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When Time Ran Out... (1980) More at IMDbPro »

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Oh, that volcano isn't going to erupt., 31 March 2003

Author: Aaron1375 from Alabama

Yes, this is the typical 70's all-star disaster flick. Though this one was made in 1980. This one, however, was not a hit. When "The Towering Inferno" was in theaters, it made over 100 million at the box office. When this one was at theaters, it made less than 2 million. Part of the problem is that it doesn't look much like a movie for the theater. In fact, when I first saw it, I thought it was a made for television movie. I think most of the budget in this one went to the stars, and not nearly enough went into special effects. The story in this one is typical of a volcano movie as it has someone trying to warn people that the volcano is going to erupt. Of course no one believes them and then an eruption occurs. We have people getting fried, and a select group trying to head for safety. Along the way they have to cross a bridge, and it turns out there is someone who has a special ability to be put in use here like the character in "The Poseidon Adventure" who was an excellent swimmer. This one has some good qualities though and if you have nothing else to do it may be worth a look-see, but it is definitely nothing special.

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Atrocious!, 25 October 2001
Author: pljewkes from Boston, MA

It's hard to believe that this atrocity exists. Irwin Allen, who began his career producing inane, yet campy TV shows (Lost in Space, etc) reached his lowest ebb with WHEN TIME RAN OUT. It has something to do with oilmen and a toney resort and a volcano about to erupt...but what difference does it make. The real interest in this fiasco is wondering what the likes of Paul Newman, William Holden, and the great Valentina Cortese were paid to attach their names to such a movie. Newman, donning what looks like Chuck Heston's EARTHQUAKE safari jacket, leads a group of stranded vacationer away from the lava of an especially cheesy looking volcano. Echoes of THE POSIEDON ADVENTURE? You bet...and with such grade B talents as Pat Morita, Red Buttons, and Barbara Carera along for the trip. POSIEDON vet Ernest Borgnine plays a cop trailing crooked businessman Buttons. Edward Albert, Veronica Hamel, Alex Karras, James Franciscus, and Jacqueline Bisset are in it too. The film's highpoint: former vaudvillian Burgess Meredith piggybacking children across a lava flow via a tightrope. Don't bother to see it to believe it...take my word for it.

WHEN TIME RAN OUT gives a writing credit to Carl Foreman (could this really be the same person who penned BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, HIGH NOON, and THE GUNS OF NAVARONE?!?) Inexplicable. Although most of the characters appear to be wearing clothing from Sears (or in the case of the women, perhaps fashions from Jaclyn Smith's K-MART collection), the costumes were nominated for an OSCAR! Luckily time did run out for Irwin Allen and he stopped making movies after this one.

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8 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
When credibility ran out..., 17 June 2005

Author: dwr246 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

You would think the setup of a volcano blowing up at a remote, yet crowded location, leaving a handful of survivors to fend for themselves until they can be safely rescued would be a good one. Unfortunately, this movie shows just how poorly that premise can be executed.

The plot - what there is of it - centers around a resort hotel located close to a picturesque, and supposedly dormant volcano. The hotel is owned by successful businessman, Shelby Gilmore (William Holden), and his greedy son-in-law, Bob Spangler (James Franciscus). Gilmore is openly disapproving of Spangler, since he suspects that Spangler has only married his daughter, Nikki (Veronica Hammel), in order to become his business partner, and get his money. Gilmore's disapproval is justified by Spangler's affair with native Iolani (Barbara Carrera). The other natives of the island, those who don't work at the hotel, seem to spend their time either cockfighting, or drinking at a bar owned by Sam (Pat Morita) and Mona (sheila Allen, Irwin's wife, a little nepotism here?). Gilmore is interested in Kay Kirby (Jacqueline Bisset), who is in turn interested in oil driller, Hank Henderson (Paul Newman). When the ground starts rumbling during drilling, Henderson suspects their may be a problem with the supposedly dormant volcano, so he goes to talk to the scientists who work at a lab precariously perched on the lip of the volcano. While there, Henderson goes into the volcano in a gondola to inspect it, and nearly gets dropped into the lava. Somehow, he is able to see that eruption is imminent, even though the head of the lab, John Webster (John Considine), doesn't. Spangler doesn't want to cause a panic, or lose money, so he refuses to evacuate the hotel. While Henderson and Kirby are on a picnic, the volcano blows up, causing a tidal wave which wipes out half the island, including the cockfighting population. The hotel guests are in a panic when Henderson and Kirby arrive back there, as the volcano is spewing lava bombs at them. Once again, Spangler refuses to evacuate, and encourages the guests to sit tight. A small group, which includes a private eye (Ernest Borgnine) and the thief he is trying to catch (Red Buttons), and a retired high wire walker (Burgess Meredith) and his wife (Valentina Cortese), decides to follow Henderson to higher ground to get away from the lava, and we follow them for most of the rest of the movie, with a break to watch the hotel get destroyed by a surprisingly accurate lava bomb.

