Disaster movies are as old as film itself, and their evolution in the 20th century is remarkable. From Fire! (1901), a recording of firemen tackling a burning house, to the CGI imagery of Titanic (1997), the highest-grossing disaster film of all time, innovative filmmakers have pushed the limits of technology to bring the public stirring images of spectacular destruction. It doesn't even really matter if the event is even plausible. For every disaster film grounded in reality, like Earthquake, there's another that leaves reality in the dust (unless you are adamant that Armageddon could happen). Disaster films just need to deliver the goods, and that's just what these following films do.
In Old Chicago (1938)
A musical disaster movie (yes, you read that correctly), an account of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Like The Hindenburg and Titanic after it, the first hour is mundane melodrama, involving personal and professional conflict between the O'Leary boys (Tyrone Power, Don Ameche, Tom Brown). The good stuff is in the last half-hour, once Mrs. O’Leary’s (Alice Brady) cow Daisy kicks over the infamous lamp that started the infamous blaze. At the time, one of the most expensive movies ever made.
The Towering Inferno (1974)
A series of short circuits starts a fire on the upper floors of a newly completed, 1800-foot, high-rise office building. The fire escalates quickly, trapping the guests of a grand-opening party inside. With the fire so high up, the firemen that arrive at the scene need to figure out how to stop a raging inferno they can't fight from the ground, and how to save the party-goers. The Towering Inferno was one of many disaster films in the 70s Golden Age that assembled an all-star cast: Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, and more found themselves either fighting the fire or possibly becoming the human equivalent of a campfire marshmallow.
Earthquake (1974)
Tremors rock the Los Angeles area, but the worst is yet to come. A young scientist at the California Seismological Institute has calculated that a major earthquake will hit Los Angeles sometime within the next two days. His supervisor is more concerned that, if the scientist is wrong, they'll lose their funding, and even if he's right, putting the word out would only cause the public to panic, a potentially worse issue than the earthquake itself (ah, the age-old trope of senior scientists knowing "better" than their underlings). Southern California gets rocked by an earthquake, 9.9 on the Richter scale, for almost ten minutes. The quake is wildly destructive, but wait... there's more! The quake weakens the Mulholland Dam, which gives way, adding flooding to an already pretty lousy day. Earthquake featured another all-star cast, with the likes of Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner, but it's the quake effects that steal the show.
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
A giant wave flips over a cruise ship, resulting in absolute mayhem as passengers drown, or free-fall from the floor to the ceiling. A band of survivors, led by Gene Hackman, make their way to the bottom of the boat. Or the top of the boat, which was the bottom - whatever. Experts agree that the possibility of a large cruise ship completely flipping over is highly, highly unlikely, but if you're willing to park your logical self elsewhere while you watch, you'll be pleased. Somewhat surprisingly, the film features yet another A-list cast: basically, if you were a celebrity in the 70s, you wanted in on the disaster movie juggernaut.
Deep Impact/Armageddon (1998)
Two films, released within weeks of one another, both show the panic and chaos of giant, incoming objects from space on the people of Earth. Deep Impact is the slightly more realistic of the two, detailing an eleven-kilometer-wide comet on a crash course with Earth. The emotional trauma of the event is explored more thoroughly than in its cousin Armageddon, and the team of astronauts being sent to stop the comet is trained on the procedure over the course of weeks. Additionally, the concept of a lottery to determine who will join a pre-selected group of politicians, scientists, engineers, and other essential experts in a large, secure cavern should the comet hit the earth is something that actually sounds logical. Armageddon is pure spectacle, a count to see how many things can get blown up over the course of two hours (which is roughly the amount of time the oil drillers were given for space training). It doesn't aim higher, nor was it expected to: it promised big, dumb, illogical, and bombastic, and gave it.
Titanic (1997)
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Titanic was indeed titanic, one of the most popular films of all time, and the pinnacle of the 1990s revival of the genre. Everyone knows the story: an "unsinkable" ship hits an iceberg and well, it sinks. The real-life event itself result in over 1500 deaths, making it one of the deadliest maritime disasters during peacetimes, but director James Cameron wisely chose to invest development in two central lovers aboard, Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), instead of a scatter-shot of the thousands aboard. Combined with breathtaking attention to detail, seeing the mighty ship go down made the disaster real for people, an actual tragic event and not a fictitious story. And then there's the dude that cakes it off a propellor. Something for everyone.
Twister (1996)
If you came for the story then you left very, very disappointed. But if you came to see nature’s fury unleashed, you left insanely happy. Twister follows a rag-tag team of storm chasers as they attempt to release "Dorothy," a measuring device that, if it gets picked up by a tornado, would provide invaluable scientific data about them. There are other plot points - a rival team with better equipment, Bill (Bill Paxton) trying to get Jo (Helen Hunt) to sign divorce papers - but it's all about the twisters, whether they're tearing a drive-in screen apart or picking up a cow.
Zero Hour! (1957) / Airport (1970) / Airplane! I (1980) and II (1982)
Zero Hour! is a film about a mass food poisoning aboard a plane, affecting both the pilot and co-pilot, leaving no one to land the plane except haunted war veteran, Ted Stryker (Dana Andrews). Airport would be the first film in the 1970s golden age of disaster movies, focusing on an airline manager caught between a paralyzing snowstorm and a suicidal bomber on a Boeing 707. Sound familiar? Both films would be hilariously skewered by Airplane! and Airplane II: The Sequel, with the first borrowing plot lines, character names, and even verbatim dialogue from Zero Hour! (as both are Paramount films, the team of David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams were given free rein).
Dante’s Peak/Volcano (1997)
Another example of two big studio disaster films released within weeks of each other, but instead of a big meteorite we get volcanoes: Dante’s Peak, very loosely based on Mt. St. Helen’s, and Volcano, where a volcano forms and erupts in downtown Los Angeles. Dante's Peak sees Dr. Harry Dalton (Pierce Brosnan), a renowned volcanologist as he investigates activity from long-dormant Dante's Peak. At the base of the mountain is the town of the same name. Dalton and Mayor Rachel Wando (Linda Hamilton) call a town meeting to let the people know that an eruption is imminent, but the warnings are downplayed by Dalton's boss, Paul Dreyfus (Charles Hallahan). Then she blows, spreading ash, oozing lava and turning lakes into acid. Volcano begins with a minor earthquake in Los Angeles causing events that lead to a newly formed, underground volcano at La Brea Tar Pits erupting, spreading fire and destruction down the streets of L.A. (or Wednesday, as the locals call it). It's up to Emergency Management director Michael Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) and Dr. Amy Barnes (Anne Heche) to divert the lava and save the day. At least Peak has some logic and real-life parallels. Volcano, not so much.
Crack in the World (1965)
Thank God it's only a motion picture! Before The Core there was Crack in the World, about a scientist, Dr. Stephen Sorensen (Dana Andrews) who wants to launch a nuclear missile into the Earth’s crust. Crazy? Maybe, but his intentions are pure: he's promised to make use of the geothermal energy beneath the core so that the world will have an unlimited supply of it. Warned of the possible consequences of such an action (or blatant foreshadowing, as we call it) by Project Inner Space's chief geologist Ted Rampian (Kieron Moore), Sorensen goes ahead anyway, after learning he has only days to live. Sure enough, he only succeeds in creating a Doomsday-level event that could split the Earth in two. Oh, scientists – when will you ever learn?