The Big Bus (1976)

Simply Perfect

Just perfect...

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I'm canceling my next bus trip. What with this goofy gang, who knows where I'd end up. As expected, gags fly faster than Kleenex in a windstorm. Frankly, I'm glad the girls' panties save the day, otherwise our highway rocket would take a dive into Lake Oblivion. All in all, I think I liked the disaster spoof better forty years ago, but then the material was a lot fresher, what with all those phony disaster movies. Still, there's plenty to laugh at, including an array of passengers from an out-patient clinic, a driver who can't stay awake, and a lounge singer on permanent leave from reality. So if you don't like this gag, another will follow faster than your next breath. The first part's best while the absurdities are still fresh. But it's darn hard to keep the nuttiness rolling even on a rocket-driven asylum. Kudoes to special effects or however they did the teetering bus that looks real as heck. I'd also like to have been on the set where I'll bet the ad-libs were funnier than even the script. Sure, the results are less memorable than those of the spoof classic Airplane! (1980). But there's enough orchestrated goofiness to make the ride worthwhile.(Meanwhile, can't help noticing the bus company's gag name is Coyote. Surely that's a dig at Greyhound, which is understandable since the adviser on the movie was Trailways, Greyhound's chief competitor.)

I actually saw The Big Bus as a kid in a theatre, because I LOVE Stockard Channing, and I got my mom to take me (she put up with a LOT of stuff from me - Thanks mom!).As a 7 year old, I loved it - I wasn't interested in, nor rally was looking for plot 'holes,' or, anything else, other than just silly fun, and, I do remember - all these years later - I did enjoy myself.My mom... well, I never asked, then,but, when I recently asked her, she was vague, so, I'm gonna say I don't think she liked it.In the mid 70's, we had Earthquake (in 'Sensurround' - a theater-wide effect in which every time the earthquake started to rumble, the 'Sensurround' system (a legit sound amplification, which very simplistically speaking, were bass-heavy, and those frequencies REALLY did a number on those in the theatre at the time. It was VERY wild.We had The Towering Inferno- about a very tall building on fire, and The Poseidon Adventure, as wells some others.Then, about a year or two after these big films, came The Big Bus.As I noted in several other reviews, they noticed the similarities between this film and those of the Zuckers & Abrahams, i.e., Airplane!, Naked Gun, and (my favourite of this genre) Top Secret, as well as others.I don't know if the Zuckers or Abrahams had seen The Big Bus, and said they can 'do it better,' or not, but, one can definitely see The Big Bus as an influence on those later films.I can't recommend The Big Bus, to anyone who is looking for a 'quality' film. But, if you are one of those die-hard fanatics, like myself, who are fans of any of the (large) cast, which contains many well known character performers, like Ms Channing, and really don't care about 'plot holes' ('big enough to drive the 'Big Bus' though,' LOL!), then sit back and enjoy.It is NOT 'side-achingly' funny, but, it is 'chortle' funny.I give it a '6,' because I DO like kitsch such as thisAs an addendum, for those who remember this era, NBC was in LAST place of the 'Big Three' TV networks, and they hired (former) 'wunderkind,' Fred Silverman away from ABC.Whilst not a direct descendant of this genre, the Big …'egg' Silverman laid at NBC was a TV series, which was at the time THE most EXPENSIVE (on a per-episode basis) titled 'SuperTrain.'It was not (intentionally) either a comedy, nor a disaster, but, in the annals of TV, it is both.In the entertainment world, one is supposed to describe their projects in one 'grab ya' sentence,' and the descriptive sentence of Super Train was 'Love Bot on a Train.With SuperTrain, the 'circle' was complete, and it wouldn't be until the Zuckers and Abrahams got together and made 'fun' disasters the 'right' way.

If you enjoyed (loved) those cult-favorite comedy classic from the early 80's, "Airplane!," "Get Crazy!" and "Bachelor Party" then you're in for a treat. "The Big Bus"(also known internationally as: "Cyclops, The World's Largest Bus") is a mid-70's comedy spoof. A bit similar to "Zucker/Abrahms" comedy "Airplane!," but perhaps not as funny. I remember watching this film as a kid (approx. 8 or 9) and could never forget the scene where they show a swimming pool enclosed in a dome on top of the bus, and the classic scene where a kitchen alley is filled cupboards high with soda pop.REZuleta

Is a society that laughs so hard at its own fads humble, narcissistic, or both? This forgotten spoof, four years before "Airplane!," appeared after years of "Airport" and Irwin Allen films, just as disaster movies were being replaced by the Spielberg shockers that started with "Jaws" and led to "Jurassic Park" (X-treme Discovery Channel, but that's another story). Cylops, a nuclear-powered, double-decker, articulated luxury bus (an impressive set of props & sets) finishes development despite sabotage attacks that cripple the specially trained drivers. Venerable driver Dan Torrance (Bologna) is hired as a replacement even though he's in disgrace after a disastrous run in which he was accused of eating his passengers while stranded! The bus's designer, Kitty (Channing) is his former love whom he dumped after cheating on her repeatedly. The film is a mostly unsubtle jab at all-star disaster movies in which subplots are resolved by the characters being forced to find common ground to survive the burning building, burning airship, overturned liner, earthquake, et. al. Scruffy engineer Scotty (Beatty) and a fugitive housewife (Gordon) are openly based on George Kennedy's & Helen Hayes' characters in "Airport," respectively. There are also a failed priest (Auberjonois, spoofing his "MASH" role), an oversexed, vengeful fashion maven (Redgrave), a spoiled, bickering couple celebrating their divorce (Mulligan & Kellerman) and a vet disgraced for experimenting with lapine birth control (Dishy). Shull, as a terminally ill man, parodies Lionel Barrymore in "Grand Hotel," reminding us of how uncomfortably similar that old classic is to "The Towering Inferno." The bus's nemesis is a powerful family (Ferrer & Margolin) who create disasters to destroy technical innovation & are apparently responsible for most disasters, real or fictional, filmed since the 1950s, including the "Titanic." The script is wildly erratic, ranging from comic genius to contrived stupidity. The latter include the opening press conference & the encounter with the pickup truck. But the former include most of the scenes involving the bus, including the one in which Dan deals with a bomb, which was redone dramatically in "Speed" nearly 20 years later. Cyclops has a bowling alley, swimming pool & dining room, all hilariously reduced to dollhouse-size, as well as self-changing tires, an Automatic Washing Mechanism (AWM) and soda-pumping & luggage-ejection features. Despite its contrivances, the story holds together amazingly & even provides real suspense up to the very end. Bologna is a bit hammy as the troubled Bus Captain, but Channing is brilliant, both believable & funny, as the nuclear scientist/love interest. The scene in which she drives while sitting on the lap of unconscious co-driver Shoulders (Beck) is almost enough in itself to make the whole film worthwhile. But Murphy Dunne nearly steals the show as the most offensive lounge piano player ever ("Thank yooou!"). Despite the in-your-face satire, look for some very subtle comic touches like the jab at TV news & the pictures in Iron Man's hall.