Question on Rollercoaster 1977, Two-Minute Warning 1976, and The Hindenburg 1975

Highly unlikely. Maybe as MOD discs, but I'm not seeing Blu on the horizon. I'd likely buy them all, though.

A ROLLERCOASTER remake, in IMAX 3D and Sensurround, seems a good idea to me.

Agree with you on all accounts. 
 

 

Every one of those would be an instant buy for me.  The fact that the existing DVDs are non-anamorphic is the real...uh...disappointment.  I could actually employ somewhat stronger language to convey how I really feel.

 

Well, that's four buyers right there. Are you listening, Universal?

With this being a big year for Universal -its 100th anniversary -I think they may be pushing more of their already released catalog titles than start with ones never released yet to DVD.

Universal made an exciting announcement recently about its big dozen coming to bluray this year-most excited about JAWS and ET. I'm sure U will take the time and also release JAWS 2 , JAWS 3-D (in 3D) and JAWS THE REVENGE at the same time riding on the dorsal fin of the original.
They seem very agressive lately-putting out many catalog bluray titles in the last 6 months-even lesser titles like HALLOWEEN ll.

There are a number of reasons I think the above 3 will be released in Blu:

1) The sales of all of them are obviously robust as they only go out of print only briefly. In the case of ROLLERCOASTER -I don't think it EVER went out of print.

2) The grandaddy of Universal's 70s disaster films-EARTHQUAKE -will surely be important enough for the studio to pu out on its 100th anniversary in Blu. It is here I think the others may ride on EARTHQUAKES coattails as a disaster film promo that would probably also include GRAY LADY DOWN -another stalwart seller for the company. If U decides to wait 2 years for EARTHQUAKEs 40th anniversary it will be no "fault" of the movie -which cries out for bluray.

3) Of the 3 you mentioned (all great choices) THE HINDENBURG may warrant a standalone release being 2012 is the 75th anniiversary of the disaster. There has also been talk of remaking this as a TITANIC like love story . As much as I loved the 1975 version -I was always disappointed that the disaster itself was only shown in newsreels. Despite that it garnered an inpression 5 Oscar nominations.

4) This is ROLLERCOATERs 35th anniversary. Of all of them this would be a compelling remake as you mentioned. If they went bigtime I could see Angelina Jolie in one of her action roles in the Segal part with suspense being one of her children would be riding the rollercoaster. I love the 1977 version but this should be more of a mystery with perhaps a whodunt surprise ending.

5) With 2012 supposedly being the end of the world, what better way to "celebrate" when most people will be feeling BLU anyway than with a 6 pack of disaster movies? 1974: EARTHQUAKE ; 1975 : THE HINDENBURG ; 1976: TWO MINUTE WARNING ; 1977 ROLLERCOASTER ; 1978 : GRAY LADY DOWN ; 1997: DANTES PEAK(15TH ANNIVERSARY)

6) Universals MOD program has slowed down quite a bit. I think they are trying t make the 100th anniversary special and important. They do not seem to rerelease their pressed dvd's on mod as the other companies have.

Heres hoping they will release these great classics in bluray. i'm hoping 20th Fox will follow with a 40th anniversary Blu rerelease of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE-although with the recent Italian catastrophe in Italy -right now may not be the appropriate time

 

 

 

I think Rollercoaster never went out of print because they never sold out of the origianl run.     I enjoyed the film and it was the next to last Sensurround Film released in the US.  But it needs an anamorphic transfer and just don't see that happening. 

 

I was disappointed that Earthquake was not on the Universal Blu-ray list for this year, but it is on the list for reissue as a DVD, so there may be some hope in the future, but I don't see it this year. 

 

I do worry about Earthquake in Blu do to all the matte and blue-screen shots that were in this film.  Not sure how they would look in Blu, as I recall in the theatre there was a lot of very grainy shots during the actual disaster due to the special effects. 
 

 

You may be right about ROLLERCOASTER never selling out of their original shipment. That means the 4 copies us guys bought leaves about 6 copies left!

Its a nice looking movie. I enjoyed this more thsn the other sensorround films because it had less special effects. It was simpler. Rather than the gun shots/bomb explosions in MIDWAY or the spaceships in BATTLESTAR GALACTICA -ROLLERCOATER utilized the sensorround in a subtler way. It was the AVATAR of Sensorround! (with a bluescreen raher than blue people).

