10 Best '70s Disaster Movies, Ranked

Disaster movies dominated Hollywood in the 1970s, and the trend even spread into made-for-television projects. Most of these films featured ensemble casts with big name actors enduring some sort of life-threatening crisis at hand. These incidents often involved the hubris of the rich and powerful, overriding safety precautions for profit and glory at the ultimate cost of human lives. As the popularity of the genre grew, filmmakers came up with virtually every conceivable premise involving a disaster that they could dream up and afford to realize on-screen.

Though rarely connecting with contemporary movie critics, disaster films were definitely a major box office draw for most of the '70s. Decades later, we still have a soft spot for the incendiary spectacle that these movies provide, not to mention their unintentionally funny moments. And to their credit, some disaster movies are among the most entertaining and enduring movies from the decade overall. Here are the 10 best '70s disaster movies, ranked.

The late, great legendary B-movie producer and director Roger Corman produced 1978's "Avalanche," which was directed and co-written by Corey Allen. Rock Hudson stars as foolhardy hotelier David Shelby, who opens a ski resort in an area plagued by severe avalanches, determined to prove his naysayers wrong. David invites his ex-wife Caroline Brace (Mia Farrow) to the resort's grand opening, secretly hoping to rekindle their relationship, and growing jealous of her attention to photographer Nick Thorne (Robert Forster). This is all sidelined when a small plane crash triggers a huge avalanche, completely engulfing the resort and trapping the survivors inside.

As with any disaster movie, what makes "Avalanche" work is its ensemble cast, particularly the trio formed by Hudson, Farrow, and Forster. The movie also wisely doesn't try to absolve Hudson's character, at least not completely, from the catastrophe caused by his single-minded hubris. The action itself is largely what's expected of the genre, but the alpine setting helps distinguish it from its contemporaries. A solid disaster movie that came out as the genre began to gradually wind down, "Avalanche" doesn't pack any surprises but leans into what audiences come to expect.

One of the most underrated disaster movies is 1977's "Rollercoaster," which actually features a number of amusement park rides gone horribly wrong. The movie opens with an unnamed terrorist (Timothy Bottoms) causing a horrific rollercoaster derailment at a theme park, killing and grievously maiming the riders. Safety inspector Harry Calder (George Segal) and FBI agent Hoyt (Richard Widmark) realize that the terrorist is moving across the country, targeting other amusement park rides. The duo move to intercept the deranged culprit before he can claim any additional victims as his rampage continues.

Rather than keep audiences on the hook, "Rollercoaster" delivers its biggest and most ambitious set piece right at the start of the movie. From there, the movie peppers in smaller theme park ride accidents to punctuate the story, reminding viewers of the stakes as the manhunt escalates. This premise blends crime thriller elements into the disaster movie spectacle. A cross-country game of cat-and-mouse with plenty of carnage along the way, "Rollercoaster" adds its own twist to the disaster movie genre.

The best of the "Airport" sequels is the third entry in the franchise, 1977's aptly titled "Airport '77." The disaster movie starts out as a high-flying heist story, with wealthy Philip Stevens (James Stewart) transporting his priceless art collection on a privately owned airliner. Co-pilot Bob Chambers (Robert Foxworth) leads a small team of hijackers to incapacitate the pilot and take the flight off-course, only to accidentally crash the plane in the Bermuda Triangle. This leads Stevens and the recovering pilot, Don Gallagher (Jack Lemmon), to lead the surviving crew and passengers to alert the authorities and stay alive.

Compared to the other lackluster "Airport" sequels, "Airport '77" has a relatively more intriguing premise with its mid-air heist gone wrong. The cast also shines brighter than most of its franchise counterparts, with Lemmon and Stewart bringing a real humanity to what could've been more formulaic proceedings. Plus, the movie features Christopher Lee in a rare heroic role as a professional diver who becomes part of the seabound crash. Though "Airport '77" was never going to be among James Stewart's best movies, it's a late-career blockbuster for the venerable actor.

As far as sheer scope, few '70s disaster movies can match 1974's "Earthquake," which featured a massive earthquake completely leveling Los Angeles. The movie introduces several seemingly disparate characters, each with their own personal hang-ups, before bringing them together as the earthquake suddenly upends their lives. This includes estranged married couple Stewart (Charlton Heston) and Remy (Ava Gardner), whose squabbles are tabled when disaster strikes. The survivors try to help get the injured to safety as the after-effects of the quake continue to pose mortal danger.

"Earthquake" is a wild movie, even beyond its city-obliterating spectacle and major characters steadily being killed off. From a psychotic National Guardsman to a late-in-the-game flood, this is a film that careens from crisis to crisis amid the larger carnage at hand. But where the movie thankfully excels is in delivering those visceral thrills, offering a grander scale in its destruction than most of its contemporaries. One of the best natural disaster movies ever, "Earthquake" set a high bar for on-screen devastation.

Another Charlton Heston-led disaster flick, 1972's "Skyjacked" was based on the 1970 novel "Hijacked" by David Harper and capitalized on the "Airport" movies' success. Heston stars as Hank O'Hara, an airline captain who is alerted to a bomber's written demands to divert his plane to Alaska or risk death. With the help of the flight crew, O'Hara learns the hijacker is mentally ill Vietnam War veteran Jerome K. Weber (James Brolin). As O'Hara tries to defuse the situation without causing bloodshed, Weber has the plane continue on to the Soviet Union, where he plans to defect.

