Monday, January 18, 2010

Second Attempt to Capitalize on Fear About the Geologically Impending Catastrophic Eruption of Hualalai!

As part of my ongoing effort to leech onto the "Is Hualalai Going to Erupt?" campaign, I present this little-known documentary about the last time Kona was devastated by a volcano. Who can forget those awful days when the old Kona Surf was bombarded with flaming lava bombs, imperiling not only Paul Newman and Jacqueline Bisset, but James Franciscus, Red Buttons, Ernest Borgnine, Burgess Meredith, Pat Morita and William Holden as well!

I emphasize that the film is only fictionalized reality, so unreasonable fear and panic is probably not warranted quite yet. Still, we can be reasonably sure that a real eruption would be almost exactly like this:



UPDATE:Because this movie a) was shot in Kona; and b) is cheesier than a Packers' tailgate party, it's worth sharing more. Watch Pat Morita do a double back somersault into a lava river! See the Kona Surf destroyed, taking out Veronica Hamel and Barbara Carrera too! Marvel at Burgess Meredith's ludicrous (and seemingly endless) tightrope walk over molten lava, carrying a little kid on his back!

3 comments:

Aaron Stene said...

I remember this movie very well.They filmed in East Hawaii also if I recall correctly.

Tom said...

Oh, thanks for that! I haven't seen that movie before but will order it from netflix. I love the bit where the volcano erupts, the earth is shaking, there's a giant tsunami, there are dead people in the street and basically the world is coming to an end, yet they're chasing a chicken.

They don't make films like that anymore...

What on earth was Paul Newman doing in a film like this?

Tom

Tom said...

PS. That volcano doesn't look anything like Hualalai to me!

I enjoyed the helicopter crash scene. In hindsight, the pilot clearly knew he was facing disaster. He clearly did his best to save those people hanging onto the outside of his helicopter by dropping them off in the sea before disaster struck with him flying off into the cliff face.

Actually, that was some quite skillful flying by whatever helicopter pilot they hired for the scene.