A stellar cast are submarine but Gene Hackman soon sorts the men from the buoys when the drama unfolds. Ernest Borgnine chews up the scenery but Oscar nominated Shelley Winters provides great support in one of the great genre movies. The visual effects are better in the remake but in 1974 they reigned supreme and along with the set design making the tension run just as high in these rafters. Scored by John Williams, it won an Oscar for Elizabeth McGovern's performance of the song, "The Morning After".

I have seen many disaster films in my day but The Poseidon Adventure is truly a film that will leave you on the edge of your seat because each moment after the being hit by a tidal wave is unpredictable. The survivors have to find a way out of the ship and a preacher (Gene Hackman) has to lead them out that becomes dangerous and often scary situations they face. Each cast member played their parts with emotion that becomes dramatic at times. All in all I thought this was better then the Titanic. I know they did a remake of this film in 2005 but as I always say, stick with the classic.

I love – and I truly mean LOVE – those typically bombastic and ginormous-scaled disaster movies from the 70s and early 80s, but admittedly they are all exactly the same… The setting and type of catastrophe are always different, of course, but the narrative structure, cast of characters and action sequences are practically always alike! When all hell breaks loose, there's always one atypical hero who stands up and mobilizes a small group of reluctant followers to do the exact opposite of what seems logical and of what everybody else is doing. The group exists of stereotypes that complain the entire time about the decisions that are being made, and several of them obviously don't make it until the end of the movie, but eventually the hero's choices naturally turn out to be only slim chances for survival they ever had! Of course, being released in 1972, "The Poseidon Adventure" was one of the very first big-budgeted disaster movies and one of the first enormous successes of producer Irwin Allen, so it's only logical that it spawned many imitations and that the formula blatantly got copied by Mr. Allen himself. Nearly 45 years later, the film is still very exciting, the sets & stunts still look very convincing (without any computer generated effects) and it's also still extremely realistic when it comes to illustrating what happens when blind panic breaks out. For all passengers and crew members aboard the SS Poseidon, the New Year couldn't possibly start off any worse… Caught in an immense storm, the luxurious cruise ship gets hits by a massive tidal wave and capsizes, only moments after midnight on the 1st of January. With the captain and most of the crew members dead, the slightly controversial but authoritarian reverend Scott (Gene Hackman) profiles himself as the leader and rescuer of as many people as possible. He guides a small group towards the bottom of the ship – since it's upside down – but since they were celebrating the New Year in the restaurant on the deck, they have to climb huge Christmas trees and squirm through narrow ventilation shafts in order to reach the engine room. "The Poseidon Adventure" is incredibly fast-paced, all the big names in the cast depict their roles very energetic and John Williams delivered a tremendously great score. The script contains a few horrible clichés in terms of character development (for example, dominant males and docile women) but luckily the multi-talented actors and actresses deal with it very well. Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters and many others deliver stellar performances, and even Leslie Nielsen is memorable in his (too short) role as the amiable captain. Along with "The Towering Inferno" and the original "Airport", this is the most iconic disaster movie of the seventies!

As opposed to the moron who currently has his review on the main page, who casually said "the cast doesn't matter -- what matters are the special effects..." well, all I can say to that is: "thank God you're not in the film business, pal!! Because brother, you haven't got a goddamn clue."Make no mistake: the cast is EVERYTHING in this film. That's why it's a great movie... along with a fantastic script, great sets and perfect editing that moves the story along at a thrilling pace. And speaking of the cast, in my opinion it's an absolute crime that Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons and Carol Lynley didn't all win Academy Awards -- or at least nominations -- because they are all superb. In fact, every performance is powerful and believable, adding to the drama and emotion and constantly pulling the viewer into the scene. Because of these performances, the film is as heartbreaking as it is breathtaking... NOT because of the special effects (which are fantastic, incidentally, courtesy of the great L.B. Abbott).A good lesson in how NOT to involve the audience can be seen in the multi-million dollar turd of a remake, directed by some clueless idiot whose brain apparently works the way the aforementioned reviewer's does. In the remake, the effects are EVERYTHING and the cast is basically nothing. Not that Richard Dreyfus and the others don't do a good job. They do. But with the lame writing and unsympathetic characters, no one gives a crap. That's why the film failed.In "The Poseidon Adventure," however, every scripted word counts, and every second of valuable screen time matters, dramatically moving the story along, building unbearable suspense and audience involvement. It's a great lesson in filmmaking, which clueless amateurs like Tarentino obviously never bothered to learn (as so painfully demonstrated in his latest snore-fest, "The Hateful Eight."As directed by the great Ronald Neame, "The Poseidon Adventure" is not only the greatest of the 70s disaster films, it's one of the most dramatic and exciting adventure movies ever made.