Holden and Newman are back together again, baby!!! Hell yeah. This time, instead of fighting a towering inferno, they're fighting, well, actually they're just running like hell from a pissed off volcano. And that's about it. The End.
WHEN TIME RAN OUT... is alright. I don't like the three dots at the end of the title, but the location photography in Hawaii is beautiful and the build-up stuff is fun. William Holden is a rich dude and very busy, so when his hotel manager guy, James Franciscus, tells him everything is okay, he believes him. So what if the volcano right next door to the hotel is smoking and lava's bubbling like it's a fucking witches cauldron. That's nature, baby!
And the volcano ain't the only thing blowing it's load around here...Holden proposes to his secretary (Jacqueline Bisset), but she's secretly seeing local oil man (Paul Newman); Franciscus is cheating on his wife (Holden's goddaughter) with a hotel employee who happens to be engaged to another employee who is secretly Franciscus' illegitimate half-brother!!! What the hell? That's a lot to take in. It's awesome and so pointless! I love it.
Poor looking special effects, medium pace that actually gets slower as the film goes on, random tidal wave, Jacqueline Bisset in a low cut t-shirt, people crowding a helicopter like it's a zombie movie, zero nudity, a glass-bottomed elevator thing that actually lowers people down into the volcano(!!!), lava bombs, silly story. Honestly, the best thing about WHEN TIME RAN OUT... is the cast. The movie's not very good (it kinda feels like an old made-for-TV movie), but it's fun watching all of these big names running around. (Red Buttons' speed walk is goddamn hilarious!) I have no regrets about watching it and will most likely watch it again occasionally...at least the first two acts. The third kinda stunk.
Rumor has it WHEN TIME RAN OUT... had a budget of $20 million and brought in less than $4 million at the box office. Ouch.
Post-review thoughts: I have absolutely nothing to back this up, but while watching the film, I kept thinking to myself that the character of Mona seemed like it would be perfect for Shelley Winters. The actress even seemed to act a little bit like Shelley, at least to me. It wasn't until later that I discovered the actress, Sheila Allen, was actually producer Irwin Allen's wife.