I would love to see one of these again in sensorround-I think Germany recently had them in that long ago tech style.

I really enjoyed the playful score as well. In June 1977 it held its own against supposed blockbusters EXORCIST 2 and A BRIDGE TOO FAR and slaughtered SORCERER.

Make that five.  I actually saw all three of these movies with my parents when they were first released to theaters.

 

The Region 2 UK DVD of Two-Minute Warning is anamorphic btw, but I'm pretty certain the Region 2 Rollercoaster disc is not.

 

As long as we are in a fantasy land about these titles, I would the Blu-ray of Two-Minute Warning to include both versions.  The original R-rated theatrical version and the completely revised TV version that puts the action as a museum heist instead of a sniper. 

 

And on Earthquake, include the longer TV version. 

Edited by ahollis - 1/18/12 at 6:56pm

I caught the extended version of TWO MINUTE WARNING on tbs a few years back. It changed the movie totally.

Other than seeing the extended version of EARTHQUAKE on NBCs great The Big Event, I haven't seen it since.

I believe there was an extended Tv version of GRAY LADY DOWN as well.. Studios and the networks really tried to give something special for their viewers in the 70s. Sort of like a Dvd extra.

I wouldn't say "something special." Really just filler and blather, sometimes jarringly out of sync with the actual movie, designed to make up for edits and allow for two-night telecasts. I don't understand the nostalgia for these phony cuts.

Nothing special at all about the edits only interesting.  Earthquake added additional characters and situations that were pared down from the theatrical release and not just expanded scenes.  The one scene I remember in Earthquake was a plan trying to land at LAX just as the tremor was starting and almost crashed.  The characters included Debbralee Scott of Mary Hartman fame at the time along with other actors that were not in the theatrical release. 

 

Two-Minute Warning was a completely different film when it hit television.  The sniper at the game was only a small part of the story and was used to lure policeman away from an Art Museum so it could be looted.  That was the main plot.  They cut the killing of the spectators at the game to where the sniper was shooting warning shots. 

 

I don't think it is nostalgia as much as it is what the film companies went through to get a film sold to national television at the time, at least for me.  I have the interest in the additional scenes for Murder By Death, cut from theatrical release, but added to the national television telecast. 

 

There were a lot of padded films for TV during the hey day of the Network movie nights, but I think Earthquake and Two-Minute Warning are the two most famous, Earthquake for the major advertising NBC did to push the additional scenes and Two-Minute Warning for it being a completely different film. 

i would like to see an extended version of midway as well as MacArthur.

I agree 100%. I've always wanted to see the (apparently terrible) TV version. I love how they thought TV audiences 'couldn't handle' the idea of a sniper killing for no reason, and had to shoehorn in this stupid robbery-heist-distraction plot line. Classic 70's thinking, and I'd love a BD!

In the wake of Columbine, Virginia Tech, and the Phoenix shootings, among others, you'd have a hard time getting a random sniper movie off the ground today in theaters, much less on TV. The TV version of WARNING (which I did see) is mystifying. (And the theatrical, a flop, was lambasted for its ugly violence.)

 

And you are right on all accounts.  The theatrical film starts off right after the titles with the sniper randomly shooing a jogger, I guess as a practice target.  The best thing about the film, as always in any film, was Walter Pigeon.  But it is an interesting slice of Retro 70's film making that has it's campers of which I am one of them. 

 

Universal really had a bad run of event pictures during that time with Two-Minute Warning in1976, Rollercoaster in1978, MacArthur in 1977, Airport 77 in 1977, and Gray Lady Down in 1978.  I guess during that period only Midway in 1976 was a true hit. Not that each of the films listed does not have something going for the them with Airport 77 making money.  Funny now that I look at it, someone in the story department must have had a thing about art heists, for that was what the background event in Airport 77 was about and then again in the TV version of Two- Minute Warning.   And again, I am fond of each of these films as a part of the 70's film culture.  They make great Thursday night showings with friends. 

 

Making a random sniper picture today would prove harder than Lucas had getting Red Tails made.  The only person that might get away with it would be Quentin Taratino. 

