Meteor (1979)

User Rating:

4.7/10   

Director:

Ronald Neame

Writers:

Stanley Mann (screenplay)
Edmund H. North (screenplay)

Release Date:

19 October 1979 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline:

There's No Place On Earth To Hide!

Plot:

After a collision with a comet, a nearly 8km wide piece of the asteroid "Orpheus" is heading towards Earth...

Plot Keywords:

Satellite | Comet | NASA | Meteor Threatens Earth | Disaster Film

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

Sean Connery	...	Dr. Paul Bradley
Natalie Wood	...	Tatiana Nikolaevna Donskaya
Karl Malden	...	Harry Sherwood, NASA
Brian Keith	...	Dr. Alexei Dubov
Martin Landau	...	Major General Adlon
Trevor Howard	...	Sir Michael Hughes
Richard Dysart	...	Secretary of Defense
Henry Fonda	...	The President
Joseph Campanella	...	Lt. Gen. Easton
Bo Brundin	...	Rolf Manheim
Katherine De Hetre	...	Jan Watson
James G. Richardson	...	Alan Marshall
Roger Robinson	...	Bill Hunter
Michael Zaslow	...	Sam Mason
John McKinney	...	Peter Watson

Runtime:

107 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Russian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo

Certification:

West Germany:12 | Italy:T | Argentina:13 | Chile:14 | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 (1979) | Sweden:15 | UK:PG | USA:PG | Singapore:PG | UK:A (original rating)

Company:

American International Pictures (AIP)

Trivia:

Brian Keith was an 11th hour casting choice replacing an actor who dropped out

Goofs:

Factual errors: The rockets sent to hit the meteor would not burn their engines for the entire trip from launch to impact. Rockets are very fuel-thirsty. The ones in the movie would burn for a few minutes to achieve escape velocity and get on an intercept path. They would coast the rest of the trip to the meteor.

Quotes:

Tatiana Donskaya: One day you will come to Moscow and I will show you a clean subway.

Movie Connections:

Edited into The Day After (1983) (TV)

The curse of 1979 strikes again.

Was there something in the water in 1979? I was reading up recently about some of the films that major movie stars made in 1979 and it is remarkable how many actors were busy wasting their talents on duds in that year. Michael Caine in Beyond the Poseidon Adventure; Laurence Olivier in Dracula; Roger Moore in Escape to Athena; Jason Robards in Hurricane; Peter Cushing in A Touch of the Sun; Donald Sutherland in Bear Island; James Mason and Anthony Quinn in The Passage; Robert Shaw and Lee Marvin in Avalanche Express; and Richard Harris in A Game For Vultures. Even some directors seemed to be affected by the curse of 1979 - Steven Spielberg, for instance, made his only fully-fledged turkey in the shape of "1941". The '79 trend for big stars in bad films also extended to Sean Connery. Poor old Sean's 1979 film, Meteor, is a disaster movie of stupefying awfulness.

It is revealed that a huge meteor is on collision course with earth, so big that unless it is diverted or destroyed its impact could cause another Ice Age. The American president (Henry Fonda) instructs professor Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery) to figure out how to blast the meteor to bits by using secret nuclear weapons positioned in orbit above the earth. However, Dr. Bradley soon calculates that the American weapons alone will not halt the meteor. The Russians are brought in and informed of the potential destruction of the world as we know it and, in a race against time, the Americans try to persuade them to admit that they too have space-based nuclear missiles which could be added to the strike.

The special effects are remarkably poor for a post Star Wars sci-fi film, but the film fails on many other levels too. None of the actors look enthusiastic about being here; Ronald Neame and Stanley Mann's script is full of idiotic dialogue and plot contrivances; excitement is persistently undermined by interminable talky scenes; and the characterisation is so ludicrous that it makes you want to grind your teeth with despair. Soon after this, disaster movies came to an end, not to be seen again until their special effects-enhanced re-emergence in the mid-1990s. When you see Meteor, you'll immediately understand why the genre self-destructed.