Adrian Sweeney A disaster movie spoof that covers all the bases and goes off on inspired tangents of its own, with some immortal dialogue and gloriously silly sight gags. I can only echo what other reviewers have said: should be better known, should have a much higher rating here, released four years before 'Airplane' and is equally hilarious. As for quoting lines, other people have already bagged 'Where is your God now, old woman?' (which I keep wanting to use in real life conversation) and 'You eat one foot and they call you a cannibal' and the milk carton line, so I won't do that either.I note with interest the suggestion from another reviewer that the Zuckers may actually have had an uncredited involvement. It's unlikely, and a bit insulting to the actual writers. But really, it's so good it wouldn't surprise me to find the Pythons, Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers had helped out too. Tremendously funny.

clabkeloh "The Big Bus" seems to be getting better as it ages: what was once par-for-the-course screwball comedy is morphing into grand, high camp.Camp with real style, too. An amazing cast of big actors pull out all the stops; mugging for the camera and delivering the most insane lines in earnest deadpan. I remember the mania for disaster movies that occurred when I was a kid and "The Big Bus" hits the nail on the head aping all the great moments of an overblown genre. Plus you have to see the bus to really appreciate the absurdity. I recommend seeing this film just for the fun of seeing a colossal double-decker, articulated passenger bus that has a swimming pool, a bowling alley, a formal dining room, and a piano bar complete with a brilliant schmaltzy singer. A little lower-key than the 'Airplane' movies...but well worth it simply to see the A-List cast having fun. A Note: the dinner scene can never be accurately described, it must be seen to be believed.

RE Zuleta If you enjoyed (loved) those cult-favorite comedy classic from the early 80's, "Airplane!," "Get Crazy!" and "Bachelor Party" then you're in for a treat. "The Big Bus"(also known internationally as: "Cyclops, The World's Largest Bus") is a mid-70's comedy spoof. A bit similar to "Zucker/Abrahms" comedy "Airplane!," but perhaps not as funny. I remember watching this film as a kid (approx. 8 or 9) and could never forget the scene where they show a swimming pool enclosed in a dome on top of the bus, and the classic scene where a kitchen alley is filled cupboards high with soda pop.REZuleta

James Hitchcock The popularity of the disaster movie in the early seventies meant that it was only a matter of time before someone attempted to parody the genre. Probably the funniest disaster movie parody is "The Cassandra Crossing", but that was intended to be a serious film and only counts as a parody because it was so badly made. The best-known deliberate disaster movie spoof is "Airplane" from 1980, but four years earlier there was "The Big Bus". The opening voice-over makes it clear what the film's targets are, as there are obvious implied references to "The Poseidon Adventure", "Earthquake", "The Towering Inferno" and "The Hindenburg".The plot concerns the maiden journey (from New York to Denver) of the world's first nuclear powered bus and the attempts that are made to sabotage it on behalf of the oil industry. "Straight" disaster movies are often based around the concept of a motley collection of people, brought together by chance, who are forced to work together by the threatened disaster. "The Big Bus" seizes hold of this concept and takes it to the limit. The passengers include a priest who has lost his faith (his arguments in favour of atheism include the claim that a just God would have given the devout old lady next to him a window seat rather than an aisle seat), an about-to-be-divorced couple who bicker constantly when they are not trying to seduce one another, and a man who has only six months to live and constantly reminds everyone of the fact.The crew are just as eccentric as the passengers; Dan the driver (who is also the ex-boyfriend of the bus's female designer) is a suspected cannibal, although he defends himself by claiming that he only ever ate a single foot. ("You eat one lousy foot and they call you a cannibal. What a world!") The co-driver (named "Shoulders" because of an unfortunate tendency to drive on the shoulders of the road) also has an even more unfortunate tendency to fall asleep at the wrong moment, including while driving. There is also a scantily-dressed stewardess named (satirising the American fondness for double-barrelled Christian names) Mary-Jane-Beth-Sue and an appallingly tactless and tasteless piano player.Some of the humour in "The Big Bus" comes from sending up the conventions of the genre, such as exaggeratedly portentous music or the scene (probably inspired by "The Poseidon Adventure") where Dan has to rescue his ex-girlfriend Stockard Channing from drowning in soft drinks. Its targets, however, range wider than the confines of the disaster genre. The faithless priest Father Kudos, for example, is an obvious reference to Father Karras in "The Exorcist", and the use of the opening theme from Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" may echo its earlier use in Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey". The scene where the bus is left seesawing on the edge of a cliff is taken from the ending to "The Italian Job". Indeed, the film's range of targets is not confined to the cinema. The constant mentions of cannibalism seem to be a reference to Piers Paul Read's book "Alive!", about a plane crash in the Andes, which was a bestseller in the seventies but which was not made into a film until 1993.Perhaps it was this scattergun approach, firing off its satirical bullets in all directions, which meant that I did not find the film particularly funny. It might have worked better if it had concentrated on sending up the disaster genre and had not tried to cram in so many extra targets. When you are aiming at so many targets, you need to hit them all, and too many of the bullets are either duds or fly harmlessly wide. For every funny joke there are several unfunny ones. As I watched this film, I couldn't help thinking that it would had been a lot better if Mel Brooks, the master of the parody, had been the director. 4/10