You gave us the Robot, the Jupiter 2, Doctor Smith, the Time Tunnel, the Seaview, the Flying Sub, the Spindrift, and the immortal words, "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!"
Thanks, Irwin.
Don't forget the S.S. Poseidon and the Glass Tower. "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno" were very good (and in "Poseidon's" case, influential) disaster flicks, and deserved successes that still hold up almost thirty years later.
Cast your votes for the top ten all-time silliest/most bizarre Irwin Allen episdoes Here's mine:
1) Voyage - "The Terrible Toys"
2) Lost - "The Space Vikings"
3) Lost - "The Great Vegetable Rebellion"
4) Voyage - "The Wax Men"
5) Lost - "The Promised Planet"
6) Voyage - "The Terrible Leprechaun"
7) Giants - "Land of the Lost"
8) Voyage - "The Deadly Dolls"
9) Giants - "Secret City of Limbo"
10) Tunnel - "Visitors From Beyond the Stars"
Can't remember the title, but I can't forget Dr. Smith playing the Pied Piper on Land of the Giants.
Irwin Allen had the idea, common today but unheard of in 1974, of two studios combining forces to make one film. Fox and Warners owned film rights to books about burning skyscrapers. Instead of cutting their own throats with competing films (and risking failure of both), Allen had both studios share production costs ($14 million), distribution and revenue for "The Towering Inferno". A very influential idea, and an immense success.
Some recent co-productions between two studios:
"Gladiator" and "Small Soldiers" (Dreamworks and Universal)
"Deep Impact" and "Saving Private Ryan" (Dreamworks and Paramount)
"Hannibal" (MGM and Universal)
Also "Starship Troopers" (Touchstone & Tristar)
Just a note: "The Towering Inferno" was made (as Adam said) from two books... "The Tower" and "The Inferno".
Sorry, that should have been "The Tower" and "The Glass Inferno".
Adam, you think that "The Poseidon Adventure" is a good movie? As if! I saw it a few months ago and thought how incredibly lame it is, at least by today's standards, especially when comparing it to the likes of "Titanic". The lamest part of "TPS" was the pisspoor wave knocking the ship over. I know it was quite a shocking sight to see at the time, but it's really such a weak wave that it couldn't've knocked over anything more than a toy boat. What I hated the most about the film was that one annoying kid. Why did they have to have that little smartass brat anyway? He couldn't talk, he shouted all of his lines. He should've drowned with all those other idiots who chose not to follow the party to safety. I saw the movie on AMC, after it followed a making-of documentary of it, which was actually better than the movie.
Anyway, I'm not ragging on ya. I've no problem if you like it. I just don't myself. It's a very lame film.
how incredibly lame it is, at least by today's standards, especially when comparing it to the likes of "Titanic".
Yes, FX technology has come a long way in 30 years, hasn't it? However, this is not a legitimate beef with the film, remember it wasn't made today.
Your thing about the annoying kid, however, is right.
"The Poseidon Adventure" still holds up today due to the strong perfomances of the two leads-Gene Hackman (before he started treating almost every role as he did Lex Luthor) and Ernest Borgnine. The dialog was occasionally turgid and the FX primitive by today's standards. But I still think it was a good movie and I stand by it. It was influential because every studio made disaster pics when it became a monster hit. Allen went from Fox to Warners in 1975, where every film he did there (including an awful "Poseidon" sequel) tanked.
The REAL reason the Poseidon tipped over is because Shelly Winters fell on her duff after the wave struck, thereby capsizing the ship.
That's a terrible lie, Anonymous! Everybody knows it was a Giant Lobster Man from Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea that knocked it over!
Don't forget Leslie Nielsen as the Captain of the Poseidon, eight years before his career-changing role as the Doctor in "Airplane" and a decade before his signature role as Det. Frank Drebin in "Police Squad."
Rumor has it that there is a two hour movie
pilot in the works for a new LIS series.As
far as I know this is just a rumor.
This "rumor" started with a March 5, 2002 reuters.com article titled, "Fox Rewinds Sci-Fi TV Classics". This "rumor" was expanded into another article in "Alpha Control", the official magazine of L.I.S.A. (Lost In Space Australia), complete with an early premise for the beginning of a pilot movie, at [http://www.lisa.org.au/exclusive002.htm]. This "rumor" then led to several postings on [http://uncleodie.whaticollect.com/index-forum.html]; (hint: read the titles of the threads; "Lost In Space" is abbreviated "LIS" here also.).
