The Poseidon Adventure

Part religious parable, part disaster movie, all superior entertainment, The Poseidon Adventure turns New Year’s Eve into a fight for survival aboard a luxury liner flipped upside down by a rogue wave. Leading the climb through the capsized wreckage, Gene Hackman—by his own admission, doing it for the paycheck—still gives a performance of fierce conviction as a fists-first preacher whose crisis of faith plays out in real time. His brooding charisma and explosive self-sacrifice give the film its soul within a whirling spectacle of Oscar-winning effects: flooded ballrooms, fiery shafts, collapsing ceilings. Also starring Shelley Winters, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Roddy McDowall, and, as the hapless captain, Leslie Nielsen (who would later lampoon his role in Airplane!).