AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Yvonne Jodi Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

mlink-36-9815 I first saw it on Cinemax in the 80's & I liked the movie. They tried to show a sodom and gomorrah scene where sex was given away cheaply. Its the type of movie where the filmmakers were hoping interesting stuff would happen and then afterwards they could edit the good stuff together. But not enough interesting things happened. The VHS tape is a cut version at its proper speed. The cinemax version is time compressed. Both are 91 min.! I guess they were told 91 min. and no longer. I have not seen the dvd yet. I own the movie poster, paperback tie-in and soundtrack album. Guess I must like it. eh? The best scene is where the girl attacks the skier with a knife and he throws a glass of milk in her face. Its unforgettable.

tarwaterthomas Well do I remember this disaster movie classic from the 1970s, brought to one and all by Roger Corman and his New World Pictures outfit' ol' Rog was rather late to the party. Anyhoo, this fractured flicker takes place in the Colorado Rocky Mountains (where this movie was shot, but fortunately recovered). Rock Hudson plays a bazillionaire businessman who owns a ritzy mountainside hotel where a sports competition is taking place. We're talking ice-skating, folks. Mia Farrow plays his former wife whom he's trying to woo once again. Then there's Robert Forster, who's an environmentally-conscious forest ranger and he's trying to alert Rock and company about an avalanche that will happen unless somebody does something. There are some cannon shots that loosens the snow, but the titular disaster happens when an airplane smacks into a snowy peak. And away we go. The surprisingly good visual effects were accomplished by an uncredited Gene Warren (who with Tim Barr and Wah Chang) snared an Oscar for Best Special Effects on THE TIME MACHINE (1960). This movie is finally available on DVD, thanks to Olive Films. Next year marks AVALANCHE's 40th anniversary. Check it out. And look for the well-written novelization of the movie; the tie-in novel was written by Robert Weverka and issued by Bantam Books. That's all. One more thing. I promise. The avalanche sequence was borrowed by American International for METEOR (1979) where an avalanche covers a Swiss ski resort thanks to a fragment of the big rock.

Scott LeBrun Rock Hudson is entrepreneur David Shelby in this production, legendary independent filmmaker Roger Cormans' (belated) contribution to the cycle of disaster films in the 1970s. David doesn't want to let anything stand in the way of his dreams, and he's also still hung up on his younger, estranged ex-wife Caroline Brace (Mia Farrow). David owns & operates a thriving ski resort, and makes the fateful move of deciding to clear some trees from the mountain. Know it all photographer Nick Thorne (Robert Forster) is aware that this is unwise, but his warnings fall on deaf ears. This, of course, paves the way for the event of the title to eventually take place.Yes, the script to this one (by actor turned director Corey Allen and Claude Pola) is uninspired, and one does grow impatient getting through the not terribly interesting stories of the characters. Yes, the acting in "Avalanche" is not so hot, but the actors & characters remain reasonably likable. There are no real villains here; some of the people may make questionable decisions, but there were very few characters that this viewer wanted to die horribly. The photography by Pierre-William Glenn of the wintry landscapes *is* first rate, and may provide some sustenance for viewers who are otherwise bored with the movie. The music by William Kraft also serves its purpose.If one is able to get through the opening half of "Avalanche", they might find the resulting mayhem watchable. The avalanche action is mostly stock footage combined with original footage handled by the very capable, under rated director Lewis Teague, and the action scenes are pretty decent, even if the special effects aren't always up to snuff.There are some fine actors in this thing, even if they're not utilized all that well. Jeanette Nolan plays Davids' lively mother, Rick Moses the conceited star skier Bruce Scott, Steve Franken the perpetually worried looking Henry McDade, Barry Primus the nice guy sportscaster Mark Elliott, and Antony Carbone is Leo the coach."Avalanche" may, in the end, be more for completists of this short lived genre than fans, but it's not totally without entertainment value.Seven out of 10.

Coventry I'm an avid fan-boy of 1970's disaster movies. Not so much because they're intense and captivating since, quite frankly they're not, but actually just because they're so exaggeratedly clichéd and kitschy. You can easily summarize ALL the 70's disaster movies ever made with one and the same synopsis, only the nature of the disaster differs. It can be a fire, flood, volcanic eruption, virus, shipwreck or – like in this case – an avalanche! The main difference between this film and the majority of classic titles (such as "The Towering Inferno" and "The Poseidon Adventure") lies in the budget. Usually Irwin Allen produced this sort of stuff and he had plenty of money to spare. "Avalanche", on the other hand, is a Roger Corman production and he's mostly (in)famous for delivering cheap and extremely low-budgeted cult films. A half-decent disaster movie is simply impossible to accomplish without a bit of budget, and this clearly shows in "Avalanche". The special effects are pitiable, with whole bunches of people getting buried underneath thick and oddly shaped boulders of Styrofoam. But, aside from the budgetary restrictions, "Avalanche" does live up to four out of five essential disaster movie trademarks. #1: there needs to be at least one major star and a long list of secondary stars. Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow were big names around the time, but the supportive cast is a bit disappointing. I assume that Roger Corman spent all his actors' budget on the aforementioned two names and Robert Forster. #2: The characters are usually split into two camps with completely opposite ideals and/or initiatives. Why, yes! Although the "righteous" camp is extremely small this time. Rock Hudson is the owner of a fancy winter sport resort in Colorado and he keeps on expanding the area to lure more tourists. Robert Forster is the tree-hugging reporter who endlessly warns him that the expansion needs to stop otherwise there will be avalanches. #3: regardless what type of disaster we're dealing with, variants of the exact same perilous situations are always applicable. Too true, we have people that are buried alive, trapped in ski lifts, crushed or dead in gas explosions. #4: always remember that, when the situation appears to be at it worst, it can and will still get even worse! That's another true cliché of the disaster film! In "Avalanche", for example, there's a sequence in which an ambulance transporting people who narrowly escaped dead already, crashes into a ravine! Only for die-hard disaster movie fanatics.