RAISE THE TITANIC (1980)

"It's just laying there! Move, you bastard, move!"

With the popularity of the 1970's disaster phase waning and audiences demanding more fantastic blockbusters (like SUPERMAN, STAR WARS and STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE) what better time was it to sink $40 million into a slow-moving film about the wreckage of the Titanic?!  Keep in mind, the same year's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK only had a budget of $18 million!  Another thing that puzzled me was 1977's all-star AIRPORT '77 (which not only featured a commercial airplane being raised from the ocean floor, but was also directed by Jerry Jameson!) only brought in $30 million...so why would the filmmakers of this film think that retooling basically the same story with even less star power would make more money?!

The entire story behind the making of this movie would be fascinating to hear.  Like...what was the logic behind financing this film?  Looking back on it now, it sounds like a completely insane idea...and it was.  RAISE THE TITANIC cost a reported $40 million to make and only brought in $7 million at the box office.

So, we established that RAISE THE TITANIC was a financial disaster, but is it a good film?

Ehh, not really.  I enjoyed the beginning, but once the story got going, it quickly became too silly and slow-moving for it's own good.  Long story short: the American government needs a rare mineral (the fictional "byzanium") for a full-proof nationwide missile defense program.  Unfortunately, the only known location of the amount of byzanium needed for the project is in the cargo hold of the Titanic.  Don't ask.  The whole story is ridiculous and only gets more ridiculous when the government decides the best way to retrieve the cases of byzanium is to first locate the Titanic and then raise that big bitch out of Poseidon's underwater sex dungeon and drive it back to New York City.

And if all that wasn't enough: On top of wildly convoluted story (how about instead of a bunch seahorse shit about a government defense program, you just have rich guy who simply wants to raise the Titanic?), there's the exceedingly pointless love triangle between the two men in charge of the program and a female newspaper reporter!  And don't forget about the Russians!  Or Alec Guinness who's listed in the opening credits, but is only on the screen for less than 6 minutes.  The script for this movie is a mind-blowingly wonderful train wreck.  I can't quit thinking about how dumb the whole thing is.

Overall, being a box office bomb doesn't make RAISE THE TITANIC into a bad movie, it's the dumb story, slow pace and poorly written script that make RAISE THE TITANIC a lame movie.  But then again, I pre-ordered the blu-ray, so what the fuck do I know?

THE DAY AFTER (1983)

"What's going on? Do you understand what's going on in this world?"

"Yeah. Stupidity...has a habit of getting it's way."

As the story goes, THE DAY AFTER was a huge cultural TV event when it was originally broadcast (on ABC) just a few days before Thanksgiving on November 20, 1983.  It was reportedly watched by over 100 million Americans.  Which, considering there was only 233 million Americans around back then, is pretty goddamn impressive!

Opening with some documentary style footage of American military guys talking really super serious while onboard an Strategic Air Command aircraft, the story then shifts to the lives of various simple Americans living their lives in the towns along the border of Kansas and Missouri.  You got Jason Robards as doctor with a loving family; Steve Guttenberg as a student; JoBeth Williams as a nurse; John Cullum as the head of a family that lives on a large farm and John Lithgow as a professor.  For 45 minutes or so, we're brought up to speed on these people's lives.  The whole time there's various news reports playing in the background talking about the growing tensions with Russia.  People are scared, but they go about their normal lives and then...BOOM!  Nuclear missiles start flying out of the nearby silos and all Hell breaks loose.  People start rioting and trying to get out of town, but before you can say "radioactive baboon testicles" the Russian missiles reach their targets and it's "Goodbye, Kansas."

Everything blows the fuck up and the people that are left after the smoke clears are all fucked up.  Not as fucked up as the survivors in the next year's THREADS, but still screwed all the same.  Radiation sickness, lack of food, lawlessness, no shelter from the elements, no more Netflix.  It's Hell on Earth, but unfortunately since this is a made-for-network-TV movie we never see much more than a mass grave and unwashed people with their hair falling out.  The story is dark, but the events shown on-screen are tame.

Still, it's a good movie and a very interesting glimpse into early 1980's American culture.  Especially, if you go online and look for videos of all of the original commercial breaks shown during the original broadcast and then watch the ABC News special that showed immediately after the movie.  Hosted by Ted Koppel and featuring Carl Sagan, then current Secretary of State George Shultz,  former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, William F. Buckley, Jr., former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, General Brent Scowcroft  and Elie Wiesel.  It's a fascinating watch and the one female audience members question (around the 45 minute mark) is even more important today than it was in 1983.

Above average acting (even by Steve Guttenberg), restrained script, mediocre direction, an unwed woman arguing with her teenage sister about her diaphragm, bland camerawork, cool explosion scenes (I loved the skeleton effects), disappointing ending.  THE DAY AFTER isn't the best nuclear war movie ever, but it does play an interesting part in world history in that it helped bring attention to the subjects of nuclear war and nuclear winter.  Definitely worth watching.

If you need me, I'll be in my fallout shelter wearing my Church of the Children of Atom robes and praying to Atom that HBO will make a high-budget, CHERNOBYL-level miniseries based on the Robert McCammon masterpiece, "Swan Song".

Maybe I'm giving the filmmakers too much credit, but when the silo doors opened up and the nuclear missiles started blasting off, they showed this white horse and it brought to mind how in the Bible, Revelation 6:1-2 says: "And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.  And I saw, and behold a white horse..."