With a voice-over narration by "Lost in Space's" Billy Mumy the documentary explains that starting in the 1920's and 30's, with news-reels, movie-theater exhibitors and producers realized that people were drawn to dramatic on-screen disasters. Audiences began to flock to the biggest, loudest, most outrageous calamities and tragedies they could see on sceen.

There is a good overview of the first disaster films of the early sound era. Such 20th Century Fox films as In Old Chicago (1938) and The Rains Came (1939) set standards in the presentation of big disasters on screen as well as setting box office records. Then there was a lull during World War Two due to the horror of Pearl Harbor and other battles. But a subsequent rise came again in the atomic age with films such as When Worlds Collide and The Day the Earth Stood Still and other atomic age, space alien type films.

According to the documentary there was a real down period for disaster flics between the mid 1950's and the late 1960's. Perhaps because people's attention was drawn towards the social upheavals of the era. But then in 1970 came Airport a film that virtually jump-started the whole genre. Throughout the 70's disaster films were given the go ahead at every major studio and for better or worse they charged full steam ahead.

In the last half the documentary commits a lot of space to Irwin Allen who directed such classics as The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. In fact, the documentary gets a bit unbalanced in this section because so much time is spent discussing Irwin Allen and so little on anyone else. It's as if the filmmakers decided to make a documentary about Irwin Allen and then decided to expand it a bit into a history of the whole genre. But, then again, some of the documentary's highlights come from this section, which includes choice behind-the-scene footage of the shooting of both of these films.

In the 1980's the disaster film again took a nose-dive due to such spoofs as Airplane but recently there has been a revival of sorts with such films as Volcano, Independence Day and Titanic. Since the documentary was clearly made before the events of September 11th it's safe to say their will be another chapter to the disaster film in this new century.

Audio:
The documentary is presented in English Dolby Digital 5.1. The explosions sound good and loud when they need to. But most of the DVD is interviews and voice-over narration so the sound need not be turned up.

Video:
The DVD is presented full screen 1:33 to 1, which leaves some of the 1970's films improperly cropped. And the image quality of the older footage isn't too good. The behind-the-scenes footage too of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno are definitely dated but valuable non-the-less.

Extras:
There are no extras. Although the DVD would probably make a good extra on an Irwin Allen double DVD set.

Overall:
This DVD is a good documentary about the history of the disaster film. It's short at sixty minutes but there is a lot of good footage and tidbits of film history. In the post 9/11 world some of the footage may cut too close for some but it is worth a look if you are interested in disaster films or the history of film in general.