 

I wonder how Targets would play to a lot of folks today.

TWO MINUTE WARNING always had a rushed feel to it. I believe it was rushed to beat BLACK SUNDAY to the punch. Universal did succeed in that endavor, but as much as I like WARNING , BLACK SUNDAY is the superior footbal game set actioner.

More perplexing is that TWO MINUTE WARNING garnered one Oscar nomination whereas SUNDAY captured none. They truly missed out giving Bruce Dern a Supporting Actor nomination for his brilliant turn in BLACK SUNDAY. He was consistently great in the 70sin very diverse roles from THE COWBOYS andPOSSE to his very witty turn in SMILE. The academy made up for it in 1978 for COMING HOME-but he didnt stand a chance against Christopher Walken in that other vietnam movie!

Interesting how disaster movies went on to garner Oscar nominations -no matter how bad they were. Between THE TOWERING INFERNO and TITANIC I dont believe many others went on to be nominated for Best Picture. THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE just missed but receive8 noms w/o a Picture nom.

Those are all understandable. But the puzzler was why did THE SWARM and WHEN TIME RAN OUT receive nominations for Costume Design? I never understood that. At least AIRPORT 77s Costume nomination had the esteemed Edith Head doing the costumes. People like to site THANK GOD ITS FRIDAY as the worst movie ever Oscxar nominated-but at least its song was good. A real headscratcher. But to see those two films receive nominations for Costume design in a year tha MOVIE MOVIE or THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK were overlooked perplexes me.

The theatrical WARNING surely turned up on cable before and after its TV airings, but I only recall seeing it unexpurgated (and of course in widescreen) on DVD.

From Wiki:

"Due to the film's explicit violence and uncomfortable detail of a homicidal sniper acting alone, NBC negotiated with film's company Universal Studios to film additional scenes for its television premiere in 1978. The new scenes would detail an art heist, with the sniper serving as a decoy so robbers could escape without detection. The additional scenes, 30 minutes total in length, were added for the film's TV showing while 45 minutes of the original version were removed. Director Larry Pierce disowned the TV version, which credits the pseudonymous "Gene Palmer" as director and Francesca Turner (who also helped doctor David Lynch's Dune for TV) for the "teleplay". When shown on network television, this version of Two-Minute Warning is often shown rather than the original theatrical release.[4] The television version was not included when the film was released to video and DVD."

Re: EARTHQUAKE: "For the film's October 1976 television premiere on NBC, additional footage was added to expand the running time of the film so it could be shown over two nights. The "Sensurround" audio was simulcast on FM stereo in the Los Angeles market. This allowed the home viewer to experience a similar effect as in the theater. Contrary to popular belief, this "television version" made no use of material originally left out of the theatrical release (save one brief scene featuring Victoria Principal and Reb Brown), but rather new footage was shot some two years after the original, using some of the stars from the theatrical version. New scenes included a young married couple. The husband seeks a job in with Graff in Los Angeles, while his wife has the eerily accurate ability to see the future with cards. (Debralee Scott and Sam Chew) They are on an airliner attempting to land at Los Angeles International Airport during the earthquake.[15] The airliner is barely able to take off a second time and divert to San Francisco."
Edited by Bob Cashill - 1/20/12 at 5:54pm

Bob -

 

I believe that both exist, but the question that keeps popping up is in what aspect ratio.  I understood from a LA Times article that the Earthquake additions are from the original filming that Universal just did a pan-scan of those edits and the originals are lost, but could be wrong.  I have also heard that the Two-Minute Warning re-do was filmed in 1.37:1 since it was to be only for television sales. 

 

I remember seeing the NBC version of Two-Minute Warning and it was bizarre after seeing it in theatres, but do not remember seeing it in that version again until the DVD, just as you. 

Oy.

I saw all these movies in the theater, and own the DVDs for Two-Minute Warning and Earthquake because I'm a Chuck Heston fan (and for no other reason--they're pretty poor).

I also own the DVD for Hindenburg (cause I'm a George C. Scott fan), which I just watched recently for the first time since seeing it on the big screen when it first came out. My god, what an awful movie.

