AVALANCHE (1978): Roger Corman's Snow Job

AVALANCHE (1978)

Starring Rock Hudson, Mia Farrow, Robert Forster, Jeanette Nolan, Rick Moses, Barry Primus. Directed by Corey Allen. 91 min

Essay by D.M. Anderson💀

In the 1970s, the phenomenal box office success of early disaster movie classics Airport and The Poseidon Adventure prompted studios to keep striking while the iron was hot. Those films begat Earthquake and The Towering Inferno, which in turn begat lower-tier efforts such as The Hindenburg and The Cassandra Crossing. The latter two still boasted all-star casts of fading A-listers and young up-and-comers, but there was a noticeable dip in overall quality, both technically and narratively.

Ironically, the free-spending producer-director responsible for two of the biggest blockbusters in the genre, Irwin Allen, suddenly turned miserly, abusing his “Master of Disaster” moniker to crank out The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. They still boasted big casts, but every other aspect reflected a conscious effort to throw them together as fast and cheap as possible.

Speaking of cheap, it was around this time that B-movie mavens Samuel Z. Arkoff and Roger Corman jumped on the bandwagon. Arkoff’s American-International Pictures actually opened their wallets pretty wide for 1979’s Meteor, managing to nab a decent cast (including Sean Connery and Natalie Wood), though the rest of the film was slapdash and silly (but admittedly kind of fun). However, Meteor is The Towering Inferno compared to Avalanche, released the previous year by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures (AIP’s main competition for drive-in dominance during the 1970s).

Roger Corman

And God bless the late Mr. Corman, the prolific mini-mogul who never met a blockbuster he couldn’t rip-off for a fraction of the money. In the wake of Star Wars, he produced Battle Beyond the Stars, a not-half-bad space opera that also borrowed elements of Seven Samurai. Before 1975’s Rollerball was even released, Corman got wind of it and cranked out the daffy Death Race 2000, which was often more entertaining than the film that inspired it. 1978’s Piranha, his inevitable Jaws rip-off, has since become something of a classic itself.

Avalanche isn’t actually Corman’s first attempt to grab a slice of the disaster pie. In 1975, he bought the rights to the Japanese film, Submersion of Japan, added new footage with American actors and released it as Tidal Wave. Predictably, the result was utter shit. More predictably, it made a tidy profit with little real investment.

But even though Avalanche’s budget was bigger than nearly every previous New World picture, it’s still a bargain basement bottom dweller, one of the low points of the entire disaster genre. Its biggest marquee name, Rock Hudson, was yet another one-time leading man whose star had lost much of its luster (though the TV show, McMillan & Wife, briefly resuscitated his career). He plays David Shelby, the controlling, bull headed owner of a new ski resort who refuses to heed warnings from nature photographer Nick Thorne (Robert Forster) that the entire mountain is unstable and prone to avalanches. 

So despite Hudson’s top billing, he is the main antagonist throughout most of the film. It’s a weird, angry performance, and not just because of the character, who’s creepily obsessed with ex-wife Caroline Brace (Mia Farrow). Hudson himself looks resentful to be appearing in such a sloppy cinema suppository, perhaps lamenting that Paul Newman and Charlton Heston got big paydays for The Towering Inferno and Earthquake while he’s relegated to dodging styrofoam snowballs and ogling his topless secretary.

Rock has a word with his agent.

Farrow is far removed from her star making performance in Rosemary’s Baby a decade earlier, required to do little but reject Shelby’s advances and flirt with Thorne, who, by default, is the main protagonist because he’s the only one concerned about impending disaster. Other bland characters exist either to die, hop between the sheets or join Shelby in poo-pooing Thorne’s warnings. Subplots abound…none of them interesting (though Cathey Paine is an unintentional hoot as the insanely jealous girlfriend of a philandering Olympic skier).

The avalanche is triggered when a plane - ordered by Shelby to bring one of his business partners to the resort - crashes into the mountain (I’m not exactly sure where it was expected to land in the first place, since ski resorts don’t generally come equipped with runways). It’s at this point when the viewer might have their hopes up that the disaster itself will make the laborious first hour worth enduring. After all, even The Swarm had enjoyable moments of fiery destruction. However, the chintzy special effects and stock footage are simply a reminder that we’re watching typical cut-rate Corman. But as hilariously bad as the effects are, AIP thought some were good enough to reuse in Meteor when that film ran over budget.

Once the resort is buried, the remainder of the story sees Shelby suddenly turning selfless and heroic as he leads the charge to dig his co-stars out of the styrofoam, including his bubbly mother (Jeanette Nolan), yet another superfluous character who serves no purpose other than to be put in peril. Elsewhere, even rescue vehicles end up crashing & burning in incidents totally unrelated to the avalanche. As for the movie’s presumed hero, Thorne doesn’t actually do anything particularly heroic. Though Forster’s grounded performance isn’t half bad, he’s pretty scarce throughout most of the final act. 

Unlike most of Roger Corman’s other low budget rip-offs, Avalanche was a box office bomb, coming-and-going in theaters in the blink of an eye. Sure, part of the reason could have been the disaster genre’s waning popularity at the time. But mainly, it’s simply a bad movie with a trainwreck quality that's good for some unintended chuckles (it also inspired a pretty good Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode a few years ago).