Meteor (1979) American International/Sci-Fi-Action-Drama RT: 107 minutes Rated PG (language, violent images, scenes of destruction) Director: Ronald Neame Screenplay: Stanley Mann and Edmund H. North Music: Laurence Rosenthal Cinematography: Paul Lohmann Release date: October 19, 1979 (US) Cast: Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Richard Dysart, Joseph Campanella, Henry Fonda, Bo Brundin, Katherine De Hetre, James G. Richardson, Roger Robinson, Michael Zaslow, John McKinney, John Findlater, Paul Tulley, Allen Williams, Bibi Besch, Gregory Gay, Clyde Kusatsu, Sybil Danning. Box Office: $8.4M (US)
Rating: *
How do you follow up an act like The Concorde… Airport ’79? Obviously, you don’t. That disaster-in-every-sense movie is so spectacularly inept; no mortal man could ever make anything like it, on purpose or not. However, there’s no rule that says you can’t at least try. The folks at American International sure did with Meteor, a slightly less incompetent disaster flick about a giant asteroid on a collision course with Earth after being knocked out of orbit by a comet. I’d like to say that the news of impending disaster sends the world into a panic, but since most of the running time is spent inside an underground military facility, it’s hard to say how the public is taking it. It’s just one of many blunders made by director Ronald Neame who should know better seeing as how he previously directed The Poseidon Adventure, a classic of the catastrophe genre.
Neame starts things off with a brief lesson on comets and the Asteroid Belt courtesy of actor Peter Donat (couldn’t get Carl Sagan?) via voiceover. He tells us about a large asteroid called Orpheus describing it as “20 miles in diameter and undisturbed for countless generations…. UNTIL NOW.” Ah, “until now”, a two-word phrase that carries with it anticipation of calamity and chaos. BTW, the calamity part isn’t necessarily restricted to the events depicted in the movie.
The plot of Meteor isn’t anything special. When it’s learned that a huge chunk of Orpheus will hit Earth in less than a week, NASA calls in Dr. Paul Bradley (former 007 Connery) to help out. He isn’t exactly happy to be there. He created Hercules, an orbiting satellite armed with nuclear missiles. It was intended to protect the planet from the likes of Orpheus until the military took charge of it and aimed the missiles at what was then the Soviet Union. He’s never gotten over this betrayal, one for which he holds former colleague and friend Harry Sherwood (Malden, On the Waterfront) responsible.
ANYWAY, they need him to reprogram Hercules to fire its missiles at the meteor once it’s in range. The problem is that it doesn’t have enough firepower (only 14 missiles) to stop Orpheus. They’re going to need the help of the Soviets who have their own secret satellite- aka Peter the Great- with 16 missiles. Soviet scientist Dr. Alexei Dubov (Keith, The Parent Trap) comes to the US to discuss the matter. It takes some doing, but they finally agree to work together to stop the meteor before it wipes out humanity.
Like all disaster movies, Meteor boasts an all-star cast of great actors looking to stay in the game. It includes Natalie Wood (West Side Story) as Russian interpreter Tatiana, Martin Landau (Ed Wood) as facility commander General Adlon, Trevor Howard (The Third Man) as British scientist Sir Michael, Richard Dysart (Pale Rider) as the Secretary of Defense, Joseph Campanella (Hangar 18) as General Easton and “Henry Fonda as The President” (another favorite disaster movie phrase).
Now for the pertinent info about the characters. Bradley and Tatiana fall for each other. Adlon, the film’s villain figure, is vehemently opposed to sharing information with the Soviets. Early in the movie, three astronauts die when a chunk of Orpheus hits their craft. One of them was Easton’s son. For him, it’s personal. The facility is located beneath the subway system in Lower Manhattan. A piece of the big space rock hits New York taking out the World Trade Center- in the words of teenage Movie Guy 24/7, that’s pretty f***ed up- and trapping the principal characters underground. Yes, I think that should do it as far as plot is concerned.
The biggest mystery in Meteor is how it still manages to look cheap despite $16 million being spent on it. We’re talking 1979 dollars which translates to roughly $57 million in 2020 dollars. With that much money available, the special effects should be awesome. Instead, they’re awesomely bad. Outer space is clearly a backdrop. The meteor, obviously a large fake rock, seems to move in place rather than hurtle towards Earth. Then there are the disasters caused by fragments of the meteor landing in different parts of the world. We get an avalanche in the Swiss Alps, a tidal wave in Hong Kong and, of course, the Big Apple. Fake, fake, FAKE! Look at the New York sequences. Neame uses stock footage and miniatures to depict the collapse of Manhattan. For scenes inside the facility, he shakes the camera to simulate the effect of an earth-shaking event.
The acting is pretty much on par with other disaster movies. A lot of once-big stars try to out-embarrass each other with hammy performances and terrible dialogue. About the nicest thing I can say is that Wood and Keith’s Russian accents aren’t awful. Both actors speak the language fluently. When they’re not talking, they’re dodging falling plaster and flowing mud. That’s really all there is to say on this subject.
The idiocy in Meteor is nearly as rampant as it is in Airport ’79. The science is questionable at best and entirely wrong at worst. The makers did not do their homework. If they did, they’d know a few facts about space that would have come in handy during production. Take the scene where the space probe is destroyed. The astronauts never would have seen it coming. They wouldn’t have time to react. To be fair, not a lot of people would know this. Not everybody is a rocket scientist. I had to look it up myself. This is not the only thing Meteor gets wrong. I could name a few other things, but what’s the point? I’ll say this much, my sixth grade science teacher would slap a big fat F on the movie.
I do like the poster for Meteor. True to form, it has a line of boxes with the actors’ faces in them. It also has “Henry Fonda as The President” on it. It’s the little things in life that make me smile. And it’s bad movies like Meteor that keep me laughing. I’ll give it this much, it’s more entertaining than Armageddon which cost almost ten times as much to make and is only a tenth as fun as the older movie. Take that, Michael Bay!
