Supelice
Dreadfully Boring
Comwayon
A Disappointing Continuation
Frances Chung
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Coventry
Hooray, another 70's disaster flick! I love them so much that I put up my own sort of five-point checklist for this genre. Five little traits to see whether a film is a cheesy and clichéd 'so-bad-it's-good' blockbuster guff … Or a surprisingly atypical and innovative hidden gem! The best thing about this checklist is that the audience always wins, regardless of the particular film passes or fails the test. If a film scores 3 points or more, you're guaranteed to have found an undemanding but fun popcorn film. If the film scores less, you might just have stumbled upon an original disaster film full of genuine shocks and effective surprise twists. "The Cassandra Crossing" scores pretty high on the scale, alas it's a prototypic 70's disaster movie with all the commonly known clichés and stereotypical characters. In all honesty I must admit I was hoping for a much better film in this case, however. The concept of a bacterial virus spreading itself amongst the unsuspecting passengers of an intercontinental express train offers so much potential greatness. There isn't any setting more appropriate for a disaster movie than an inescapable, claustrophobic high speed train! Unfortunately, the plot almost immediately reverts to all the dire clichés of traditional American disaster flicks. This is a European co- production and thus should have formed the unique occasion to handle things a little bit differently; like "Bullet Train" and "Virus" did for the Japanese disaster movies. We have a cast full of stereotypical characters muttering the most pitiably banal dialogs you can imagine (albeit they're all A-list stars and starlets), absurdly grotesque action sequences that might as well feature in any other disaster movie ever made, lousy attempts to evoke sentiments of empathy and plot twists you can see coming from multiple countries away. A Trio of Swedish terrorists break into the buildings of the International Health Organization in Geneva to plant a bomb, but their incentive fails thanks to some very alert security guards. Two of them die at the spot, but the third one escapes although exposed up close to bacteria containing a deadly and highly contagious pneumonic plague. The infected terrorist hops on the Intercontinental Express from Geneva to Stockholm, where he naturally comes into contact with many of the passengers, including children, a prominent neurologist and his ex-wife, a spoiled rich woman and her younger tomboy and an oddly behaving priest. Although local scientists are working hard to find a cure, the American Colonel McKenzie is very reluctant to call off the quarantine and even ordered for the train to alter its route towards a notorious former concentration camp in Poland via the ramshackle Cassandra Crossing. I'm not entirely sure if it were intentional (actually, I hope not) but George P. Cosmatos' script contains a few elements that leave a sour aftertaste. Basically the innocent plague carriers are being transported towards annihilation, like Jewish people were during WWII. I truly hope he's not comparing the victims of both situations.
wes-connors
Terrorists spread the Plague on an all-star cast aboard a luxurious European train. After a fairly decent opening, the star-studded cast gets down to the task at hand, making you bored silly. In the underwear scene sweepstakes, Sophia Loren easily beats Martin Sheen (Ann Turkel and Ray Lovelock are disqualified, for not showing enough). Richard Harris portrays a doctor. O.J. Simpson masquerades as a priest. Lee Strasberg impersonates an actor. Burt Lancaster and Ingrid Thulin aren't actually on the plague-infected train, but look pained anyway. In the softest focus, Ava Gardner appears to be having some fun. If only Lionel Stander did an impression of Hervé Villechaize exclaiming, "The plague, the plague!" they'd have had a potential comedy, instead of a disaster.*** The Cassandra Crossing (12/18/76) George P. Cosmatos ~ Sophia Loren, Richard Harris, Martin Sheen, Ava Gardner
John T. Ryan
THE DISASTER Movie is a sub-genre of the Action/Drama hybrid that seems to go on being popular down through the years. Decade after decade, we find stories of terrible impending occurrences and the number of diverse characters, perfect strangers, who find themselves caught up in the dangerous, deadly happenings; which ironically bring the varied and disparate personalities together and often in great dependence on each other's care and vigilance.AS FAR as ancestry of the film type, we can only guess; but it surely can trace at least a portion of its lineage back to the earliest days of the cinema. Even the movies of the by then well established filmmakers of the early 1920's realized the great potential in story telling that could be realized via the road to filmed disaster.EVEN the great Cecil B. DeMille applied the disaster element in his first version of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount Pictures, 1923); where he made the story both Biblical & Historical as well as Contemporary by the use of flashback from modern contemporary times to the age of Moses.TRACING the family tree of the disaster movie brings to light such titles as THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY (????/Warner Brothers, 1954), AIRPORT ( ) and its clones, the "Sensurround" laden EARTHQUAKE (????