Clear as mud, right. The writers tried to cram so many subplots into the movie that the result is a tangled mess. It's hard to tell who is who, much less who is involved with whom. And that makes it hard to develop a sense of concern about their well being. You watch so many gratuitous characters die throughout the course of the movie that you are too numb to react to the deaths of the important ones. Simplifying things somewhat would not only have shortened a movie that seems tediously long, but it would have helped to keep the viewer focused on the important characters.

The writing also has a contrived feel to it, relying so heavily on clichés that it becomes unintentionally comical. We have not one, but two love triangles. In addition, we have a noble thief, who helps the cop out when he becomes disabled. Then there's the rickety bridge over the river of lava, which, of course, gives way before everyone gets over it. There are two deaths by falling into the lava, one by heart attack, and one by falling onto hard rock. There are two foolish children who become so frightened that they run away, and must be rescued. And there just happens to be an aerialist around when you need one. All in all, it adds up to a bit much to swallow.

The science of the movie is laughably bad. Oil is unlikely to be found near a volcano, active or dormant, and you wouldn't drill near a volcano, because the release of pressure would cause the volcano to erupt. A volcano is not a mountain with a shaft in the top that leads down to a lake of lava. If a fissure like that opened up, the volcano would simply erupt because the pressure forcing the magma up would be greater than the pressure holding it down. If the volcano caused a tidal wave, chances are it would head away from the island, rather than heading back to it. And then there's the lab at the lip of the volcano. Who in their right mind would build a lab in such a place, much less work at it? Volcano observatories are usually safely away from the lava flow, not right in the path of it. It just doesn't make sense.

The effects were horribly cheesy, and the cinematography was just awful. Who thought it would be a good idea to have an actress in a red dress fall into a red river of lava? All you see are her head, hands, and feet while she tumbles into the lava.

With the kind of star power assembled in the cast, one would think that the acting would at least be decent, but in truth, the entire cast seems embarrassed to have been involved in the project, delivering their lines with a kind of sheepishness that makes the movie seem all the more embarrassing.

All in all a bad movie, but oddly enough, it can be enjoyable if you're willing to suspend disbelief to a great degree, and lower your expectations. If you don't take it seriously, it can be an amusing little diversion.

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8 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
The first Golden Age of Disaster Movies closes with this whimper as `time runs out'-- on the genre., 24 October 2002
Author: (tgodel@aol.com) from Denver, Colorado

- 2/5 STARS -

The operator of a tropical hotel conceals the mounting threat of the island's active volcano when his laissez-faire partner and a renegade oilman start asking questions. When the volcano finally blows its top, a small group of hotel residents make a dangerous trek to higher ground, but not all will survive as the peak spews smoke, fire, and lava across the island.

This relaxed disaster movie signals the end of the first Golden Age of Disaster movies. It is appropriate, then, that it was produced by Irwin Allen and recycles a variety of cliches that spanned the seventies. When Paul Newman and Jacqueline Bisset start sipping wine on the beach with the volcano in the distance, for example, we know to start counting the minutes until the mountain blows.

With both Paul Newman and William Holden playing roles very similar to those in "The Towering Inferno", it isn't difficult to draw parallels between the two movies. "The Towering Inferno", however, was a unique project involving a joint venture between two studios, a huge budget, an all-star cast, and a blockbuster script culled from the best elements of two popular novels. Does When Time Ran Out represent what we should expect from Irwin Allen when all of the cards AREN'T stacked in his favor?

When Time Ran Out harkens back to the drama-heavy days of the original Airport, with a web of infidelity that will make your head spin. Battle lines are quickly drawn between the defensive developer of the island (Franciscus) and a renegade oil driller (Newman) who believes the mountain is, as he puts it, `a powder keg.'

Occasional visits to the volcano's crater provide distraction while the relationships between the characters are cultivated for the disaster. The oilman stirs up trouble when he wants to see for himself that the mountain is safe before drilling in a high-pressure oilfield. However, it's just ridiculous to think that his inspection would involve stepping into a laughable protective capsule and being lowered inside the smoldering volcano. Naturally, the capsule--with a glass floor!--experiences a series of unexplained malfunctions that send him hurtling towards bubbling lava at the bottom of the crater.

It's the kind of special effect that Irwin Allen was famous for from his television days on The Time Tunnel and elsewhere. But the silver screen requires a much greater level of believability than is needed by television. When Time Ran Out contains some of the worst effects in the history of the genre--images which aren't even acceptable for the SMALL screen. What happened to the Master of Disaster?

