Ever since The Towering Inferno blew by 11-year-old mind when I saw it in a theater back in 1975, I’ve been a die hard disaster movie fan.
The seventies were a great era for the genre and I caught nearly every cinematic catastrophe cranked out during the decade…the blockbusters (Earthquake), the bombs (Meteor), the sequels (Airports 1975-79), the satires (The Big Bus), the hybrids (The Medusa Touch), the historical (The Hindenburg), the crappy (Avalanche), the cash grabs (Tidal Wave), the Canadian (City on Fire) and everything in between.
What I didn’t see in theaters I watched on TV, mostly films released before I caught the disaster bug, such as the original Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, The Neptune Factor and Krakatoa: East of Java (which it isn’t). By the time both Airplane! and Irwin Allen nearly killed the genre in the early ‘80s, I thought I had seen everything.
Even today, disaster films (and the tropes & cliches attributed to them) are largely regarded as a 1970s phenomenon, though there was a brief resurgence in the 90s with such mayhem as Twister, Deep Impact, Daylight, Volcano, Dante’s Peak, Armageddon, Hard Rain and, of course, James Cameron’s Titanic, the only disaster movie to ever win a Best Picture Oscar. They still pop-up now and then, some good (The Day After Tomorrow), some great (Greenland) and some so bad they’re great (Moonfall). There have also been some awesome ones from around the world. Norway’s The Wave, Russia’s batshit Air Crew and South Korea’s The Tower are as entertaining as anything Hollywood has dished out lately.
Still, disasters movies aren't made as frequently as they used to be. It’s easy to understand why. Unless it’s a SyFy Channel cheapie, these things are expensive, and considering they’ve never been a particularly respected genre, kind of a financial gamble. But similar to westerns, the genre never disappeared completely. Like a volcano, it just lays dormant from time to time.
Nor did it begin with Airport in the 70s. There have been a lot of disaster films throughout history, some dating all the way back to the silent era. And I’m still trying to catch them all, which has turned into a true labor of love over the years. It’s been a lot of fun going further and further back through time to discover The Devil at 4 O’Clock, The Last Voyage, Zero Hour (the initial inspiration for Airplane!), Crack in the World and no less than four movies about the sinking of Titanic (including one that’s essentially Nazi propaganda). There have been fact-based masterpieces (A Night to Remember), musical melodramas (San Francisco) and the flat-out bizarre (Deluge).
But what was the first pure disaster movie? By ‘pure,’ I mean the one that first incorporated story elements, melodrama and subplots we still typically associate with the genre (for better or worse). The one that emphasizes destructive spectacle and perfunctory characters in equal measures. Going even further back in time, that movie might be 1926’s The Johnstown Flood, a fictionalized account of the Great Flood of 1889 in Pennsylvania.
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| Someone should have prayed harder. |
There are also personal complications, of course. What disaster movie (from any era) would be complete without them? In this case, Tom is in love with Hamilton’s daughter, Gloria (Florence Gilbert), and plans to marry her while Dad’s out of town. But there’s a potential love triangle brewing as well. Young Anna Burger (Janet Gaynor) is also madly in love with Tom, though he seems to be unaware. However, Anna’s gruff, hulking father, Joe (Paul Panzer), is convinced Tom has lecherous intentions for his impressionable daughter. This leads to a few amusing misunderstandings.
As Tom and Gloria are getting married in the town church, the dam bursts. Torrents of water take out a moving train as it cascades toward town. The train scene is especially satisfying because Hamilton happens to be on-board, finally reaping what he sowed. Anna, still concerned for Tom's safety even after realizing he loves Gloria, rides a horse into town to try and save him, shouting warnings to everyone along the way. But for the most part, it’s too late. In a lengthy sequence, Johnstown is consumed by the deluge…buildings are destroyed, thousands are killed.
Considering it was made in 1926, the climactic destruction of Johnstown is pretty spectacular, filmed in Santa Cruz, California and mostly done using miniatures and photographic effects. We have to wade through a lot of pre-catastrophe melodrama beforehand. But unlike San Francisco or In Old Chicago, which provide absolutely no foreshadowing before disaster strikes, the genuine fear expressed by Tom (and other characters) throughout the film creates underlying tension in seemingly innocuous scenes.
Tom serves the same purpose as Doug Roberts in The Towering Inferno, Captain Harrison in The Poseidon Adventure and Walter Russell in Earthquake…the sole voice of reason whose boss is either too greedy or stupid to take him seriously. Conversely, Hamilton arguably begins the time-honored disaster film tradition of self-serving bad guys getting the poetic justice they deserve.
Not surprisingly, most of the stars of The Johnstown Flood had their heyday during the silent era (though Janet Gaynor would later win an Oscar). But interestingly enough, the film also includes several others who’d eventually become Hollywood icons. None other than Gary Cooper, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard appear uncredited as extras or in bit parts. If this film were being made just ten years later, the roles would probably be reversed.
Though I wouldn’t rank it among the greatest disaster films, The Johnstown Flood is a vital part of the genre’s history, and not just because of the groundbreaking scenes of destruction (though they are the best part). The narrative elements, tropes and archetypes that made me fall in love with disaster in the first place are all here in abundance.
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