Yet another TV-movie with a cast of familiar faces in a disastrous situation, Disaster On the Coastliner benefits not only from the main familiar cast, but a tight, action-packed plot, great music and great direction from Richard C. Sarafian, a vet of hundreds of hours of episodic television like Gunsmoke and I Spy.
A nutcase (Paul L. Smith, Bluto in Robin Williams' Popeye movie) has not only sabotaged the main computer system for Trans Allied railroad, he's also chloroformed the engineer and taken his place. The intent is to cause to trains, one northbound and one southbound, to crash. He blames the train company for a derailment that destroyed his house and killed his family and wants revenge.
On one of these trains, the northbound one, is a VIP, the President's wife. This brings in a bellicose Secret Service agent, played by Lloyd Bridges, who immediately clashes with the overseer of the computer room, E. G. Marshall. Once it's discovered there's a situation, and a limited amount of time to fix it, the two men REALLY get at each others' throats, particularly Bridges, who shows that he has a gun simply to be intimidating, bitches about coffee and pizza being delivered to the computer room...in short, he's a high-strung jackass who clearly can't handle the stress. This is a nice trial run for the character Bridges would play a year later in the classic Airplane...except that he doesn't say, "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit (insert vice here)!"
Now we come to some of the folks on the train. The always-great William Shatner is one of the passengers, a con artist being chased by the cops (who are also on the train in the persons of Michael Pataki and Peter Jason, the 'Black Russian' guy from 48 Hrs.). He hooks up (or tries to hook up) with the lovely Yvette Mimieux, whose cad of a boyfriend (Emergency hunk Robert Fuller) is on the other train, hitting on anything in a skirt. Old reliable Pat Hingle is the conductor.
Finally, there's the main office for the train company, of which Raymond Burr is the company president. He doesn't have a lot to do here, but sit in a comfy chair and bark at people, which pretty much describes any of his roles between the end of Ironside and the revival of Perry Mason. Lane Smith, the wily prosecutor in My Cousin Vinny and Perry White in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, plays a railroad bigwig who may have caused the accident that took out Paul Smith's family.
Marshall comes up with a resourceful plan to get the train to switch tracks and avoid disaster, but the train still isn't out of the woods yet. That's where Bill Shatner goes to work to save the day...with the aid of the cops pursuing him, the Shat manages to uncouple the front engine from the rest of the train, climb on top of the train, pull Paul Smith out safely, and then the two jump off the train into a river. The passengers in the main body of the train are safe, Shatner saves Smith from drowning and gets him to a nearby beach and then mugs for a photographer as the cops are taking him away. Bridges and Marshall walk out together on friendly terms. Mimieux sees Fuller with a woman he picked up on the train and finally realizes what a jerk he is and inquires about the guy who saved everyone on the train and where they took him.
DOTC has everything you can want in a disaster movie...a main cast of likable, familiar stars, a supporting cast of lesser, though still familiar actors, action, romance, unintentional humor (Bridges, Burr and Shatner would reunite a few years later for Airplane II: The Sequel)...I highly recommend this movie!
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