Coventry Review of The Cassandra Crossing

The Cassandra Crossing (1976)

Strangers and pneumonic plague carriers on a Train!

[5/10 · 9 August 2010]

Hooray, another 70's disaster flick! I love them so much that I put up my own sort of five-point checklist for this genre. Five little traits to see whether a film is a cheesy and clichéd 'so-bad-it's-good' blockbuster guff … Or a surprisingly atypical and innovative hidden gem! The best thing about this checklist is that the audience always wins, regardless of the particular film passes or fails the test. If a film scores 3 points or more, you're guaranteed to have found an undemanding but fun popcorn film. If the film scores less, you might just have stumbled upon an original disaster film full of genuine shocks and effective surprise twists. "The Cassandra Crossing" scores pretty high on the scale, alas it's a prototypic 70's disaster movie with all the commonly known clichés and stereotypical characters. In all honesty I must admit I was hoping for a much better film in this case, however. The concept of a bacterial virus spreading itself amongst the unsuspecting passengers of an intercontinental express train offers so much potential greatness. There isn't any setting more appropriate for a disaster movie than an inescapable, claustrophobic high speed train! Unfortunately, the plot almost immediately reverts to all the dire clichés of traditional American disaster flicks. This is a European co- production and thus should have formed the unique occasion to handle things a little bit differently; like "Bullet Train" and "Virus" did for the Japanese disaster movies. We have a cast full of stereotypical characters muttering the most pitiably banal dialogs you can imagine (albeit they're all A-list stars and starlets), absurdly grotesque action sequences that might as well feature in any other disaster movie ever made, lousy attempts to evoke sentiments of empathy and plot twists you can see coming from multiple countries away. A Trio of Swedish terrorists break into the buildings of the International Health Organization in Geneva to plant a bomb, but their incentive fails thanks to some very alert security guards. Two of them die at the spot, but the third one escapes although exposed up close to bacteria containing a deadly and highly contagious pneumonic plague. The infected terrorist hops on the Intercontinental Express from Geneva to Stockholm, where he naturally comes into contact with many of the passengers, including children, a prominent neurologist and his ex-wife, a spoiled rich woman and her younger tomboy and an oddly behaving priest. Although local scientists are working hard to find a cure, the American Colonel McKenzie is very reluctant to call off the quarantine and even ordered for the train to alter its route towards a notorious former concentration camp in Poland via the ramshackle Cassandra Crossing. I'm not entirely sure if it were intentional (actually, I hope not) but George P. Cosmatos' script contains a few elements that leave a sour aftertaste. Basically the innocent plague carriers are being transported towards annihilation, like Jewish people were during WWII. I truly hope he's not comparing the victims of both situations.