SPOTLIGHT BOOK: Did you know?
Ambushed and The Poseidon Adventure (1972) have something in common—only I used an electric cord instead of a rope and an android instead of Shelley Winters.
I was just a kid when I first saw The Poseidon Adventure, and it made a HUGE impression. It was one of a bunch of excellent disaster-adventure films made in the early 70s, like The Towering Inferno (1974) and Airport (1970) (not to be confused with the spoof classic Airplane! 1980).
The cast of The Poseidon Adventure includes my favorite male movie star, Gene Hackman, Red Buttons, Jack Albertson (Grandpa Joe/the Man), Ernest Borgnine, and Shelley Winters as part of a tiny group (led by Gene Hackman) that has to climb their way up to the hull of the overturned ship in the middle of the ocean for rescue.
In one scene, Hackman swims through a flooded compartment with a rope, hoping to find a way to lead the group out of danger, but gets stuck. Shelley Winters’ character, Belle Rosen, was a world-class swimmer as a young woman (she’s a “cozy” grandmother now). She dives in and saves the day, only to have a heart attack and die on the other side, sacrificing herself for the others. That sacrifice—and the underwater threading with rope—stuck with me.
So I used it—or something along the same lines—in Ambushed. Only I added 25-foot de-extinct crocodiles in the flooded underground cavern AND the shadow of a scene from True Grit (1969) at the end.
But that’s for next time.