Rollercoaster (1977)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

I love this movie so much

Redundant and unnecessary.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

"Rollercoaster" released in 1977, was a great suspense film, that unfortunately, suffered from a bad marketing campaign. Coming out in the wake of the "Disaster Flicks" sub-genre that was all the rage in Hollywood in the 70′s, movie goers attending "Rollercoaster" expecting to see yet another over the top epic in which Hollywood B- list actors are picked off one by one on a regular basis in the midst of some disaster or other might have left the theater feeling cheated. But that's not the kind of film "Rollercoaster" is, and the fact that it wasn't as well received or as successful as it should have been is a shame. Because "Rollercoaster" is a crackling good suspense story concerning an insane but smart bomber, the amusement park rides he destroys, taking lives down with it, and the one man who knows how he thinks and is the only one who can stop him. This is the stuff great action films today are made of. Films like "Speed" and other "mad bomber" epics owe a great debt to "Rollercoaster" for laying the "tracks", (see what I did there?) for similar films like it in the future. For reasons never explained, a young psychopath, played by Timothy Bottoms sets about rigging roller coaster rides at various amusement parks in America with home made explosives. The results are obviously deadly, and he soon issues an ultimatum to all the owners of the major amusement parks in the country: Pay up, or they will continue to see how "vulnerable" (as he puts it) they are to people like him. The hero of this film is Harry Calder, (George Segal) a California safety inspector, under whose jurisdiction the first roller-coaster bomb is deployed. Even though Calder wants no part of these proceedings, he has the intuition to identify the modus operandi of Bottoms' character, known only in the credits as "The Young Man". Calder finds himself clashing on a regular basis, not with "The Young Man", but with a senior agent of the FBI, Agent Hoyt, played here with the usual gusto of Richard Widmark. It's obvious Agent Hoyt considers Calder "little people", a civil servant beneath his attention, but Hoyt soon realizes he needs Calder's participation in bringing down "The Young Man" for a rather disturbing reason. It seems "The Young Man", who has eavesdropped on Calder's advice to the amusement park owners to take this man seriously and also appreciates Calder's reluctant accreditation of his demolition and engineering skills. In a way, this is very much like the relationship between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling in "Silence Of The Lambs"; in that the presence of evil is appeased by the respect shown to it by the forces of good.In the central portion of the film, "The Young Man" arranges for a payoff to be made at King's Dominion Amusement Park in Doswell, Virginia, and he wants Calder to personally deliver the money to him. Here is where "Rollercoaster" really takes off in terms of suspense and gamesmanship. Even though Calder is being watched by a legion of undercover agents, commanded by Agent Hoyt, "The Young Man" consistently moves Calder around the amusement park like a chess piece, from ride to ride, all to exhaust and throw off the agents shadowing Calder so that when the time comes for the drop to be made, they will all be out of position and looking the wrong way. "The Young Man's" plan seems to be successful, but then things change, setting up a very deadly endgame at the Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park in Valencia, CA. It is there that Calder and Agent Hoyt must engage "The Young Man" one last time, with the lives of innocent people hanging in the balance. I won't go into any further detail then that, because "Rollercoaster" is truly a lost "gem" from the 70′s in terms of its storytelling, pacing and buildup. Dare I say, this is a film that perhaps even Alfred Hitchcock would have approved of thanks to its nerve wracking atmosphere. Bottoms is cool, sinister and unsympathetic in the way he conducts business. Segal, who was in the prime of his career in the 70′s, plays his role with just the right amount of cynicism and contempt, balanced with a very begrudged respect for the villain. And Widmark completes the trio bringing all the bluster and bravado that cemented his legacy as one of the old school Hollywood "tough guys". It's also a fun period piece hearkening back to the days of the Carter Administration, bell bottom jeans, and acid rock. In one scene, a real life rock band called Sparxx plays a concert at the Magic Mountain Park for the audience waiting to take the first ride on a brand new roller-coaster, during which a bomb squad tentatively attempts to locate and disarm the deadly explosive left by the culprit. The crosscutting between the 70′s rock (think of the band Free, but on a much smaller scale) and the edgy business of pulling the plug without blowing up the works is very effective indeed. And the film is replete with such sequences, and that's half the fun of this movie: getting worked up, anticipating the worst, and holding your breath just in case it does.Bottom line: "Rollercoaster" is not about blood and guts and high profile deaths. If that's your cup of tea, this might not be the film for you. But if you enjoy suspense and well played confrontations and showdowns, "Rollercoaster" is a very enjoyable ride indeed!

I do like suspense thrillers, and for me Roller-coaster was a good one. I personally had little problem with the length or with the pace here, what I wasn't so keen on was that there were times when the music could have been less obvious while still enhancing the tension, there are times when it succeeds in that but others when it is rather monotonous, and also while I loved how sympathetic her character was Susan Strasberg was underused. However, there is so much that I liked about it. The production values are of high order, with crisp photography and editing and striking locations, the script is often tense and involving and the story is very taut and intrigues right from the start. The acting is fine, and I have no qualms about the characterisation either. It was nice seeing the legendary Henry Fonda here, and Richard Widmark is good value. But it is the performances of Calder and The Young Man and how they're constructed character-wise that really impresses. George Segal is excellent as Calder, and Timothy Bottoms is very chilling as The Young Man, and how they are written as individual characters and how they're set off against one other is what makes Roller-coaster such a good watch. Overall, I don't know why the rating is as low as it is, but regardless I think this movie is a very good one. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Roller-coaster (1977) ** (out of 4) The disaster genre was certainly running on fumes by the time this thing struck but I'd say this has a lot more in common with JAWS. A nut case (Timothy Bottoms) blows up a roller coaster ride and then blackmails the park owners for a million dollars. He forces a inspector (George Segal) to go along with the ride but after a detective (Richard Widmark) double crosses him, the psychopath picks out another park to blow up. There's barely enough plot here to fill up a TV episode so stretching it out to two-hours was just crazy because after the first deadly ride nothing happens for the rest of the film. A lot of the problem is due to the screenplay but director Goldstone doesn't do the film much justice either as there's no suspense ever built up, which is the same thing that happened to the director's next film, the real disaster WHEN TIME RAN OUT. Back to this film, I'm really not sure what they were thinking making this thing so long unless there was some unwritten rule that any disaster film had to run extra long. At the start of the film it seemed like the screenwriters were going to do something smart and that is do a JAWS on us. In that film, they gave us something everyone like (water) and made us scared of it. This film starts off by showing why people love roller coasters but then it tries to make us scared by showing bodies being broken apart after the first accident. This is all good but then the movie continues and it just goes downhill. There's really not much you can do with a plot like this because rides are either going to blow up or they're not. Here, they don't. We get a long cat and mouse game at an amusement park as Bottoms has Segal walking all over the place to try and get away from the police. This sequence feels close to an hour and not one second of it contains any suspense. The film tacks on an extra ending with the possibility of another bomb being on yet another ride but again we get no suspense. By the time the final act comes along I was struggling to stay away. The one thing the film does offer are some fun performances with Segal doing a very good job in the lead. The screenplay doesn't offer him too much development but the actor keeps thing alive with the fun performance. Widmark is also pretty good in his role and gets to play off that classic attitude in a few nice scenes. Bottoms isn't the greatest villain in history but his calm attitude works. Henry Fonda is kind enough to show and pick up a paycheck. Look quick for Helen Hunt and Steve Guttenberg. One could debate the importance of the 70s disaster flicks but there's no doubt that as the decade went along they got a lot worse. This one here isn't as bad as THE SWARM or WHEN TIME RAN OUT but at the same time there's not enough here to make it worth wasting two hours of your life.

I remember seeing part of this little gem when it came out on TV around 1985. Unfortunately, I didn't see it again until about 1997 when I found a copy on VHS. This one isn't a true disaster film; it's more of a suspense/thriller/mystery. I was actually quite impressed with this flick about a terrorist/extortionist targeting rollercoasters and the innocent people on them.The film opens on a pier, with a young 20-something man (the villain) watching a maintenance man walk up a roller-coaster called 'The Rocket' in Virginia. He then disguises himself as a maintenance man, and plants a bomb for remote-detonation on the tracks. Later that night, when the park opens, he re-visits the park, watching as the roller-coaster loads up. We see him stealthily take a remote detonator from his coat, then detonate the small explosive. The track is damaged on a turn, and when the roller-coaster hits the spot, horror ensues. Cars crash through the rails; bodies are thrown from the cars; and one car falls off a roof & lands upside-down on top of its passengers.An amusement park inspector named Harry Calder, who had inspected that coaster only 2 months before, is called in to investigate. He soon discovers it was the work of a terrorist, and rules out structural failure. It isn't long before the bomber strikes again, this time in Pittsburgh, causing a fire that destroys a ride but everyone escapes safely. When the bomber threatens the owners of 5 different parks with a simultaneous attack against their rollercoasters unless his $1-million ransom is met, Harry suggests calling in the FBI, which his bosses do. Harry is also tasked by the terrorist to deliver the ransom, to be dropped at an amusement park. Led all over the park by the bomber, Harry makes the drop, but the money has been marked in defiance of the bomber's orders, and the fiend vows revenge - this time at a major park in California! Harry suspects that his target will be the Revolution roller-coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain, and his bosses reluctantly allow him to go to the park & try to stop the bomber. The fiend places another bomb on the tracks, but the FBI discovers it & disarms the bomb. Enraged, the fiend buys a ticket for the Revolution's inaugural ride, and plants a second bomb in the last car of the train.Harry soon catches up to the bomber, who tells him that the bomb is in the last car. Unable to stop the train (it had climbed over the hill), the FBI jams the remote frequency for the detonator, foiling the bomber's plans. The fiend tries to use Harry as a human shield, but that fails when Harry shoots him in the leg. A wild chase ensues as the bomber runs through the hills around the roller-coaster, not realizing he is going in circles that lead back to one place - Harry. The fiend climbs up on the Revolution's track, spots Harry, and freezes, not seeing the roller-coaster coming from behind. The bomber is killed on impact when he is hit by the roller-coaster.I was quite impressed with the visual effects of the original roller-coaster crash; I've read that some of the more graphic scenes were supposedly edited out, but all the same, it did convey a chilling scene when the cars go flying out of control. The sheer terror that would be felt is unimaginable: there is no way to protect yourself, no way to stop it, and no apparent help at hand.The story is one that isn't impossible; in fact, especially today the potential for a real-life version of this exists (even remotely). The acting isn't all that bad; the bomber (Bottoms) is especially chilling for such a simple character - he just wants MONEY, $1-million of it. Henry Fonda also turns in a stellar performance as an FBI man in charge of the investigation. Harry Guardino (best known for his roles in the 'Dirty Harry' movies) has a smaller but effective role as one of Harry's bosses.Not a bad movie, certainly worth seeing. I give this one 8/10 for a good story & exciting visual effects (by 1977 standards).