Meteor ** (1979, Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Henry Fonda, Richard Dysart) – Classic Movie Review 9750

Sean Connery leads the all-star cast as astrophysicist Dr Paul Bradley, in director Ronald Neame’s sci-fi action thriller Meteor (1979), a late entry in the Seventies disaster movie stakes, about a meteor that strikes an asteroid and sends a huge chunk of rock eight kilometres wide hurtling at 30,000 miles per hour on a collision course with planet Earth.

The Yanks and the opposing Russkies must co-operate to get their boffins to send missiles to explode the giant five-mile fragment of the asteroid Orpheus before there is an extinction-level event. Basically, we all die. N.A.S.A’s illegal nuclear weapon satellite Hercules, designed by Dr Paul Bradley, doesn’t have enough firepower to stop the meteorite, so the Americans would have to join forces with the U.S.S.R’s illegal nuclear weapon satellite to save the world.

American International Pictures (AIP), Shaw Brothers and Palladium Studios spent mega big bucks ($22 million) on Meteor, and the sterling stellar cast work hard to keep it interesting. But the effects just aren’t special and the insufficiently actionful script keeps things earthbound.

The dialogue is very sticky when things aren’t actually happening and the movie just collapses till the action and special effects kick in.

Natalie Wood (1938–1981).

It also stars Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Henry Fonda and Richard Dysart.

Director Neame has a Hitchcock-style cameo as the British representative diplomat.

Also in the cast are Joseph Campanella, Roger Robinson, Bo Brundin, Katherine De Hetre, James G Richardson, Roger Robinson, Michael Zaslow, John McKinney, John Findlater, Gregory Gaye, and Sybil Danning.

Visual effects production teams were fired during the long production for allegedly failing to produce adequate effects on a limited budget. The final company provided the movie’s effects for the money remaining, seriously compromising the results.

As expected, there are many scientific errors in the script.

Some of the avalanche footage is taken from the Roger Corman movie Avalanche (1978). Like that film, it was a box-office flop.

Henry Fonda shot his star cameo as the US President in two days.

Meteor is directed by Ronald Neame, runs 107 minutes, is made by Meteor Joint Venture, American International Pictures (AIP), Shaw Brothers and Palladium Productions, is released by American International Pictures (AIP) (1979) (US) and Columbia-Warner Distributors (1979) (UK), is written by Stanley Mann (screenplay) and Edmund H North (story and screenplay), is shot by Paul Lohmann, is produced by Arnold Orgolini, Theodore R Parvin, Run Run Shaw, Sandy Howard and Gabriel Katzka, and scored by Laurence Rosenthal, with special effects by Margo Anderson and William Cruse.

The main shoot was from 31 October 1977 to 27 January 1978 at MGM Studios in Culver City, California, with location filming in Washington DC, St Moritz in Switzerland and Hong Kong. The 15 June 1979 release was postponed to 19 October for special effects re-shoots.

Russian-American actress Natalie Wood [Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko] plays a Russian, Tatiana Donskaya, for the first time. She could speak fluent Russian and so could Brian Keith (Dr Dubov).

Wood’s death certificate was amended in August 2012 from ‘accidental drowning’ to ‘probable drowning and other undetermined factors’.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9750

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com