When Time Ran Out is heavy on talk before the volcano erupts, but the runaway action we were expecting during the buildup simply never arrives. Only two action sequences occur with the Newman followers, and they both involve a large group of people taking a very long time to cross a treacherous path to safety. It's a snooze-fest all around.

The special effects are ho-hum, even though Irwin Allen attempts to diversify the experience with flaming meteors fired from the volcano and a tidal wave that inexplicably levels part of the same island whose shock wave created it! They're not enough. Most of the visuals are clearly pre-existing volcano footage placed on a chroma-key in front of the actors. And the rest of the eruption footage appears to be poorly executed post-production animation.

The lush tropical setting is a refreshing change of pace for most disaster movies, and Jacqueline Bisset and Paul Newman try their best to keep things classy. But an unnecessary cock fight in the village and a preposterous laboratory perched on the rim of the volcano immediately suggest that this movie needs a dose of reality--and adrenalin. The first Golden Age of Disaster Movies closes with this whimper as `time runs out'-- on the genre.

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12 out of 19 people found the following comment useful :-
The most laughably bad effects and plot in the history of cinema., 20 April 2004

Author: cableaddict from United States

It's hard to image a major motion picture any worse than this turkey.

Absolutely NOTHING makes any sense. Action sequences are so poorly

executed, you wonder if perhaps they hired brain-damaged high school

students to do most of the work.

Some favorites, not already mentioned:

The ranch-hand must ride on the outside of the helicopter. Dumb enough, but why

then fly DIRECTLY over the mouth of the volcano? You must be kidding.

-And when the guy predictably falls, we first see him fall backwards away from the 'copter, but them the immediate cut-away shot shows him clearly falling in a FORWARD roll. oops.

I also enjoyed seeing telephone poles fall over without anything hitting them, and as they fall over they don't looked cracked at all, just perfect horizontal bottoms that weren't really even in the ground.

Some guy's whole back catches on fire, and he rolls around for about ten

seconds. when they finally put out the flames, only a small part of the top of his jacket is scorched.

two people are flying past the smoking volcano in a helicopter. It suddenly

explodes with a loud crack and flames. Neither person reacts at all.

You could go on and on and on. Every few seconds there's another blatant goof or monumentally stupid scene.

You know, if someone made an edited DVD of this, with all the boring "personal interaction" scenes deleted, and ran a commentary along with the action, this would be possibly the most hilarious movie ever put out.

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8 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
The worst disaster movie of all time, 27 December 2002

Author: Jonathon Dabell (barnaby.rudge@hotmail.co.uk) from Wakefield, England

Ask a film buff for the worst disaster film of all time and you might get answers like The Swarm, Meteor, City on Fire, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure or Avalanche. But in reality the very worst of all is this incredulously awful Irwin Allen debacle. It has a wonderful cast, which in some ways makes its utter awfulness even more surprising and unacceptable. This is one of the worst films from any genre.

Paul Newman heads the cast, and has a red tinge to his cheeks throughout which may either be sunburn or embarrassment. He is the chief oil driller on a volcanic Pacific island who suspects that a catastrophic eruption is a matter of days away. However, the island relies on its tourist industry, and business bigwigs like William Holden (great actor, never more wasted than he is here) won't heed the warnings and insist on keeping people on the island. The eruption arrives, as anticipated by Newman, and the tourists are left to run for their lives from its clutches. Newman finds himself leading one group of evacuees, made up of the usual clichéd characters. The group includes some great stars, like Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Burgess Meredith and Jacqueline Bisset, but anyone with a brain can figure out with a degree of certainty which ones are going to make it and which are doomed.

The action is marred constantly by terrible special effects. The actors are critically defeated by banal dialogue and actions. The suspense element of the film fails also, because it takes way too long to get going and is thoroughly predictable once it finally kicks into gear. There really is nothing positive to say about this film at all, except that it was so bad that it virtually single-handedly ended the disaster genre once and for all. If nothing else, we should thank the cast and crew for that small mercy at least!

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8 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Towering Inferno Meets Poseidon Adventure,Film Burns & Sinks, 6 July 2002

Author: lorenzo212 from huntington beach, ca

Irwin Allen should be thanked for discovering a cure for insomnia.

The most notable feature about this movie is in the credits. Gayle Kananiokalapontigay's name takes two lines.

The movie is another Irwin Allen disaster - all the way around.

What agents got Paul Newman, William Holden, Jacqueline Bisset, Red Buttons, Ernest Borgnine, Burgess Meredith, James Franciscus, Barbera Carrera, Veronica Hamel, Edward Albert and Pat Morita into this loser?

And the writing? What writing? Carl Foreman and Stirling Silliphant should have had their names removed to save some embarrassment.

A bag of fish left in a car trunk in Sylmar would smell better than this stinker.

