"TWO MINUTE WARNING".......CAUGHT IN THE CORPORATE CROSSHAIRS.........

Two Minute Warning (1976)   We'd forgotten all about this huge slice of Universal Studios' corporate sausage until we stumbled across it in our Little-Library-On-The-Prairie's DVD collection......

               Holy crap......what an icy, astoundingly cruel turd of a movie this is........

               It doesn't even look human beings made it........this is the kind of movie we'd imagine a 1970's computer would vomit out of those huge spinning disks and rectangular punch cards.........

                Technically, it strictly adheres to the 1970's disaster-movie playbook........the coming together of a disparate group of characters in a large public place......then either a man-made or natural threat is unleashed upon them.......

                As calamity strikes, some of them die, some survive......heroes and cowards get quickly sorted out before meeting their various fates.  Meanwhile, in the background, huge numbers of assorted innocents suffer horrible deaths to amp up the spectacle........

               Usually, these movies took some amount of pains to include compassion and humanity for their cardboard characters...........after all, the suspense has to flow from an audience worried about who's going to come out alive.....

                But not "Two Minute Warning"........it's as cold, unfeeling and utterly devoid of empathy and human emotion as Donald Trump at one of his rallies.......

                The threat here could not be more topical and bone-chilling for the 2000's........an anonymous sniper parks himself  behind the scoreboard of the Los Angeles Coliseum stadium during a championship NFL game.

                 The film, in its theatrical version, presents the sniper as a pure force of random evil.......it shows no interest in him as a character......you're only shown glimpses of him - arms, legs, shoes, his high-powered assault rifle.....who he is and what drives him to slaughter innocents is left unknown and unexplained.

                  Amid the stadium crowd of 100,000 people, the movie presents its disposable pop-up targets......a pair of obnoxious, squabbling middle-agers (David Jansen, Gena Rowlands), a hot-tempered dad barely tolerating his family (Beau Bridges), a sweaty, desperate gambler under a death threat from his bookie (Jack Klugman, giving it his all, as if he's in a real movie), and an awkward trio who've fallen into an romantic triangle (David Groh, Marilyn Hasset, Jon Korkes).

                 To the filmmakers, all these actors and amassed crowds are really nothing but part of a giant whack-a-mole arcade game. Unlike the "Airport" movies and Irwin Allen's cataclysms like "Poseidon Adventure" and "Towering Inferno", the total lack of anything resembling human feelings here is frightening to behold.

                  This movie plays out like it was made by those little kids you see at the start of Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch"......the ones gathered around to watch tortured scorpions devoured by ravenous ants......just before the indifferent kids set fire to the entire crawling bunch.......

                 Once the sniper's spotted by the TV crew covering the game, along comes law enforcement (Charlton Heston, John Cassavetes)  to....uh.....save the day. But don't feel comforted. They're as cold-hearted as the film itself, more interested in verbally sniping at each other than storming the sniper.

                   And everyone seems way more concerned about the safety of the dignitaries attending the game than the thousands of ordinary citizens in the sniper's crosshairs. In that regard, "Two Minute Warning has more in common with a creepy horror film than a genuine disaster movie......

                 In a weird sequence, Beau Bridges, having spotted the sniper in his binoculars, runs to the cops for help. The cops react by behaving and sounding like they've already been taken over by "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" seed pods......

                  When the mysterious sniper finally opens fire and generates mass terror, we at last see the movie's true purpose and reason for its miserable existence.........a spectacular display of all-out crowd panic, with human beings trampled, crushed, and dying as they tumble off of stairways, escalators and railings along the stadium's upper levels.  Random death as corporate entertainment........

                 When it came time to televise this film, NBC couldn't quite tolerate its empty-headed carnage......so an elaborate re-shoot was devised, adding 30 minutes of footage that explained the sniper's rampage as a diversion for an elaborate heist..... .(think of it as a cinematic attempt to spray air freshener over a pile of steaming manure......)

                  It's been a while since we handed out our very worst rating.......but we've never seen a movie that deserved it more.....we proudly present "Two Minute Warning" with the BQ's  AFH award.....a true ABOMINATION FROM HELL......consider yourself warned.