"Skyjacked" stands above most of the "Airport" movies it was evoking because it plays more like a suspense thriller. The soap opera elements that often try to force a human story into disaster movies are downplayed in favor of the psychological battle of wills between O'Hara and Weber. With his no-nonsense glare, Heston falls into the role of an airline pilot well, matched in intensity by Brolin's performance. A disaster movie gem overshadowed by its more formulaic counterparts, "Skyjacked" is a great, high-flying thrill ride that takes advantage of its contemporary politics.

Michael Crichton was one of the biggest best-selling science fiction authors of the 20th century, and many of his novels were adapted to the big screen. The first adaptation of Crichton's work was 1971's "The Andromeda Strain," based on his 1969 novel of the same name, in which a crashed satellite unleashes an extraterrestrial pathogen on Earth. After it wipes out most of the residents of a small town in Arizona, government officials and the military scramble to contain the airborne organism from spreading uncontrollably.

Some might consider "The Andromeda Strain" more of a sci-fi thriller than a typical disaster movie, and they wouldn't be wrong. Our stance is that the film has all the usual disaster movie tropes — it's just that the contagion threatening humanity happens to come from outer space. Regardless of genre labeling, the movie provides an eerie and tense mood that persists for much of its runtime. Ranked with the best Michael Crichton movie adaptations, "The Andromeda Strain" features a disaster by plague, a disaster that's the most terrifying of all.

Before "Chernobyl," there was "The China Syndrome," a 1979 conspiracy thriller and disaster movie all at once centered on the burgeoning development of nuclear power plants. The movie has California news team Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) and Richard Adams (Michael Douglas) stumble on a cover-up of unstable conditions at a local nuclear power plant. As Wells and Adams are stonewalled from broadcasting their findings, the plant's shift supervisor Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon) learns a nuclear meltdown is imminent. However, Godell's concerns are firmly kept under wraps by his superiors, even as conditions visibly worsen at the plant.

"The China Syndrome" had the eerie distinction of being released 12 days before the Three Mile Island incident, a partial nuclear meltdown in Pennsylvania. That gave the movie's disaster movie aesthetics a grounded sense of legitimacy in the story it was telling. This is elevated by the movie's stellar cast, especially Jack Lemmon, who went out on a limb to star in "The China Syndrome." A tautly presented thriller capitalizing on anxieties of civilian nuclear energy use, "The China Syndrome" is a prestige-level disaster movie.

The disaster movie that really started it all, 1970's "Airport" not only spawned its own franchise but set the template for the genre. The movie takes place in a snowbound Chicago airport which has one of its airliners stuck in a snowbank. This occurs as a full Rome-bound flight has to turn back for an emergency landing after a mentally ill passenger (Van Heflin) plans to blow himself up on the flight. Meanwhile, airport Mel Bakersfield (Burt Lancaster) and veteran pilot Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin) each contend with developments in their respectively messy personal lives.

"Airport" starts out as a workplace-set soap operatic drama before its airplane bomber plot catapults the story into action thriller territory. Something that gets lost in the wake of all its sequels is that the first "Airport" movie was actually quite good. The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, with Helen Hayes winning for Best Supporting Actress for her role as elderly stowaway Ada Quonsett. Offering a solid story that felt fresh at the time (before its subsequent sequels descended into derivative formula), the 1970 "Airport" still holds up as the best from its series.

Producer Irwin Allen really capitalized on the disaster movie trend in the '70s, producing some of the best movies of the genre. "The Towering Inferno" focuses on a new skyscraper opening in San Francisco. Electrical subcontractor Roger Simmons' (Richard Chamberlain) cost-cutting measures lead to the building full of faulty electrical wiring. During a lavish dedication ceremony on the skyscraper's upper levels, the wiring sparks a huge fire, trapping the guests inside. The pressure falls on chief firefighter Michael O'Hallorhan (Steve McQueen) to devise an innovative way to put out the blaze and rescue the surviving guests.

"The Towering Inferno" went on to become one of the highest-earning movies of 1974, earning over $116 million at the box office. The movie has the requisite all-star cast, but it really belongs to McQueen and Paul Newman, with the latter playing the skyscraper's architect who realizes his creation was mishandled. Those actors keep the spectacle grounded in human emotion and keep it from becoming just a visual effects parade picking off stock characters methodically. One of the best Steve McQueen movies, "The Towering Inferno" is also one of Allen's strongest disaster projects.

The movie that cemented the disaster movie genre's place among prestige cinema, 1972's "The Poseidon Adventure" is based on Paul Gallico's 1969 novel of the same name. The movie follows an ocean liner bound from America for Athens, Greece during the holiday season, with the ship cruising above its recommended speed. When the ship is hit by an enormous tidal wave created by an undersea earthquake, it is completely flipped upside-down, with water quickly rising across the capsized decks. Reverend Frank Scott (Gene Hackman) leads a small group of survivors up towards the ship's exposed hull to find a way out of the vessel before it sinks.

While disaster movies had received award season accolades before, Gene Hackman's performance in "The Poseidon Adventure" helped legitimize the entire genre. There is a real sense of loss whenever someone dies throughout the story, and Hackman brings a tremendous amount of conviction to his character in humanizing that struggle. Audiences and critics responded in kind, making the movie a huge success both critically and commercially. A complete triumph of the genre, with steady thrills and memorable characters brought to life by its ensemble cast, "The Poseidon Adventure" is an enduring classic.