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30 out of 33 people found the following review useful:
Don't cross it off! Watch it!, 13 January 2003
Author: Poseidon-3 from Cincinnati, OH

Disaster epics like "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno" from 20th Century Fox led almost everyone else to try their hand at it, since, for a time, disaster at the movies meant box office gold. This entry was Italy's answer to the genre and, though it is far-fetched and occasionally ridiculous, it is a thrilling and tense movie. Loren toplines as a divorcee and author who happens to be boarded on the same train as her ex-husband (twice!) Harris is the husband, a noted neurosurgeon. The two lob sarcastic and occasionally poignant barbs at each other and attempt a sort of 1970's, updated Nick & Nora Charles thing. (Ironically, their names are Jonathan and Jennifer, the monikers of the later Nick & Nora redux "Hart to Hart" and Stander, Max the conductor in this film, played their cohort---ALSO named Max!) Other passengers board in the typical genre fashion, each with their tics and traits and duties to the story. Gardner looks stunning. She ludicrously, but welcomely, appears in a new drop-dead Franka ensemble for almost every scene. Nothing about her character is realistic, but she adds great style and class to the film. Sheen plays her latest boy-toy and they share a rather kinky, Oedipal relationship. Simpson (in another subpar performance) is a mysterious priest. Strasberg is excruciating as a sort of male Estelle Getty from "The Golden Girls", omnipresently appearing everywhere trying to sell watches to the passengers. He gets better toward the end, but his appearance is mostly embarrassing. Turkel (doubtlessly on board due to her offscreen relationship with Harris) is a hippie singer who warbles a truly awful song which stops everything in its tracks (pun intended.) Also on board: an infected terrorist who is spreading a horrific plague everywhere he goes (which is hilariously punctuated by ominous sounds and scenes of him coughing in the train's food, etc...) Lancaster as a stern army colonel and Thulin (who exists as a verbal punching bag for Lancaster) as a doctor argue over the best course of action. She fights for the rights and lives of the passengers. He sees them as casualties of an unfortunate situation. Eventually, it is decided to direct the train to an old concentration camp in Poland, but first it must traverse the title bridge---The Cassandra Crossing! The film contains some really impressive aerial camera work (the film should be viewed in widescreen) and doesn't take long to begin it's feeling of dread and suspense. Though a lot of the drama is diffused by clumsy editing, inane dialogue, agonizing bit players, lax rear projection (but not often) and lazy acting, there is enough good in the film to overcome this. Immeasurably helpful is Goldsmith's Italian-flavored, chug-chug score which wrings every ounce of excitement it can out of the visuals. It's also fun to see Loren in a film of this type, pitching in and holding her own with Harris in the action scenes. There is a level of emotion in several instances that helps this rise above some other screen flops like "When Time Ran Out" and "Avalanche". A lot happens in this film. The plague would be enough, but then there's gunplay and the weakened bridge! The situation is the film is serious and threatening and isn't relieved until almost the fade out, so a few missteps along the way can be forgiven.

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18 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
Everything but the kitchen sink, 21 January 2000
Author: heedarmy from United Kingdom

Wow! Now here's a value for money film. You get an outbreak of plague on a train, heading for a rickety bridge, whose passengers include sundry thieves, arms dealers, terrorists, pretty girls and cute kids. We've got helicopters, shoot-outs, explosions, songs, heroic sacrifices, Martin Sheen as Ava Gardner's kept boyfriend, Lee Strasberg emoting nobly and Burt Lancaster as an Army General who is Not To Be Trusted. George Pan Cosmatos directs at a fair lick, the setpieces are staged with relish, there's some neat bits of dialogue (courtesy of Tom Manciewiez, one suspects) and a spectacular climax. By most definitions, this is a pretty bad, crass, melodramatic, ludicrous film, but it's more fun than many a Good Movie I can think of.

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16 out of 20 people found the following review useful:
A disaster movie in more ways than one – but I like it!, 23 August 2004
Author: John M Upton from Southern England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Primarily I like this movie for its comedy value, this is your typical band of standard characters in group jeopardy disaster type movie so beloved of the 1970's (see the various Airport films, Towering Inferno, etc for more examples of this classic ‘unintentional comedy' genre).