The story is stupid. A volcano settles scores and rights wrongs. Except it didn't destroy the master print copy. The acting is wooden, with bad, cliche lines just being spoken. And there's not one shred of excitement or danger at the climax. Just 20 minutes of watching 10 boring people cross a footbridge over a lava bed that poses no real harm.

Somehow Allen got this financed, and nobody read the script. At least I hope that's what happened. Otherwise some people would do anything, and I mean anything, for money.

When Time Ran Out, everybody fled the set.

Even if you've got five million hours left to live, don't waste one second on this piece of junk. Unless you're an insomniac. Even then, you will sleep, but your stomach's gonna churn with this garbage in it.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
so bad!!! you gotta love it..., 22 May 2007

Author: (jana-87) from United States

i wish this movie was available on DVD. it's one of those that makes you laugh hysterically - it is so bad. interestingly enough, airplane came out the same year - obviously, the time was more than ripe.

i've been laughing out loud just reading the forum about this catastrophic masterpiece. i almost forgot some of the gory details (including the science lab perched at the edge of the volcano lip).

i saw it as a teenager behind the iron curtain, freshly dubbed into czech in the early eighties. it was such a treat i had to go see it twice.

are you guys sure this movie was intended to be taken seriously?

(well, i used to think the independence day was a subtle spoof that made fun of self- declared u.s.a. greatness, but people are telling me otherwise. i still enjoy it, though.)

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
The rest of us should have followed!, 10 October 2003
Author: billyfish from Monrovia, Liberia

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Here be spoilers! But frankly, not much to spoil! It's already as rotten as they come!

Wow! What the hell are Paul Newman and William Holden doing in this woofer? You expect to see Ernest Borgnine and Jacqueline Bisset in something this awful, but not those guys!

This is a movie that seems to have been made with MST 3000 in mind. Honestly, it's so bad that it's funny, and that's the only reason I finished it. An angry mob stealing a helicopter (sure, there are at least one or two qualified helo pilots in every angry mob!); a wooden bridge more or less undamaged by a molten lava flow just a few feet under it; rescued men being told to hang on to the outside of the helo when there is still plenty of room inside (but not enough seatbelts, so you stand on the landing skids, buster!); Burgess Meredith tightrope-walking (balance pole and all!) across a quivering "steel" beam a few feet above the lava, apparently "cold" lava, as the beam was not hot at all. I just had to keep watching this movie to see what inane nonsense was going to be served up next. And I never did tire of the twisting bodies "falling" against the blue screen of molten lava! What a riot.

I kept watching Newman's face and wondering what the hell was going through his mind. Making this movie must have been like stepping in a large pile of manure, but not accidentally -- because someone paid you to do it. It must have taken him weeks to scrape it all off his boot.

Kind of made me wish there had been no survivors from The Towering Inferno...

I really had to pity those who worked on this movie. They must have known what an ungodly stinker it was every step of the way. Watch this movie only if you enjoy seeing the humor in a truly terrible flick.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
when ideas ran out, 18 November 2002

Author: andy blundell (blundell_andy@yahoo.co.uk) from warwickshire, england

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Fairly decent acting from an impressive cast list was not enough to save this disaster (of a) movie from a thoroughly boring and unoriginal script.

*** potential spoilers follow - not that there's much to spoil ***

The plot is fuller of holes than a Swiss cheese. For a start I'm not sure that an active volcano and an oil field on the same small island are compatible, but as I'm not a geologist I might be inclined to let that go. But there's much more.

There's the tidal wave that trashes the village up the coast when the hotel doesn't see so much as a ripple. Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't a tidal wave travel outwards from an eruption and trash the island next door?

There's the long shot of a volcano spewing fire full blast into the stratosphere, cut to the research station on the edge of the crater. OK it doesn't look to be the best place to be but judging by the previous shot it should be vapourised.

There's the overloaded helicopter that crashed, despite having taken of even more heavily loaded (at least 3 people fell off). Oh yes, and it had just arrived even more heavily loaded. All it would have taken to make this less ludicrous was an additional four words in the script, (It's out of gas!) but obviously time ran out for the script-writers some time before they had finished the job.

And where did that blonde woman get that awful pink dress. The group that left the hotel to reach safety on the other side of the island were told they were travelling through rough country and to wear sensible clothes. I don't believe that was the best she could do.

And last but not least, the plot driver for the whole film was the head-in-the-sand attitude of hotel owner. He refused to leave,insisting that the lava could not reach that far, an that the hotel was the safest place to be. Quite a few others followed his lead. We never saw the lava reach the hotel. It was destroyed when the volcano blew its top again, shooting out a few tons of fiery rock which arced high in the air and, much against the odds, scored a bullseye. It seems the hotel owner was right, the odds were better on staying, even if they didn't come off.

All in all, one to miss. But why, you might ask, if it was that bad, why did you watch it for long enough to find all these faults. I wish I knew.

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