Apparently, the rescuers arriving in the final frames of 1972’s The Poseidon Adventure stuck around for all of 15 minutes, because when Irwin Allen’s sequel begins the same day of the topsy-turvy event, the once-mighty ship and all its innards are up for grabs. This time around, our ostensible heroes are the aptly named Turner (Michael Caine, having learned nothing from The Swarm), captain of a mortgage-hilted tugboat; his salty right-hand man (Karl Malden, Meteor); and flibbertigibbet Celeste (Sally Field, Smokey and the Bandit), who might be a prostitute.
On New Year’s Day, Turner and crew arrive at Poseidon’s wreckage to salvage all the jewels and money. They’re not alone, either, because posing as medical rescue personnel are a terrorist (a super-suave, snot-slick Telly Savalas, Killer Force) and his goons, seeking barrels of plutonium. Everybody crawls inside, thus beginning what amounts to the Poseidon as haunted house and/or escape room, with each character taking turns climbing ladders, crossing makeshift bridges, dodging flames, leaping over holes and — in Turner’s case only — referring to Celeste as “Monkey.”
Members of the all-star cast balloon as the group goes further (and then decrease accordingly with each set piece). Among them are a mouthy bar owner (Young Frankenstein’s Peter Boyle in a pink puffy shirt), a blind man (Jack Warden, Used Cars), a farmer (Mark Harmon in a bowl cut) and, playing against type, White Line Fever’s Slim Pickens as a quantum physicist.
I’m totally kidding. Pickens plays a wino named Tex who says things like, “I smell grub! … All kinds of vittles!”
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure harbors a bad reputation, and while it’s not up to the excitement of the original, it’s not a waterlogged failure if judged on sheer spectacle. If Beyond is guilty of one thing above all else, it’s being late to the game; audiences were simply tired of the disaster movie by 1979, whereas seven years before, the first Poseidon Adventure garnered eight Oscar nominations. It’s not like Allen veered creatively from his bread-and-butter formula in this follow-up, sticking with the kablooey effects, obstacle-course sets and teeter-totter acting as the camera turns to and fro. Nevertheless, this sunk his career as director. —Rod Lott