In other words, Lord willing, someday soon we'll be able to see an episode of "Lost In Space" in which Dr. Smith starts talking about his "delicate back", and it WON'T be just an excuse this time!
Re: The Poseidon Adventure
I thought the sfx were pretty good, especially considering when they were made. The model of the SS Poseidon itself was huge (like 23 feet long or something) and looked pretty good in the film's opening shots. Even the tsunami scene isn't bad when the wave first hits; it's the next shot of the ship heeling over onto its side that looks more model-like. Just because other films have either used real ocean liners (1960's The Last Voyage) or full-sized mock-ups (1998's Titanic) shouldn't relegate The Poseidon Adventure to the sfx dustbin. (FYI: In the film, the ship is top-heavy due to a lack of ballast, which contributes to its capsizing. In reality, a real ship may not have rolled over 180 degrees, but at least the writers attempted to deal with the nit.)
Sure, the film's a bit over the top in the melodrama department, but I've seen far worse. I still like it (it was one of the first "adult" movies I recall going to the cinema to see as a kid), and recently (a couple of years ago) watched it on an appropriate night: New Year's Eve.
it was one of the first "adult" movies I recall going to the cinema to see as a kid
Me too. Of course, it was the basis of my "I knew I shouldn't have..." (see the board).
You know, Scott, you never did answer my questions about why this film did whatever it did to you that made you start up that board...
That actually made sense to me, even though it's one of the most convoluted sentences I've ever written.
I was 9. It gave me nightmares.
Me, too. The man that's flung backwards a couple dozen feet to crash through the upside down ceiling, and the death of Shelley Winters' character were more graphic than I expected.
How about the burned cook in the galley, with his eyes still open. I think that was the first time I'd ever seen death portrayed with open eyes. (I didn't have nightmares, but it was creepy.)
Maybe we should ask Jake to open up a Poseidon Adventure board over on Movies?
OOO! I second that! (This, coming from the guy who asked for a Mad Max board and posted there only once or twice...)
Seriously, I think that could be a fun board, just to discuss the movie, and of course to pick its many nits. (For the record, I do like the film... oh, wait, I already said that a few days ago.)
The Poseidon Adventure topic continues over on Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections:Movies:Jake's Movies:Action/Adventure(or Both!):The Poseidon Adventure.
It's good to see Irwin Allen getting the recognition he deserves. Okay, maybe he didn't have the depths of Gene Roddenberry, but the man did know how to entertain people.
Of his shows, The Time Tunnel is my favourite.
What Will Robinson didn't like about the robot.
As the master of re-using sets and props and scenes from previous episodes, it's a shame that Irwin Allen couldn't do the Ultimate Re-use and have a Time Tunnel / Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea cross-over, or a Time Tunnel / Lost In Space cross-over, since those shows ran during the same season (1966-67), and seem to exist in the same 'univverse'.
A cross-over wasn't totally unheard of back then; there was a Christmas episode that merged Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction.
Yeah, Tony and Doug could have popped up on the Jupiter Two or the Seaview 
Dick Tufeld, the voice of the Robot, passed away on 1/22/2012 at the age of 85. He suffered from cancer and Parkinson's disease. More here.
In 1976, Irwin Allen tried another time travel concept, with the TV movie called Time Travellers.
In this movie, two scientists, Clinton Earnshaw (Sam Groom, who played Jerry on The Time Tunnel) and Jeff Adams (Tom Hallack) are sent back in time to Chicago of 1871, to make contact with a Doctor Joshua Henderson (Richard Basehart). The reason being is that Doctor Henderson was the only one who was able to successfully treat an epidemic that Clinton was trying to treat in the present.
Problem is that Henderson died, or will die, in the Chicago Fire and all his notes will be lost. Said fire will start in less than a day. Clinton and Jeff are thus in a race against time (no pun intended).
To complicate matters further, Clinton enters into a relationship with Henderson's niece, Jane (Trish Stewart), who is also going to perish in the fire.
This was a pilot for a potential television series. Of course, it wasn't picked up. Seems to me that, had it gone to series, the premise would have been Clinton and Jeff being sent back in time to solve medical mysteries.
Shame that the series never happened, I rather enjoyed the movie.
Another fact that I came across by accident as I surfed the inter-webs;
Irwin Allen died on November 2, 1991.
Gene Roddenberry died October 24, 1991.
Just 9 days separated the deaths of these two creative geniuses.
Yeah, we lost two Sci-Fi giants so close to each other.