The usual slightly bored all star cast who need the cash, this time are sealed on a non-stop train with a deadly virus, a couple of dozen gun toting goons and a hundred or so extras who met various violent deaths either at the hands of the virus or other more violent means.

The reason this film is so funny is that you can sit back and relax and watch the endless errors – the non stop train that manages to change locomotive mid journey, the scenery going by the wrong way outside the train windows, the same scenery going by several times on a loop, the electric locomotive that still manages to keep going when the electrical supply disappears every so often, the red kitchen car that manages to turn round and change places in the train, not to mention the final coup de grace with the extra ten or so carriages of cannon fodder extras that mysteriously appear at the front of the train just in time to be tipped over the bridge to their deaths.

The scenario is so ludicrous and the dialogue so clichéd that it makes me laugh out loud whenever I see it, not least that concept that the train is sealed – yeah right – and that they are all cured by the pumped air – so then what do they do? Break a few windows to try and escape – good one!

Still it fills in an afternoon, amazingly this rubbish has actually been released on DVD - whatever next?

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13 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
"What sweaty pervert?", 9 September 2006

Author: TrevorAclea from London, England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Sometimes you want nothing more than to turn your brain off and settle down to a slice of Europudding. Lew Grade and Carlo Ponti's Anglo-Italian co-production The Cassandra Crossing is a perfect example. Full of fattening but empty calories and boasting an Irish, Italian, American, German and anybody else who wasn't busy that month cast of fading stars, a Greek director and shot in Switzerland and France with the profits from The Muppet Show, it's a prime example of that much maligned genre, the conspiracy/disease/disaster/train/action movie. Richard Harris and the co-producer's missus Sophia Loren take the leads as the glamorous twice-divorced couple – he conveniently a doctor, she a pulp novelist – who find themselves on the same train as Martin Sheen's drug smuggling toy boy gigolo mountain climber (seen in one surreal moment standing on his head on a bed wearing only Y-fronts while Ava Gardner applauds), O.J. Simpson's gun-toting not-really-a-priest (and yes, the bastard does go down), Lee Strasberg's concentration camp survivor muttering "I can't go back to Poland" (some of my relatives feel the same, Lee), Lionel Stander's lovable conductor (yes, he's called Max and he looks after them), the then-Mrs Harris, Ann Turkel as a free-spirited hippie chick who can't sing (or do much about her boyfriend's premature ejaculation problem either for that matter), and, critically, Lou Castel's sweaty Swedish terrorist (described in one memorable exchange as a "sweaty pervert"). The reason he's sweating is he's got a nasty strain of Pneumonic Plague that the Americans were planning on destroying (honest) in Geneva before he and his ill-fated pal tried to blow up the lab.

While Ingrid Thulin's humanitarian doctor tries to find a way of saving the passengers and Burt Lancaster's American general tries to find a more permanent containment solution involving a rickety bridge en route to a disused WW2 Polish 'isolation' camp ("It's a Warsaw Pact country but we can't do anything about that") in one of those flashing light control rooms with minimalist glass maps (you can just imagine them exchanging anecdotes about the days when they were working with Visconti inbetween takes), it's up to Richard Harris to save the day. Boy, are those passengers in trouble – he's such a responsible doctor that when he sees a sweaty Castel panting and heaving over a bowl of rice pudding he doesn't even tell the nun sitting opposite him in the dining car that she might want to try the trifle instead, so we know that a lot of the passengers aren't going to make it. Oh, did I mention the 'cute' little girl? Alida Valli's governess? John Phillip Law's 'sinister' military aide? There's an enjoyably overwrought Jerry Goldsmith score (the only one to include an entire cue used in a previous score, in this case a re-orchestrated version of 'Night Attack' from Islands in the Stream), some better than expected production values and worse than expected back-projection and one real howler of a continuity goof as the locomotive changes type two-thirds through the film. But most of all, it's just demented enough in its straight-faced way to be great fun if you're in the right mood. Director George Pan Cosmatos may have been a hack, but he was a very proficient one, as an extremely well executed and impressively edited opening raid on the World Health Organisation – sorry, INTERNATIONAL Health Organization's headquarters demonstrates. It also has some genuinely impressive camera-work (including a couple of shots I still can't work out how they got) and what is easily the best transfer of a sick Basset hound from a moving train to a helicopter before the train hits a tunnel action set-piece in screen history. Now THAT'S entertainment!

