The Cassandra Crossing -- Disaster

http://stores.ebay.com.sg/All-Era-Collectibles
http://vincentyeo88.blogspot.com
Colonel MacKenzie (Lancaster) directs the plague-infested train to the Cassandra Crossing where it will plunge to oblivion. Jonathan Chamberlain (Harris) struggles to save the back section of the train while the front section meets its doom at the collapsing bridge.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Artisan
• Carlton
• The
• Cassandra
• Crossing
• Burt
• Lancaster
• Richard
• Harris
• Sophia
• Loren
• train
• railtrack
• bridge
• movie
• 1976

[DaveyC95]

Ironically I believe the French authorities had to close at first and then restrict trains crossing the Viaduct de Garabit (that served as The Cassandra Crossing), in recent years for safety reasons due to structural weakening..Now that is creepy.

[vincentyeo88]

@DaveyC95

oh i see, and thank you for this interesting information.

if the French authorities has to close the Viaduct de Garabit for safety reasons, i hope they would conserve that area and rail-tracks as a national heritage site.

[DaveyC95]

@vincentyeo88 Well when they discovered the problem it was closed for a bit, it only had about 1 passenger train PER DAY crossing the single line, more freight trains I would imagine, It has reopened round about now...But it is a really old, because the architect was Eiffel who built the famous tower in Paris...It has been painted red since the film was made and the Garabit valley is very windy..Sorry it is Viaduc de Garabit in France or Garabit viaduct to the British.

[vincentyeo88]

@DaveyC95

thank you very much for sharing this interesting information with the viewers.

[DaveyC95]

I saw this in the late-80s as a young child and I thought it was scary... It is hammy in some parts, I am typing this as the film is being shown on Film4 at this moment in time, but I don't think it is as bad as a lot of disaster movies and does not deserve the panning it got by the critics..One of them described it as "A movie for cash-strapped over the hill old Hollywood stars" Well I don't call a 41/42 year old Sophia Loren OLD!! or a young Martin Sheen and the legend Richard Harris.

[vincentyeo88]

@DaveyC95

as like you, i'd first watched this excellent movie in a Singapore cinema in the late 1970s when i was young.

well, younger viewers then had mistakenly thought that Burt Lancaster, Richard Harris, Ava Gardner, and Sophia Loren were old in this movie.

the young Martin Sheen in this movie later became a great actor when he'd reached middle age.

[chrigel1234]

Swiss railroad cars. French bridge. British maintenance. ;-)

[wetspandexwoman38]

This film is a classic. A germ infested guy gets on, contaminates the train, the train gets quarrantined by the the World Health Orginization, they all get welded inside and the train and it is sent to any unsafe bridge for derailment. Its a total Classic, if you haven't seen it, watch it in it's entirety. it's good. Sort of a prelude to a film called Outbreak.

[DrMarcusKane]

1.42 LMFAO - that guy getting skewered by that steel beam was epic!

Total unadulterated train disaster porn! Love this movie!!

[DaveyC95]

@vincentyeo88 You,re very welcome. :-)

[DaveyC95]

@vincentyeo88 Yes, I would have thought that back in 1989 when I was 6 probably..Children think that about all adults though, I know I did.

[DaveyC95]

All in all the film is good and entertaining, Ava Gardner playing the spoilt rich-bitch diva is funny and Burt Lancaster plays the typical American army general who is a complete, amoral, uncompromising b*****d who believes that European lives are expendable for the greater good to great effect..The only thing that I think is really tasteless is that they decided to send the train to a former Nazi death camp in Poland and the jewish stereotyping must have hit a nerve at the time.