In this Movie Memory Machine: Five For mini-episode, Landen and Truman assemble five films that either inspired Poseidon or improved on its sinking-ship energy. From genre-defining classics to spiritual successors and absurd creature features, this episode dives into the tropes, disasters, and emotional breakdowns that define the best (and weirdest) entries in the disaster movie canon. There’s betrayal. There’s fire. There’s a meth gator. You’ve been warned.
Films Discussed:
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979)
Airport (1970)
Airplane! (1980)
Attack of the Meth Gator (2023)
Topics Covered:
The original Poseidon Adventure as a gold standard of survival disaster cinema
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure as the moment the genre jumped the ship
Airport launching the ensemble-cast disaster template
Airplane! ending the disaster movie era with parody perfection
Attack of the Meth Gator as absurdist chaos in B-movie form (and a sneaky commentary on distribution tropes)
Key Takeaways:
Survival stories work best when time, space, and pressure are clear
The disaster genre dies not with a bang, but with a Peter Boyle dive into melodrama
You can't top Airplane!—you can only riff on it
Meth Gator knows exactly what it is and leans in harder than the cruise ship in Poseidon
Listener Prompt:
What’s your favorite disaster film of all time? Do you prefer the sincerity of survival stories or the absurdity of disaster parody? Let us know using #MovieMemoryMachine.
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