The Poseidon Adventure

Right after "Airport" came out, somebody suggested a low-budget remake named "Carport." It would have involved six people trapped inside a runaway Volkswagen bus with a maniac at the wheel and a midget in the glove compartment with a cherry bomb. After seeing "The Poseidon Adventure," I think it would have worked. There's no way the formula can fail.

First, you gotta have a mode of transportation. This time it's an ocean liner. Then you gotta have a situation fraught with peril. "Poseidon" has that, too: "My God, I've never seen anything like it," the first mate gasps. "A gigantic wall of water - heading directly for the ship!" It hits at precisely midnight on New Year's Eve, and splish, splash, they're takin' a bath.

Everyone is in the ballroom, neatly divided into key ethnic groups, walks of life and former Oscar winners. When the ship turns over, Gene Hackman engineers an escape attempt. He takes the large Christmas tree (conveniently constructed of aluminum tubing) and turns it into a ladder, so that the passengers can escape from the ceiling of the ballroom by climbing to the floor. Then the idea is to make their way up the down staircase, until they get to the back of the ship. See, the steel in the hull back there is only an inch thick. Talk about luck.

Anyway, everybody is sloshing around on the ceiling of the ballroom, but Hackman manages to get the other four Oscar winners and the six other movie stars up the Christmas tree. He desperately pleads with the other passengers to follow his lead, but they refuse. Hell, I knew they would. They were only extras.

It is now time for a number of obligatory things to happen. Hackman, as the righteous liberal minister, has to have a confrontation with Ernest Borgnine, the tough cop. Then Borgnine has to reassure his wife, Stella Stevens, who plays a former prostitute, that no one on board could possibly recognize or remember her. Then Jack Albertson, as Manny, and Shelley Winters, as Belle, have to say several Yiddish words and refer to Israel and their grandchildren a couple of times, until we catch on they're Jewish.

Then we look around for the black, but there isn't one this time. There is a kid brother, though. As soon as Gene Hackman tells everyone to stay put, his job is to wander off and get lost. You know how these things work. There's also a shy bachelor and a girl without any self-confidence, and the bachelor helps the girl to regain her confidence, and in the process, they discover themselves. You know.

While all of this is taking place, Shelley Winters reveals that she was the underwater swimming champion of the Young Woman's Hebrew Assn. (or maybe the New York Park District) several decades ago. She has put on a little weight since then, about 100 pounds, but she still wears her first-place gold medal around her neck. What do you think the odds are that, sooner or later, we are going to see her swimming underwater in this movie) Would you say excellent?