Best Disaster Movies

4 September 2008

This week sees Disaster Movie hit the big screen and follows the comic misadventures of a group of ridiculously attractive twenty-somethings during one fateful night as they try to make their way to safety while every known natural disaster and catastrophic event - asteroids, twisters and earthquakes.

But here at FemaleFirst we looked back over the disaster movies that have influenced the latest spoof movie to look at the best movies that depicted the world's demise.

Towering Inferno

It wasn't aliens or freak weather that was to blame for the disaster that struck in Towering Inferno but man overreaching as new state of the art one hundred and thirty storey sky scraper catches fire.

A courageous fire captain on the outside and the desperate architect trapped inside struggle to save the three hundred guests from the fire created by their greedy manipulations.

The film brought together an impressive cast of Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire and O.J. Simpson and went on to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.

The Towering Inferno followed in the footsteps of The Poseidon Adventure that had enjoyed major box office success and studios were seeing an audience for the disaster epic.

The disaster epic was born as studios pump in millions for their budget as well as featuring big casts and dazzling special effects.

The Poseidon Adventure

The Poseidon Adventure is arguably the best known disaster movie and was originally released in 1972 and based on the novel by Paul Gallico.

The film follows the passenger on a luxurious ocean liner that capsizes after being hit by a tidal wave and the desperate struggle of those that survive to journey to the bottom of the hull of the liner before it sinks.

A huge box office success, it was the top grossing film of 1972. The success of this film is in the vein of other all-star disaster films in the seventies such as Airport (1970) and later films like The Towering Inferno (1974), and Earthquake (1974).

In 2006 the film was remade with a $150 million budget but was met negatively by the critics despite going on to do well at the box office.

War of the Worlds

While the 1953 movie may not be the first movie that springs to mind when you think disaster movies but H.G. Wells' novel does follow an alien invasion whose sole purpose is to destroy the human race.

The film is credited with kicking off cinema audiences fascination with disaster film as well as kicking off the sci-fi craze.

But in 2005 War of the World got the big budget blockbuster make over as the aliens invaded earth with vengeance.

Spielberg delivered a movie laden with special effects and fast paced action sequences that was the event movie of the summer.

Independence Day

1996 release Independence Day was the film that paved the way for the modern disaster movie, as well as truly launching the career of one Mr Will Smith.

Roland Emmerich's big budget science fiction film about a hostile alien invasion of Earth.

Smith leads a group of individuals and families as they converge in the Nevada desert and, along with the rest of the human population, participate in a last-chance retaliation effort on July 4.

The film was a critical and commercial hit and went on to gross over $816 million at the international box office which was, at the time, the second highest grossing movie of all time.

The Day After Tomorrow

A second Roland Emmerich movie The Day After Tomorrow is one of the most successful disaster movies in recent years when it was released in 2004.

Like many of the movies that had gone before it it brought together an impressive cast of Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emmy Rossum and Ian Holm.

While drilling ice cores in the Antarctica climatologist Jack Hall discovers that ten thousand years ago, a global warming changed the earth's climate into the Ice Age and he predicts that this will happen again in 100 to 1000 years time if we don't protect the planet.

The world's climate system changes for the worst. Tokyo is hit by softball size hail; it begins to snow in New Delhi; and Los Angeles is destroyed by a group of tornadoes that hit all at the same time.