METEOR (1979)

A pissed off comet punches a large asteroid in the nuts and now that 5-mile-wide sucker (plus various smaller fragments) is going to hit the Earth in 6 days! Ahh, crap. Luckily, the Americans have a top-secret satellite with 14 nuclear missiles on it. Unfortunately, 14 missiles isn’t enough to stop the asteroid from evolving into a…meteor!!!

On paper, METEOR sounds like a promising film: exciting story (anything about shit crashing into the Earth is awesome); a cast full of well-known faces (at least for the time) and a respectable budget of $16 million (remember ALIEN came out the same year and only cost $11 million). But on paper doesn’t guarantee on-screen excellence. Nope. I have no clue what happened in the making of this clunker, but METEOR is a goddamn turd! I haven’t been this disappointed since the last time I walked into a Best Buy.

The story takes off quickly enough with Hercules satellite designer Sean Connery being informed of the asteroid and put in charge of getting Hercules ready to blast that global killing son of a bitch out of the sky. At the same time, US President Henry Fonda gets Russia to admit that they also have a top-secret satellite armed with nuclear missiles. So the Russians send over a scientist and Sean Connery immediately starts trying to bang interpreter Natalie Wood. Motherfucker, ain’t you got better shit to focus on?! Blah, blah, blah, it goes on and on with all kinds of conversations and romance and bickering. Fuck me. I just want to see some sappy ass heroics and shit blowing up. And don’t even get me started on the special effects. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century looked better.

Long story, short: METEOR is mildly entertaining and fun to laugh at, but if you’re looking for an actually good late-1970’s asteroid story then A FIRE IN THE SKY would be a better bet. Or, you could always just say fuck it and watch ARMAGEDDON again for the hundredth time.

CITY ON FIRE (1979)

The star-studded cast can't hide the fact that the story for this movie suuuuuccckkkks.  After being introduced to all of the (bland) characters, we're finally treated to this nameless city blowing the fuck up (thanks to a disgruntled oil refinery employee) and...it's pretty boring.  Poorly photographed explosions mixed in with stock footage.  The story eventually focuses in on some firemen's efforts to rescue the people trapped in a hospital and...that's boring as well.  In fact, there's nothing about CITY ON FIRE that isn't boring!  Boring script, boring special effects, boring photography, boring acting.  I really enjoy disaster movies, but CITY ON FIRE straight-up bored me to death.  Which is a shame since Henry Fonda and Shelley Winters are both amazing talents (just watch MISTER ROBERTS or A PLACE IN THE SUN if you don't believe me), but they are strictly on auto-pilot here.  Collecting a paycheck.

Outside of morbid curiosity or self-hatred, I can't think of too many reasons to ever subject yourself to this overcooked turkey.  Skip it with a vengeance.

According to Box Office Mojo, CITY ON FIRE cost $5.3 million to make and only brought in $784,000.  That's kinda funny.

Eating egg shells.