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13 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
Better than most recent disaster movies!, 3 March 2000
Author: nicholas-21 from Tipton, England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This disaster movie is both fun and thrilling at the same time, and does not rely at all on computer graphics unlike recent efforts like ARMAGEDDON. In fact, the visuals here, especially at the breath-taking climax, still look hot! The movie is all about a train ride into hell - not only is the Geneva to Stockholm express heading for a collapsing bridge, it has plague on board - no antidote - and nobody will allow the passengers off! Burt Lancaster is great as Colonel MacKenzie, the army intelligence officer in charge of operations, who has a decision to make - should he sacrifice the passengers to prevent a Europe-wide epidemic? Sounds familiar? This might even have inspired such recent movies like EXECUTIVE DECISION, OUTBREAK, PANDORA'S CLOCK(TV mini series) and in part UNDER SIEGE 2. Aside from the action, you get a distinguished cast featuring Sophia Loren, Martin Sheen, Richard Harris, Ava Gardner and more, plus great scenic train footage. Don't miss it!

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12 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
A dynamic disaster pic., 26 March 2001

Author: gridoon

This is not one of those soulless, uninteresting all-star packages of the '70s, like "The Towering Inferno" or one of those pseudo-artsy "entertainments" like "The French Connection"; it's a vigorously directed, tightly edited thriller that grabs you by the throat right from the opening sequence and keeps its grip throughout. Sure, it contains most of the expected disaster-movie cliches (peculiar love-hate relationships between characters played by big stars of the era, useless supporting roles - especially Ava Gardner's -, etc...), but the directing is so efficient, and Burt Lancaster is so convincingly hateful, that you find yourself completely absorbed. In my opinion, a first-rate movie, with a spectacular finish. (***)

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13 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
Under-rated disaster entry, well worth catching., 8 September 2004
Author: Jonathon Dabell (barnaby.rudge@hotmail.co.uk) from Wakefield, England

The '70s cycle of disaster films provided widely acclaimed titles such as The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, and universally panned titles like When Time Ran Out and Hurricane. It's tricky to decide which side to place The Cassandra Crossing. This 1976 entry in the genre divides critics and the public like no other disaster movie - on the one hand you have Maltin giving it his nod of approval, while on the other you have Halliwell dismissing it as a totally undistinguished potboiler. Personally, I feel The Cassandra Crossing has been rather hard done by. It's a good, well-made, sporadically exciting film with a first-rate cast.

A terrorist on the run boards a continental train, unaware that when he recently infiltrated a top secret laboratory he was infected with a highly contagious killer plague. Pretty soon, people aboard the train are coming down with the horrendous virus. In the corridors of power, Colonel Stephen Mackenzie (Burt Lancaster) plots to divert the train to an abandoned concentration camp where the passengers can be quarantined, ignoring the fact that the train will have to traverse the famously fragile Cassandra Crossing (a dangerously rickety, long unused bridge) to get there. Meanwhile, the passengers - including Dr. Jonathan Chamberlain (Richard Harris) - realize that they're not as safe as the authorities would have them believe, and they try to regain control of the express.

Admittedly, The Cassandra Crossing is derivative and clichéd - as, indeed, so many disaster films are. But it doesn't waste its marvelous all-star cast. Each character is well-written and well-performed by a stellar cast. George Pan Cosmatos (later to helm Cobra and Rambo: First Blood, Part II) directs with an assured touch and generates some very effective tension, particularly in the film's memorable climax. At 123 minutes, the film is just long enough - there's time to get involved in the story and the characters, but not quite enough time to get bored. The Cassandra Crossing is an above-par disaster flick, which has been unfairly under-rated for far too long.

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16 out of 24 people found the following review useful:
The Cassandra Crossing, 24 March 2000
Author: Janos Smal (jsmal@osi.hu) from Budapest, Hungary

An infected terrorist escapes from a Geneva chemical institute and carries a deadly plague to a European express train.

Coolly devised, fashionable, rather silly, but undeniably entertaining and spectacular disaster thriller with an abundance of topical pulp elements, handsome production, superficial writing, a curious lack of cinematic invention, and nothing much for its star cast to do. Watching it now, one can observe many components clearly influencing today's filmmakers.

