Déluge sur la ville

Among many other contemporary trends, hypes and sub-genres of the glorious 70s decade, yours truly is a diehard fan of typical disaster movies of that era! I love them so much! I've seen so many that I even developed a specific rating principle to check, via five simple little traits, if a certain disaster movie qualifies as good enough cheesy & clichéd entertainment!

Condition #1: without producer Irwin Allen, there wasn't a budget for special effects and thus no movie. Well, Allen was the producer of "Flood", but it's a made-for-TV film and hence the budget was significantly smaller than in, say, "The Towering Inferno" or "The Poseidon Adventure". Still, for a TV-film, it's looking quite good, so I'll give it 0,5 points. Condition #2: all disaster movies star one major star (Charlton Heston and Paul Newman were prime choices) and a long list of "secondary" stars (like Ernest Borgnine, Leslie Nielsen...). Another 0,5 points scored here. For reasons linked to the TV-movie status, there isn't a major star, but the list of secondary stars is nevertheless long and impressive: Robert Culp, Barbara Hershey, Richard Basehart, Cameron Mitchell, Roddy McDowall, Francine York, Teresa Wright, ... Condition #3: The characters are usually split into two camps with completely opposite ideals and/or initiatives. Oh, definitely the case here! The little Oregon fishing town of Brownsville is recovering after weeks of heavy rainfall and storm winds. Local entrepreneurs Steve and Paul are persuaded that the ecologically built dam will burst and drown the entire town, whereas the stubborn mayor irresponsibly keeps proclaiming that the dam will hold. Who do you think is right? Full point! Condition #4: Regardless what type of disaster we're dealing with, variants of the exact same perilous situations are always applicable. Yes, but limited. We have 9-months-pregnant women trapped in their homes, missing children and elderly women sacrificing themselves to rescue others, but that's about it. 0.75 points! Condition #5: always remember that, when the situation appears to be at its worst, it can and will still get even worse! I'm not handing out a point here. There aren't any sharks or piranhas coming along with the flood, the central hospital doesn't collapse, or the helicopter doesn't crash. So, theoretically speaking, Brownsville could be worse off.

All this adds up to a proper 2.75 rating, meaning "Flood!" is a recommendable and engaging disaster movie IF you are already familiar with the genre and if you are relatively tolerant. In case you seek pure blockbuster-fun, better stick to the mastodons of the era, like "Towering Inferno", "Earthquake" or the "Airport"-series.

PS: I'm still waiting for news on Roddy McDowall's character! Did he make it?

Irwin Allen disaster movie about a flood.

Wonderful Richard LaSalle (Land Of The Giants) music scores the great location footage of the town and the endless helicopter footage. That is what Irwin Allen calls film showmanship. Irwin always gets the correct music for what is on the screen. Many producers do not.

In the first half of this movie Robert Culp (Outer Limits) and Martin Milner (Swiss Family Robinson) do wonders as they move around the town warning of disaster to come. Both actors perform very well. Richard Basehart is all wrong for this role of the man with something bad to hide, what was Irwin thinking by casting Basehart in this role? Poor old Whit Bissell is looking v-e-r-y old in 1976.

When the flood happens in the second half of the film, this is the problem area. We, the viewer, do not feel like we are watching a real flood. In 1977, Irwin Allen made another TV movie like this called "Fire", in that, the fire seemed real. In yet another 1979 Irwin TV movie "Cave-In", we had the Flood problem of a TV budget not being good enough for a disaster movie.

See Flood, just to get another taste of Irwin Allen showmanship, but don't expect too much.

Disaster movie mega-god, Irwin Allen takes his formula to the small screen with FLOOD! In it, a town is threatened by the wall of water of the title, due to a crumbling dam. Robert Culp plays helicopter pilot, Steve Brannigan, who first notices the problem.

Not-so shockingly, when Brannigan brings this to the attention of the powers that be, it's dismissed out of hand. Naturally, big money plays a key role in their disinterest.

In typical Allen fashion, the tension builds slowly, while the various characters bicker, and the dam continues to decay. This takes quite some time to really get going, making much of the 90 minute running time feel like sitting on a hot stove!

In reality, disaster films are monster movies, with fires, tidal waves, floods, and other calamities taking the place of the marauding behemoth. This isn't a terrible example of this. It just takes an eternity to get this monster going!

There is the expected all-star cast, including Roddy McDowall, Cameron Mitchell, Carol Lynley as an unnaturally huge pregnant woman, and Barbara Hershey as the world's hottest nurse. Also, watch for Leif Garrett, just before his teen heart-throb days...

Irwin Allen did great on The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, Beyond The Poseidon Adventure, and The Swarm but this one was not one of his best. The special effects could have been much better. The acting was alright. I would recommend this movie to people who like disaster movies. Or people who have nothing else to do for the next 98 minutes

Let's face it, we're all probably more than a little guilty at watching 'disaster movies' to see the scale of whatever carnage is being inflicted on our helpless protagonists. I don't want to spoil 'Flood!' but in this case a small town is being threatened by a plague of locusts from the future. Only kidding. It's a flood. Or rather a big dam just by their town and if it breaks - and it's already starting to crack - it'll flood the town and home insurance is going to go through the roof when it comes to the residents' next premium.

So we're introduced to the two men who have an idea as to what might happen and they try to warn the rest of the town. Or at least they try to warn the town's leader, who - in tried and tested stubborn style - refuses to believe them because if they drain the water from the dam it will impact on the revenue that fishing brings into their local economy.

So our heroes persist in their efforts to warn more people (in between popping home to their respective women who look about twenty years their junior, but that's another story). And then they go to a different location and warn a different person. In fact, most of the film is set in - very dry - houses with people talking to people about what might happen, i.e. The flood.

It's only the last twenty minutes or so where you see the actual flood. Now, maybe this pay-off is so awesome and ground-breaking that it makes the build up worth the wait? Sadly, this is a TV movie and there wasn't much of a budget for big practical effects, let alone an alien invasion with a skybeam.

So you have a film which is quite long and desperately wants to be an epic in its genre, but the lack of anything that really happens just makes most of it drag. Pity really, as it does have its charms and with a little more money behind it for the effects in the final act and a little less scenes building up, this could have been quite good.