mrb1980 Irwin Allen brought the 1970s disaster-film cycle to an inglorious end with 1980's "When Time Ran Out". As usual, Irwin signed several prominent actors to the production, including Paul Newman, Ernest Borgnine, Jacqueline Bisset, William Holden, James Franciscus, Red Buttons, Barbara Carrera, Burgess Meredith, and even Alex Karras.The film opens and proceeds according to Allen's established formula. First, everyone is vacationing at an island resort and all is well. Then, a volcano violently erupts, endangering the resort and causing the smart people to flee for their lives. Third, a group of brave survivors fights huge odds to escape, losing many members of their little band to gruesome deaths (including predictable falls into molten lava). In a usual Allen plot device, the slimy villain (in this case James Franciscus) dies a spectacular death.Allen's last disaster epic received horrible reviews, bombed at the box office, and disappeared from theaters in a big hurry. There's a reason for that—it just isn't very good. Still, it's fun to watch this great cast and to try to guess who's going to die next. You know that Newman and Bisset will survive, and you know that Franciscus won't, but the survivors' trek is entertaining. Maybe if you find this movie in the DVD bargain bin for $2.99, it might be worth watching.

Uriah43 With a budget of about $20 million and a cast that included Paul Newman, Ernest Borgnine and William Holden, this film should have been a blockbuster hit. Unfortunately, this was not the case. One reason for that may have been because there were too many big-name actors and not enough screen time to go around. As a result, certain characters weren't allocated enough time to develop in a meaningful way. For example, James Franciscus plays the part of a hotel owner named "Bob Spangler". He is married to "Nikki" (Veronica Hamel) and has a mistress named "Iolani" (Barbara Carrera). And while both of these actresses had interesting parts, neither of them were allowed to fulfill their potential in what little time they had. On the other hand, some actors got more attention than they deserved. The husband and wife high-wire team of "Rene Valdez" (Burgess Meredith) and "Rose Valdez" (Valentina Cortese) is a case in point. Not only did they not seem to fit in with the rest of the cast, but one of the ending scenes involving Rene Valdez was too obvious and pedestrian to merit being in a multi-million dollar film. Another big flaw revolves around the circumstances regarding another two characters: The first is "Mona" (Sheila Allen) who is the stereotypical helpless female that has to be coaxed and cajoled throughout the most harrowing parts of the film in order to survive. Quite annoying. The other character is an attractive blonde named "Marsha" (Glynn Rubin) who follows instructions without complaining and adds an interesting presence to the film. Unfortunately, Mona gets the character development and manages to survive while Marsha gets killed off within a very short time-frame. How disappointing. Add to that, the poor-quality special effects, boring scripts and weak directing (James Goldstone) and it's no wonder this film didn't generate excitement at the box office. And while Paul Newman, Jacqueline Bisset, James Franciscus and William Holden all performed their parts in a very professional manner, the rest of the cast simply didn't have the time or resources to elevate this movie to a satisfactory level. Again, this film should have been much better than it was and while it might help pass the time, there are other films out there that are much more entertaining.

Michael_Elliott When Time Ran Out... (1980)* (out of 4) Irwin Allen had a string of disaster hits but things started to fall apart with THE SWARM, which was followed by the questionable BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. The final nail in the coffin came with this truly embarrassing work that managed to get several Oscar-winners cashing a check. What we basically have here is a reworked version of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE where a group of people must try and reach safety after a mammoth volcano goes off. The dummies stay back at a hotel, which we all know if going to kill them while the smart ones, led by Paul Newman, must try and reach safety across the island. Not only do we get Newman but the cast includes William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Jacqueline Bisset, Edward Albert, Alex Karras, Burgess Meredith and Pat Morita. I've heard that a majority of these stars were under contract to Allen for one final picture so that might explain why they put their name on this mess but of course it could be because of the paycheck. Either way, this disaster film is a complete disaster from start to finish and I must admit that I'm very happy to have only watched the 108-minute version on the DVD. I had previous seen the extended version but the shorter version is always going to work best because of how bad the film is. For starters, the story is pretty much a straight rip of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and features many of the same plot points including Meredith's character filling the shoes of Shelley Winters' from that film. We get Newman doing the Hackman role and we even have Borgnine playing a cop here. Even if the story wasn't so poor, the real shock here are the special effects, which are pretty bad. The blue screen is so obvious especially in scenes showing off the volcano. Just check out the tidal wave sequence, which is a real head scratcher because we don't see very much of it and what we do see appears to have the actors standing still and someone throwing a bucket of water on them. The director doesn't have any luck at building suspense even though we get three extremely long and at times laughable sequences. One happens towards the start of the film when three men, including Newman, go down in the volcano. Another happens during the tidal wave but the biggest and most questionable happens at the end when all the survivors must walk across a bridge that is falling apart as lava flows beneath it. This should have made for a great sequence but instead it goes on so long that you can't help but lose interest and hope that people start falling. The performances are among some of the blandest that the great cast have ever turned in but, according to legend, apparently Newman started up his Newman's Own brand with the money he made off of this. In the end, this is certainly one of the worst disaster movies out there but fans of the cast and genre will probably still want to check it out just so they can talk about how bad it is.

mac-hawk I was a cinema projectionist at the time of this release and it came out at the end of the 'disaster movie' era in the seventies (in the UK).I ran this at a press screening and it was obvious from the first minute this was a disaster movie of it's own kind. What initially was mildly amusingly bad soon went to so bad it's funny but thereafter, and very quickly and for most of the film, it reached that rare distinction of 'so bad, it really is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad'.OK, so I've seen lots of rubbish films but what sticks in the mind with this one is the level of money and the cast involved. I had/have no expectations that some cheap budget film with no-name actors in it might be awful but this had a decent cast and money thrown at it and for that simple reason I personally regard it a THE WORST FILM I HAVE EVER SEEN.Avoid like the plague