Ever since seeing 1974’s The Towering Inferno as an impressionable 11-year-old, disaster has been my favorite genre, and it’s been an ongoing quest ever since to see every damn one of them. The journey has taken me to some interesting places over the years - other countries, other eras - and I’ve experienced more than my share of the good, the bad and the ugly (an example of the latter being a 1943 German film, Titanic, yet another depiction of the sinking, along with a heaping helping of Nazi propaganda).
But the most unusual one might be 1933’s Deluge, a low budget, pre-code apocalyptic disaster movie released by RKO Pictures. For those of you who spent most of your formative years at Waffle House instead of the classroom, ‘deluge’ is fancy French-speak for ‘lotsa water.’ There’s certainly lotsa destruction, especially during the first act. Dispensing with the narrative foreplay typical of most films of the genre, Deluge wastes no time getting to the disaster at-hand…cataclysmic weather, earthquakes and tidal waves, all apparently triggered by an eclipse (and you thought the science in Armageddon was wonky).
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| Ocean views ain't all they're cracked up to be. |
We managed to make it to our destination with time to spare, and that’s when one of my daughters’ IBS started flaring up. The impending celestial event may or may not have the catalyst for her sudden and urgent need to defecate, but with no restroom in the vicinity, we had no choice but to speed back home and pray her bowels didn’t explode along the way. I missed my last opportunity to view an eclipse in my lifetime, but hey, at least I didn’t end up spending the rest of that Sunday cleaning shit out of the backseat. Fair trade, I guess.
The poor bastards in Deluge aren’t so lucky (and more than a few probably shit their own pants). Skyscrapers topple, cities are submerged and millions die. Though it's established that this is happening all over the world, most of the onscreen mayhem occurs in New York. On a related note, Deluge holds the distinction of being the first film to visually depict the total destruction of a major American city.
And I do mean total. Nearly every building crumbles and falls apart spectacularly, interspersed with scenes of people fleeing in panic, only to be crushed by falling debris. And this is all before a massive tsunami comes rolling into Manhattan to finish the job. The special effects are a bit quaint compared to what Hollywood is capable of these days, but still pretty damn good for a film that’s almost 100 years old. So good, in fact, that Republic Pictures later bought the rights to reuse them in other movies (most notably, 1939’s ultra-daffy SOS Tidal Wave).
All this happens during the first 20 minutes. The remainder of Deluge largely focuses on three survivors, Martin (Sidney Blackmer), who lost his wife and kids, shapely swimmer Claire (Peggy Shannon), and horndog thug Jephson (Fred Kohler), who quickly establishes his rapey intentions when he finds Claire washed ashore. Keeping her captive in his cabin, Jephson fights with equally rapey roommate Norwood over who gets to have her, resulting in the latter’s death.
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| Fred Kohler...the Marjoe Gortner of his day. |
Deluge has both of those movies beat, though. Made and released before the Hayes Code, not only does it feature a rapey guy as one of the main characters, a whole gaggle of more rapey guys show up later. Before that though, Martin rescues Claire from Jephson and they eventually fall in love, setting-up house in a cozy cabin. However, two things complicate their relationship. First, Jephson hooks up with a whole gang of thieves and rapey guys...and he's hellbent on revenge. Second, they meet a community of other survivors trying to restart civilization again, including the wife he assumed was dead, Helen (Lois Wilson), and their two kids. So not only does Martin have to contend with an angry mob of Marjoe Gortners, he finds himself in a soapy love triangle.
From a narrative standpoint, Deluge kind of runs contrary to other films of this type. All the spectacle occurs during the first act. Afterwards, the film struggles to maintain interest, no matter how many rapey guys the story throws at us. The whole thing slowly winds down into a mess of preachy melodrama with a Debbie Downer of an ending. That’s no way to end a disaster movie. What would’ve been really great is to cap things off with a bang by throwing in another round of nature getting nasty. Still, the opening of Deluge delivers the disaster goods and is worth catching just for the massive onscreen destruction, a creative combination of miniatures and matte paintings. Seeing New York drowned and gobbled up by the Earth (without the aid of CGI) is a hell of a lot of fun.
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