/Universal,197?) And a minor matinée pot-boiler called ZERO HOUR (Paramount, 1957), which oddly enough gave birth to the low budgeted, big hit sensation, AIRPLANE (Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker/Paramount, 197?).THE DISASTER Movie can even trace its roots to John Ford's STAGECOACH (?????, 1939), which had all the elements; the only difference being that the tragedy isn't caused by either man-made malfunctioning of transport mode or natural causes, but by the impending attack by local hostiles.TODAY'S HONOREE, THE CASSANDRA CROSSING ( ), is one more obvious title to come out of those 1970's "new" and "more relevant" and "more realistic" school of film. The production is spectacularly mounted, with some of the truly most beautiful outdoor scenery to be captured for a non-nature film. One certainly cannot fault the Production Team as being too tight with the purse strings; for they put together a spectacularly talented and well known international cast.READING THE Cast listing one finds such notables at the top of the bill as: Sophia Loren, Richard Harris, Martin Sheehan, Orenthal James Simpson ( "O.J." to you, Schultz), Lionel Stander (off the Blacklist), Anne Turkel, Ingrid Thulin, Mr. Lee Strasberg (master of The Actors' Studio in rare film appearance), Ava Gardner (no Schultz, not the Ava from GREEN ACRES), Burt Lancaster, Lou Castel (where's Abbott?), John Phillip Law, Ray Lovelock, …etc., etc., etc.,………..ANOTHER positive element is the inclusion of Jerry Goldsmith as the Composer for the Original Score for the film. Mr. Goldsmith's composition of both the Overture (theme) and the Incidental Music is on Parr with his other work. The prolific Goldsmith was responsible for a veritable treasure trove of beautifully rendered scores. Perhaps some of the most notable original compositions would (arguably) be: PATTON (20th Century-Fox, 1970), PAPILLION (Corona-General/Solar/Allied Artists, 1973) and RUDY (Tri-Star Pictures, 1993).ATTENTION!! WARNING!! CUIDADO!! LOOKENZEE OUTENZEE!! Could be a SPOILER a comin' up!! OUR STORY……….A passenger train which is carrying a real mixed bag of passengers, which most any self-respecting disaster film would do, is making a crossing of the Alps from Switzerland into northern Italy. A terrorist purposely spreads some deadly strain of virus throughout the train and its passengers, which would normally require a state of Quarantine. The train keeps on traveling and somehow or other comes under the jurisdiction of Lt. Colonel Stephen Mackenzie (Burt L.), U.S. Army, NATO Forces.BECAUSE OF THE Highly Contagious and deadly disease, the Lt. Colonel allows the train to continue on its way to the unsafe bridge works that lie ahead of it. There the train would surely crash; killing both all on board as well as ridding Mackenzie of the problem of dealing with a potential epidemic.OF COURSE, the battle hardened and cold-blooded military man couldn't have known that the presence of some Physicians on board miraculously provided the train crew and passengers with a cure for the infectious malady by using pure oxygen inhalation. (There is another twist, but we'll not tell here!) AS FINE of a production as this picture is, and as interesting as certain of the scenes and sequences are, we cannot give it a full and unconditional endorsement; for we disdain the heavy and underhanded-handed method in which its highly one-sided, "subtle", little message is sprung on its unsuspecting audiences. It is clearly one of an Anti-Military and America Hating. It is crystal clear that this is the crux of the hidden persuaders contained within.WE FIND this sort of loading of the story with a highly charged, one-sided and distorted view of what is the responsibility of authorities in general and the Military of the United States of America to be deplorable, deceitful and deeply harmful to unsuspecting viewers.AT least a can of poison has the written warning, the antidote and the ever present skull & cross bones to give proper warning.AS for our Grade, both Schultz and hid good buddy (me) say * ½ or a D-on its Report Card.POODLE SCHNITZ!!
whitec-3
The description "camp" means more than simply a bad or bungled film. Something must draw the eye; some pop-culture elements for cross-reference help; dumb novelty helps. Cassandra Crossing has it all!To draw the eye: The Euro train, landscape, fashions, and cosmopolitan cast of hundreds, but especially Sophia Loren and Richard Harris in their mature prime. No chemistry, but what bods! Pop-culture elements, specifically NFL running backs as big-cast stars. Jim Brown's sentimental-sacrificial-negro-in-action highlight came in The Dirty Dozen, where he ran in his familiar style, but this time stuffing handgrenades into chimneys to deal death to cold, strutting, Jesse Owens-resenting Nazi supermen--only to be cut down by a mercilessly efficient German machine gun. Sob!--no fair! 10 years later in Cassandra Crossing, former running back OJ picks up cute little girl and runs her into safe part of the train, only to be mowed down by whoever those bad guys were.Dumb novelty: In an earlier comment TrevorAclea praised Cassandra Crossing for "what is easily the best transfer of a sick Basset hound from a moving train to a helicopter before the train hits a tunnel action set-piece in screen history." Given the size of CC's cast, who could predict that an uncredited beagle would receive so much screen time? Or that the spectre of human suffering would be displaced to a dog whose water dish is infected by a sweaty Swedish pervert-terrorist? Further displacing, after the helicopter transfer the mournful but lovable pooch appears repeatedly on General Lancaster's video screen, where Dr. Ingrid Thulin pronounces the canine to be "slipping into a coma." Then, just after the train's threatened hippie chick is announced to be hungry, we see the beagle in miraculous recovery, drinking fresh water in quarantine from sweaty Swedish pervert-terrorists. Where else to witness such unexpected, extended attention to a hound's endurance and triumph but in the Cassandra Crossing?!
