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Don't listen to the negative reviews

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I gave it a 3 because of Robert Forster's acting. Mia Farrow was horrible and Rock Hudson was annoyingly bad. The director must have given them one take per scene, Forster nailed every one and the stars missed big time. The snow that someone kept throwing across the windows every 2 seconds was hilarious. Do chunks of snow really bounce off you? lol

Roger Corman might have been a tad late when it came to jumping on the 70's disaster flick bandwagon, but what this item lacks in fancy large scale scope it more than compensates for with a deliciously tacky surplus of cheap'n'cheerful exploitation cinema thrills.Loud and huffy millionaire David Shelby (broadly essayed with blustery brio by Rock Hudson) is on the verge of opening his posh new ski resort in the Colorado mountains. Crusading environmentalist photographer Nick Thorne (a solid and engaging performance by the ever-reliable Robert Forster) tries to warn Shelby about the threat of a possible avalanche to no avail. Among the guests attending the gala event are Shelby's estranged wife Caroline (a winningly warm portrayal by a radiant Mia Farrow) and Shelby's sassy fireplug mother Florence (Jeanette Nolan, who brings plenty of delightful spark to her role).Director Corey Allen, who also co-wrote the compact script with Claude Pola, keeps the familiar, yet still engrossing and entertaining story moving along at a brisk pace, makes neat use of the breathtaking rocky and wintry landscape, and pulls out all the hysterically absurd and exciting stops once the titular catastrophe occurs. And boy does this baby kick into priceless kitschy overdrive when that happens: Cocky champion skier Bruce Scott (hunky Rick Moses) tries (and fails) to outrace the avalanche, a pretty figure skater gets taken out while in the middle of her swirling routine, and a sexy neurotic gal (foxy brunette Cathey Paine) winds up buying it just as she's about to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. Barry Primus acquits himself well as smooth reporter Mark Elliott. Steven Franken also contributes a sound turn as uptight book keeper Henry McDade. The (far from) special effects are hilariously hokey: The massive chunks of snow are clearly made out of Styrofoam and the poorly matted in snow has an odd bluish hue in several scenes. A wild sequence depicting a snow mobile race in which the participants play dirty rates as a definite sidesplitting highlight; the fact that the folks in charge of rescuing any survivors prove to be even more dangerous than the avalanche supplies additional unintentional belly laughs. Both William Kraft's lively score and Pierre-William Glenn's crisp cinematography are up to par. As a yummy extra plus, there's even a decent sprinkling of tasty gratuitous female nudity. A real campy hoot and a half.

Dreadful, horrendous, awful and terrible are all words that don't even begin to describe how bad this movie is. Rock and Mia, about as mismatched a pair of costars as could be imagined; he towers over her and they share no chemistry whatsoever, would make more sense as father and daughter than ex-spouses but that is the least of this picture's problems. Some of the cast try to maintain their dignity and soldier on while being faced with stupid words to speak and idiotic situations to react to. Nonsensical happenings, bad special effects and rotten direction all add up to a textbook example of why the disaster epics ran out of steam shortly after the release of this dog.

I was surprised to see that Avalanche was produced by Roger Corman of all people. I would think that even the skimpy budget that this film had by Irwin Allen standards was not something Roger Corman was used to dealing with. Corman didn't spend it on big name guest stars for sure. His stars are Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow. Hudson is the Donald Trump like owner of a big state of the art ski lodge which is hosting that weekend some winter sporting events. He's been told like William Holden in The Towering Inferno that the lodge is in a bad place and the snow looks like it's about to come a tumbling down.Tumble down it did during a storm when a plane crashes into the top of a mountain. The Avalanche starts and it buries the whole cast in that white stuff. This is a disaster film made on the cheap, some winter sports footage mixed with real avalanche footage and some cheesy special effects by seventies standards to bind it together. The plot such as it is, is almost non-existent, the characters are never developed in the slightest, so you don't really care about them.I guess the lesson to be learned from Avalanche is for Roger Corman not to try to be Irwin Allen.