Watch Beyond the Poseidon Adventure For Free

Why so much hype?

The first must-see film of the year.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Michael Caine chews up the scenery in the first 10 mins as an opportunist salvage crew leader. It starts off very creakily with timing all over the place as the main characters fight to establish any sort of drama. Boarding the hull of the ship with Caine is Karl Malden and Sally Field, who assist with finding their riches, and so he can pay off his debts. It doesn't take long before they land on their fee. A ludicrous sub-plot emerges involving Telly Savalas, which adds some further tension, but the story then amounts to survival by way of slow movement from one topsy turvy film set-up to another. It is handled reasonably well with some good character actors of yesteryear but this is a substandard submergence rescue drama rather than epic disaster.

Irwin Allen's "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" does the unthinkable in this follow-up to his blockbuster 1972 film. Instead of people trying to get off the sinking luxury liner, he has two crews trying to get on to it for different reasons. Michael Caine leads one group into it to claim salvage rights to what's been left behind. At the same time, Telly Savalas heads up a team of murderous plunderers in search of a cargo of plutonium. Along the way, they both happen upon survivors frantically trying to get off the ship. Will Caine and Savalas find their treasures and a way to get back off the ship before it plummets to the depths of the sea?I have to give props where they're due, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. The fact that Irwin Allen had the audacity to attempt a sequel to "The Poseidon Adventure" deserves a strange amount of reverence. Can you imagine the power of suggestion he must have controlled. He walked into the offices of studio executives six years after the original left theaters and said, "Hey, I have an idea for a sequel to that movie where the ship sinks. What if people tried to get on the ship instead of off of it?" "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" is proof he convinced them to do it!"Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" is nowhere near as bad as you'd think it would be. It has everything a great disaster movie should. An ensemble cast fighting for their lives as water levels rise. Escape routes becoming blocked as the people fight their way back to the surface before the ship's hull becomes completely submerged. People who you don't want to die do and others you wish would but don't. I wasn't disappointed in it by any means.A PG rating was given to "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure." It contains violence, language, and intense sequences of peril."Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" is one of those movies that never should've happened. All I can say is thanks to all the studio executives with dollar signs in their eyes who greedily greenlit this wonderful piece of cinema history. For those of us who love unnecessary sequels and crave a little 1970's cheese, it's a rare gem that's been found and preserved for us to enjoy over and over again.

Those too young to remember the 70s probably can't appreciate the significance of the "disaster movie" genre to moviegoers of that decade. The canon of this genre included "Airport", "Earthquake", "The Towering Inferno", and of course the original "Poseidon Adventure". These wowed audiences with big budgets and state of the (pre-CGI) art special effects, but at heart, the central disaster and exacerbating obstacles were really just a vehicle to drive the interaction of the all-star casts, resulting in pithy dialog, personal revelations, budding romance, and noble sacrifice. Because of the epic, apocalyptic nature of these movies, there was generally a solid sense of closure and finality at the end. This made sequels an even more dubious concept than usual for movies. There were two progressively worse sequels to "Airport", and this movie follows a similar pattern. It's characterized by a lower budget, lesser "stars", and a much more contrived plot than the venerable original.The contrast between the two movies is stark from the beginning. Whereas the first opens in the grand ballroom of a luxury cruise ships, this opens with Michael Cane piloting his teeny tugboat across the Atlantic through a the same storm that is capsizing the Poseidon not far away. I laughed out loud when the "waves" broke over the deck, clearly thrown from buckets just off camera. The storm causes him to lose his cargo, which consists of three crates lashed just behind the wheel house. Desperate for money, he stumbles onto the capsized Poseidon and decides to loot it under the "international laws of salvage". Luckily for him, after rescuing the surviving cast of the original movie, everyone else left, without making any attempt to recover anything from the ship or locate additional survivors. Simultaneously, another, nicer boat arrives, carrying Telly Sevalas and his sinister looking, white-clad crew. He claims to be be a doctor looking for survivors. If it's a "spoiler" to tell you he's lying, then you've never watched *any* movies.They all enter the boat and, yada yada yada, survivors, setbacks, revelation, romance, betrayal, sacrifice, pretty much everything on the checklist. Disaster movies are never particularly believable, but this one doesn't even try. It starts with the absurd premise that the original rescuers left after picking up just the folks who happened to be standing under the hole at the time, goes on to the fact all the lights are still on, and includes contrived obstacles and magic water that floods some decks above other decks which are dry. At one point, they're crawling through a ventilation shaft and not only is it inexplicably lighted, but the lights are *upright* on the upside down ship!Not to say the movie didn't have a few redeeming features. Michael Cane can usually elevate a role, and Sally Field was at the peak of her "spunky" period. There was an interesting pairing of Mark Harmon near the beginning of his career with Agnela Cartwright ("Lost in Space") near the end of hers.So, an interesting distraction for people of a certain age, but don't go out of your way to see it.

Not a good movie for me. Had great actors in it…and it was rated PG…so I thought that they wouldn't actually show the ship underwater, or show it sinking into the ocean…I WAS WRONG. I don't actually understand why large ships sinking actually scares me to death...but it does. I can't explain to you the feeling I get when I see titanic and the ship sinking into the dark deep abyss. Seeing a cruise ship upside-down in the ocean is not my favorite either. Though the movie did seem to have its perks, and seem to have a good story and thrilling moments...I was completely focused the whole time at the ship being inches away from sinking. That, and the scene at the beginning of the movie where they're standing on top of the upside-down cruise ship. That image still haunts me.For daily movie reviews visit: kimsmoak.com now!