These movies do not deserve to be on blu-ray. There are many other far more deserving films that studios should be devoting the time and resources to putting on blu. I'm hoping that they get off their collective asses and we get some of Robert Aldrich's better films on blu instead of MOD.

I remember there was a TV Guide article that appeared in the late 1970s or early 1980s that briefly addressed the Two-Minute Warning TV version. It was a long time ago, but I remember that it explained the reasoning for the reshoots.

 

In 1975 NBC aired The Deadly Tower, a made-for-TV movie about the Charles Whitman sniper killings. It was pretty violent for its time. A few days after it was aired there was a so-called "copycat" crime that some TV watchdog groups linked to the airing of the movie. The link was pretty spurious, as these things usually are, but the atmosphere at the time was one of almost constant controversy over violence on commercial TV. (Back then the TV show S.W.A.T. was considered ultraviolent because it had one or two shootings in every episode.) NBC bowed to the pressure and declined repeat airings of The Deadly Tower. (The movie would resurface in syndication on TBS years later.)

 

Universal had pre-sold NBC the network TV rights to Two-Minute Warning before the movie went into production. (This was a common practice back then.)  Now NBC realized that it had paid for another movie about motiveless sniper killings that it could not broadcast in that climate.

 

Rather than write off its investment, the network persuaded Universal and producer Ed Feldman to refashion the movie into something that was suitable for broadcast. Charlton Heston agreed to participate as a favor to Feldman, but director Larry Peerce did not and demanded that his name be removed from the broadcast version. A TV director supervised the reshoots (I think it was Larry Elikann but my memory may be failing me on that point).

Edited by Jeffrey:K - 1/20/12 at 10:31pm

 

 

The theatrical version of Two-Minute Warning played on HBO in 1977 and 1978, and then completely disappeared until its VHS and Laserdisc release in 1992. All during the 1980s it was impossible to see except in the bastardized TV version.

 

This movie has always been a favorite of mine, despite its formulaic script, because it was the first R-rated movie I saw as a child. I was 12 years old and I can still vividly remember sitting in the theater with my dad, my stomach tight and in a cold sweat during the violent scenes. As a jaded, middle-aged moviegoer I'd love to be able to be rattled like that. But you can never be an impressionable child again.

Edited by Jeffrey:K - 1/21/12 at 12:05am

The trouble with a lot of these films is that I am used to the expanded versions. I tried looking at Earthquake without the expanded version and never got into it . Can't imagine watching Midway without having the extra footage.

I've never seen the expanded MIDWAY but an EARTHQUAKE that cuts to the chase minus Debralee Scott and her inflight worries is all I need. As it is it takes too long to get to the earthquake, though Heston and Gardner are fun sniping at each other.

Universal added about 30 minutes of extra material to pad out MIDWAY enough for a two part movie.  Susan Sullivan was added to the cast as a girlfriend of Charlton Heston and they used a lot of battle scenes to show battles leading up to Midway.  Some of these extra scenes are on the last DVD released and they are in 1.33 to 1.  I remember watching in on TV and it just seemed to long.  I do like the theatrical version for all it's camp and glory. Saw the the on an opening afternoon in a full house rumbling with Sensurround. 

 

MacArthur is another one that had lots of scenes added for TV. There was a whole subplot concerning an attempted assassination of MacArthur, and MacArthur's insistence on trying and executing a Japanese general played by James Shigeta.

As for the film itself, I thought it was an excellent one with great performances and a superb score by Jerry Goldsmith. It is sort of a companion piece to Patton, and while it's not as good a picture as Patton, it stands very well on its own. It's certainly a better film than Earthquake and Two Minute Warning (both of which I like).

What of the AIRPORT series? Any word if they will be part of the Blu sky?

A leaked - and so far accurate - list of Uni's 2012 slate indicates that AIRPORT will be released on Blu but EARTHQUAKE will not. I agree it's not a great movie but it is a significant one, certainly for those of us who grew up in the 70s. I likewise have a strong affection for ROLLERCOASTER because I saw it in Sensurround and loved it as a kid; but it's a pretty unexceptional movie, basicallly riffing on a DIRTY HARRY sequence. I'd love to see it on Blu but I can't see it happening.

BTW, the R2UK dvd of ROLLERCOASTER is anamorphic.