(Thanks, sideshowcarny!) 

In some parts of America during the summer of 1977, you either got very lucky and saw Star Wars, or you got very unlucky because that flick was sold out when you wanted to go and had to settle for something like Rollercoaster. Now, on it’s own merits it’s a passable “disaster” flick that’s a wee bit too long and wastes the talents of a few major stars at the tail ends of their careers. On the other hand, it’s about a unnamed home-grown terrorist who decides to seriously vandalize amusement parks and kill people (at least in the first big accident in the film) in order to extort money from a mega corporation just because he can.

There’s no motive other than profit, he’s not some crazed maniac out for revenge whose daddy and mommy were killed in a freak amusement park accident, and the film relies on some dopey luck and dumber plot holes to speed things along as it hopes you won’t notice under all that Sensurround booming your eardrums into submission. But none of this will matter to some people who see this flick today and think it works on the level of a decent thriller. It sort of doesn’t in my old eyes because the film not only shows you the culprit right at the beginning, it tends to drag out scenes just to show off some fancy camerawork and some nice amusement park real estate instead of add depth to the characters it needs to… Continue reading →