery and the bad breaks keep on coming non-stop, and that when situations appears to be at their worst, it can and will still get even worse! In this film, this is only partially true. There are plane crashes, malfunctioning helicopters, and supposedly even polar bear attacks, but none of it is thrilling enough.

Messy script, fairly entertaining and horrible cgi! Factory explodes that's connected to a mountain of snow in which causes an avalanche that all happens in the first 20 minutes which is nuts. The cinematography is pretty nice in some parts other parts it feels like a soap opera. The 4.1 is understandable and I'm just a nice critic to give it a 5. Not much to say about this movie there's a few good aspects.

This movie is hilarious!! The effects, plot and acting are SO BAD that you'll be cracking up, or crying. It's a movie you should watch if you feel like ripping apart something. The best scene is the airplane crash, and how they just survive getting thrown around, but still jump right out. I couldn't understand how they were so scared of the ice crack, but then just slide right down it. As someone who has studied glaciers, a crevasse is dangerous and once you fall in, that's it. But as soon as they slide down it, the next scene is great because it shows them just walking out of the crevasse. Also, the models of the city and the powdered sugar used for snow are awful effects.

first off this is not a horrible movie as most of you in these discussion boards have pointed out,, do I care that polar bears don't go as far south as Juneau,, no I really don't care.. most people won't ever even know the difference till some people decide to nit-pick a movie to death. Thomas Ian Griffith did a great job with the movie,, to bad the female lead was awful,, liked R. Lee Ermey's character. John Ashton was good to. I loved all of the wonderful Alaskan scenery as depicted in the movie. and yes the polar bears south of Juneau too, the storyline was great.. about the Pipeline, being built by a company knowing that it sits right on an area where avalanches are prone to happen, great action in this one. plot pretty good,, I just wish people wouldn't be so harsh on a movie like this.