(1978/New World Pictures) DVD / VHS
Rave Reviews
“Goofy pleasure [is] to be derived from Roger Corman’s big star snowjob.”
—Edward Margulies and Stephen Rebello, Bad Movies We Love
“Stupid entry in one of the worst genres ever created, the disaster film.” — TV Guide’s Movie Guide
“No better than TV movies of this same kind, especially as it resorts for its climaxes to scratched old stock film.”
—Halliwell’s Film & Video Guide
Plot, What Plot? The true all-star disaster movies of the 1970s each had their own guilty pleasures. I still recall with relish the nasty look I received from an elderly couple when I applauded wildly as Jennifer Jones fell to her death from a flaming elevator in The Towering Inferno. But any genre that proves as successful as Irwin Allen’s round-up-a-bunch-of-big-names-and-put-’em-all-in-peril formula eventually engenders ever cheaper, cheesier, and more chowder-headed imitations. And perhaps the nadir of the disaster genre is king-of-the-cheapies Roger Corman’s Avalanche.
Having produced his first film, Monster from the Ocean Floor, for the staggeringly low budget of just $18,000, Corman clearly knew how to squeeze blood from a nickel. And if anyone involved with this film received more than five cents for their efforts, they were overpaid. Our central character is a starting-to-sag Rock Hudson, as a blowhard developer about to open a multimillion-dollar mountain ski resort. The first of many budget-conscious effects is the view of the looming mountain outside Hudson’s office window: It looks about as convincing as the Paramount logo (except that logo actually has stars in it!). Beyond the pressures of being, as Rock’s devoted mom, Jeanette Nolan, puts it, “up to his ass in celebrities” planning his gala event, Hudson is also all atwitter because his ex-wife will be attending the festivities. But if Hudson is starting to sag, Mia Farrow as Rock’s ex-wife is already decomposing. With purplish, paper-thin skin hanging in bags below her eyes, Farrow looks like the mommy of Rosemary’s Baby may be sleep-deprived and expecting again.
Enter Robert Forster as a nature photographer and environmentalist, who tries to warn everyone about a potential avalanche by declaring, “There’s a heaviness and it’s growing. I can feel it!” Among those contributing to that heaviness are stock/stick figures like a studly male champion skier, a nymphomaniacal figure skater who looks (intentionally, we’re sure) like Peggy Fleming and talks like Marie Osmond, a TV reporter covering the “excitement” whose loony lush of an ex-wife is carrying on with the male skier, and assorted other has-beens, never-weres, and never-coulda-beens.
Hudson himself brings about the big snow job when he orders an associate to fly through a blizzard to the mountaintop, whereupon the tiny jet crashes into the mountain. The ensuing 10-minute sequence depicting the actual avalanche is a marvel of spend-next-to-nothing thriftiness. Stock shots of actual avalanches are intercut with double exposures showing people buried under “chunks of ice” (which actually look like giant Sugar-Frosted Shredded Wheats). There are several moments where it looks like powdered sugar pumped through a vacuum in reverse is inundating crowds of “terrified” victims. Once the snow has hit the fan, the digging-out process begins, getting off to a bang when a gas pipe in the resort’s kitchen blows, resulting in the single funniest over-the-top explosion stunt in cinema history.
Dug out from an ice cave, Nolan is loaded into an ambulance, demanding a Bloody Mary instead of an oxygen mask. Farrow rides with her ex-mother-in-law, but the ambulance, apparently being driven by Evel Knievel, spins out of control and careens off a mountain bridge. Nolan and the driver wind up as toast in the crevasse below, and Farrow is left hanging by a thread, much like her career after this turkey. Will Rock or Robert—or both of them—save 78-pound Mia from falling to her death? Will Rock and Mia be reunited at the end? And most importantly, will anyone be able to sit through this Avalanche of overacting without laughing so hard they could make their own yellow snow?
Dippy Dialogue
Hudson’s assistant (Steve Franken): “It’s always uphill to get to the top!”
Hudson’s mom (Jeanette Nolan): “If I had the strength, I’d write that down …”
Choice Chapter Stop
Chapter 10 (“Avalanche!”): The meat and potatoes of the film, including the hilarious kitchen-help-blown-all-to-hell stunt sequence.