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7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Low Grade, 31 December 2002
Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Spoilers. This film, which seems even longer than the train it deals with, is strictly routine. To make fun of it would be too easy, like parodying a karaoke amateur night. It's done entirely by the numbers. A cast of dozens of international stars, most of them over the hill at this point in their careers, and all one dimensional and strictly functional. Burt Lancaster is the full colonel who wants to destroy the train. Martin Sheen in an echt-70s mop of hair is a heroin-smuggling gigolo. O. J. Simpson's presence is depressing. Ava Gardner, quite a babe in real life, should have sued the make-up department for trying to glamorize her instead of simply letting the beauty of her aging features shine by themselves. Anne Turkel plays a young woman who's a real hottie -- she was Richard Harris's wife at the time. Harris himself is the requisite doctor who has the skills necessary to interpret what's going on for dummies like us in the audience. Sophia Loren is less garishly made up than Gardner but still overglossed and overdressed. People in airproof space suits seal up a train contaminated by pneumonic plague (they must have seen the vastly superior "Panic in the Streets"). You can tell the bad guys because they are in those white suits and follow orders, even if it means their own destruction. Lee Strasberg must have been searching for parts to take this one. Alida Valli, looking very good considering that she looked very good 28 years earlier in "The Third Man," stands as a beacon for the rest of our gradually sagging populations. There is an awfully cute little red-headed girl. There is always a cute little girl. Sometimes they need kidney transplants. At other times, as here, they are merely scared of all the noise, shooting, sealing of windows, and other assorted mishigas. Every one of these children in every one of these movies should be struck until they ring like gongs.

Well, I'll tell you, the plot is a corker. Some of the thousand-plus passengers die with little buboes that look like zits. Others, incomprehensibly, survive. There is some mumbo jumbo about the highly oxygenated air in the train causing the bacteria to reproduce more rapidly but to lose its virulence in doing so. The survivors recover in no time, happy as clams, and begin celebrating. If there were room enough they'd do the highland fling. Still, despite the evidence, Lancaster who is in charge of these things keeps the train hurtling towards a bridge that may or may not carry its weight, the "Cassandra Crossing." (The name has something to do with a Trojan legend.) A plot engineered by Richard Harris to blow up the coupling (?) and separate the train into two parts succeeds. The important characters, those not already dead, are on the second half, which grinds to a halt just short of the bridge. The first half, containing nobody we know or care about, rockets onto the bridge. Does the bridge hold? Or does the bridge collapse and provide the cathartic release that the salivating disaster-movie audience has been so eagerly anticipating? Wild horses wouldn't drag the answer from me.

I watched this thing twice, because my TV guide gave it an above average review and I believed I'd been wrong and missed something first time around. But no. For the only time in my life I was wrong. I'd been right the first time after all.

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7 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Sir Lew Grade strikes again; this one could be called "Railway of the Damned", 9 April 2008

Author: moonspinner55 from redlands, ca

A hospital terrorist in Geneva, Switzerland manages to escape security, but not before contracting Bubonic Plague in the medical lab; he stows away in the baggage car of a Swiss train bound for Sweden, later mingling with the commuters (he touches a baby, food in the kitchen, he shares water with a pooch, and even approaches a cleric-collar wearing O.J. Simpson!). Doctors and military men are onto him however, and soon the train is re-routed--towards a Polish bridge on the verge of collapse! Producer Carlo Ponti (via Lew Grade, the king of "upscale" '70s schlock cinema) employs a large group of famous faces for the guest-star roles, ensuring that his wife, Sophia Loren, gets plenty of Movie Star Close-Ups. Loren and Richard Harris aren't terribly credible as bickering/kissing ex-marrieds (she attempts to re-seduce him wearing a black négligée), but at least they're better than Lee Strasberg as a former prisoner-of-war and Martin Sheen as a heroin-addict passing himself off as Madame Ava Gardner's boy toy. Decadent, divine Gardner (with Bassett Hound in tow) gets her share of close-ups too, and also the pithiest lines. The cinematography is quite impressive, and Jerry Goldsmith's score is enjoyably melodramatic, but the writing, editing, and direction are each lousy. This hit theaters on the tail-end of the all-star-disaster-epic craze...and failed to revive the dying genre. Easy to see why, most of the passengers seem as fatigued as the plot. ** from ****

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