When Time Ran Out...
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 ...So did the ideas.
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When Time Ran Out... (originally titled The Day The World Ended) is a 1980 American disaster film directed by James Goldstone and produced by Irwin Allen. The movie stars Paul Newman, Jacqueline Bisset, William Holden, James Franciscus, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Burgess Meredith, Valentina Cortese, Veronica Hamel, Pat Morita, Edward Albert, and Barbara Carrera. It is the final film of the 1970s disaster film era as well as Allen's theatrical release.
Plot
Star-studded disaster movie in which a volcano causes havoc on an idyllic South Pacific island which has become a holiday paradise for the rich and powerful. Most of them ignore the danger, but one group embarks on a risky escape attempt.
Why The Title Is Correct Indeed
- The film officially turned the disaster movie genre into a dead horse with no action, concepts, or content.
- A bizarre storyline, which clears things up a little.
- Bad acting for most of the cast.
- Very sluggish pacing, despite the movie being 121 minutes (or any other cuts like 109 minutes) long, the movie feels a lot longer than that, as the padding keeps dragging on for too long, or too short.
- Misleading poster: On the film's poster, the poster shows a volcano destroying much of the city, but in the movie, the city doesn't even appear at all.
- Some of the settings and scenes in the movies look ridiculous and don't make any sense, at all. Like having an Oil well near a volcano, which volcano is not a mountain with a shaft at the top that leads down to a lake of lava.
- What's more, there is a scene where a volcano literally causes a tidal wave toward a small town in the movie, which it doesn't work like that.
- The story is unoriginal: It is basically a rehash of The Poseidon Adventure, but it takes place in a very different location, and characters, and is also essentially an island version of The Poseidon Adventure.
- Very abysmal, and cheesy special effects, especially the lava, and a large explosion at the end. You can also see the actor's head, hands, and feet while the actor tumbles into the lava.
- It suffers through a major genre problem: Despite being a disaster film, the third act of the movie suddenly turns into an unintentional adventure film without any purpose whatsoever.
- Bad cinematography.
- Much like the previous two of Irwin Allen's disaster films, the special effects are extremely cheap despite having a $20 million budget, because so much of the budget went toward location shooting.
- Many of these characters were extremely unlikeable and selfish, such as the visitors/guests including Nikki, and Iolani who were choosing to stay at the hotel, not evacuating with the others before the volcano destroys the entire hotel.
- