Meteor (1979)

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

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

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

I vaguely remember watching this movie on TV several times as a kid but couldn't remember a thing about it, so I decided to finally watch it again to refresh my memory. Given the year, I expected it to be a cheesy laugh riot in 1970s excess. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised.Don't get me wrong; Meteor is definitely a fourth rate Irwin Allen-esque disaster film and doesn't hold a candle to The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Some of the acting is ridiculous, especially Martin Landau, who literally screams the entire time. The movie also feels very small. I remember Irwin Allen films feeling more epic in scale because of the direction. Meteor feels more like a TV movie. However, it was actually much better than I expected for a film of this type. I was pretty entertained throughout and thought the special effects were surprisingly good for 1979. Okay, not amazing obviously but not 1950s B movie sci-fi bad. Some of the action scenes were also pretty good, especially the one that takes place in a NYC subway. The best thing about Meteor was how straightforward the story was. Unlike movies today that try so hard to appear intelligent by throwing in too many characters, subplots and convoluted plot points, the plot is simple. Basically, the USA wants to use a space weapon to destroy a meteor but is in a dilemma because using it would mean unveiling it to the world, pissing off the Russians and painting itself as a hypocrite. However, as the meteor approaches, common sense prevails and the US decides to not only unveil the weapon but work with the USSR to take the meteor down. That's the story, short and sweet.Not only is Meteor an okay film, I think it might've been a trailblazer. Before this movie, disaster films were always specific to one location (airplane, ship, Los Angeles, burning skyscraper). This is probably the first disaster movie that showed disaster happening around the globe, a la The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day. So it should get extra credit for that alone.All in all, an entertaining flick. Don't listen to the naysayers totally trashing it as crap. It's cheesy, yes, but it's no less watchable or cheesy than any modern day disaster film.

I love those 70 disaster movies they're campy,clichéd with hammy acting and great entertainment on a rainy day and there were some really good ones like the Poseidon adventure ,Airport and the towering inferno so when I finally got around to meteor I was looking forward too it but something bothered me about this film the entire footage of the meteor hitting a ski resort was taken from another disaster movie released a year before called avalanche! That would be like Dante s peak using footage from volcano today! The rest of the film was what I expected for a disaster flick and I probably would have given it a higher rating but the fact that they recycled a key scene from another disaster film always bothered me even when time ran out and Airport 79 the Concord didn't do that.

It looks like they blew the budget on the actors and were forced to compromise with some shoddy, low-budget effects work in this tacky disaster movie which serves as a precursor to DEEP IMPACT which arrived some twenty years later. Sadly, it's a rather dull affair which only picks up in the last half an hour and consists of endless talk and discussions before then. The actors and actresses do their best with the unbelievable dialogue but even they come off looking stilted and bored.It's a shame that this movie is so poor, as the cast is one of those ensemble ones to die for. A fifty year old Sean Connery takes the male lead, and plays his typical character: charming, attractive to the women, and always in command. Yeah, right. Thankfully, the ever-great Karl Malden is around and elevates the film a notch or two, showing Connery the real way to do things. Natalie Wood is the attractive female Russian, but in retrospect her presence is dominated by the viewer's recollection of her tragic death a couple of years later. Brian Keith is amusing as a Russian diplomat, while Martin Landau has the showy role of a stuffy US general forced to disagree with everybody's plans. In smaller roles, Henry Fonda pops up pointlessly as the US president, Trevor Howard is a British contact, and eagle-eyed viewers will spot Eurotrash legend Sybil Danning in a cameo as a skier in Zurich who gets buried under an avalanche.The special effects are amateurish in nature and really have to be seen to be believed. The space effects are obvious matte work and were nothing for George Lucas to worry about. Simple red lights stand in for various shards of meteorite which hit Earth beforehand and cause some minor damage. Whenever there's an explosion, the screen just fills with white so you can't see anything. One effect I did like was of a huge tidal wave coming around a street corner in Hong Kong, but that's the single impressive effort in the entire movie.If the first hour and a quarter is mere small talk and general chit-chat about what to do, then the final half-hour becomes typical disaster fare when events take a different direction, although by then it's too little, too late. The various actors and actresses suffer a shard hitting their complex and are forced to escape through a flooding subway. It's a chance for the guys and girls to get really muddy and actually take part in some action before the ending. As this is a mainstream title, the actual outcome is never once in doubt which makes any tension-building scenes relatively pointless. Worth watching for disaster movie fans; a gigantic bore for just about everyone else.

Gotta love these 1970's disaster films! The deadpan dialogue. The soap opera sub-plots. The missiles look like they were made from Revell model kits. But "Meteor" still delivers the goods and keeps you entertained. Far more so than some other "big-budget" films in the same category today. The A-list actors seem to enjoy being in this film. Also Brian Keith's and Natalie Wood's authentic Russian dialogue gives a legitimacy to the story line. "Armageddon" may have had 20x the budget, but it didn't deliver even 1/10th the entertainment as this film!