The Big Bus (1976)

THE BIG BUS - the Biggest Bus of them all!

This is the little-known precursor to AIRPLANE!; but where-as the jokes in AIRPLANE! worked about 90% of the time, in this one they worked only about 45% of the time. Hot on the heels of the AIRPORT films, EARTHQUAKE, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE & THE TOWERING INFERNO, among others, this one was thought to be a 'can't miss' probable hit. Since it's only so-so as a comedy, how well does it function as a disaster film? Well, if I had to pick between watching a bus, an airplane, a ship, the tallest building or an earthquake, I'd probably skip the bus.

Some of this is pretty funny - the parody of a bar fight, for example, and some of the cliches involving the annoying passengers on the bus. There are also good jokes about the honor & integrity of being a professional bus driver (this film's version of the typical ship's captains, decorated military officers, firemen and cops). But director James Frawley mostly worked in TV and it shows. The beginning is quite dull; it picks up after the 1st 15 minutes but many later scenes are quite lame, almost average TV sitcom quality. The bus itself, at 106 feet in length, cost $250,000 to build back then (at '76 dollars!) and weighed 75 tons. There was no trick photography or 'blue-line' screen involved in the key scene of the bus hanging over the edge of a cliff, but it's not very exciting anyway. The film is rather short, too - at 88 minutes. BoG's Score: 5 out of 10

This film was another kind of disaster - a box office disaster - and it almost sank the careers of the main stars. Stockard Channing, for example, was the new 'it' girl of Hollywood after her role in The Fortune the previous year. She barely survived after The BIG Bus and never made it to A-list star status, despite all her talent.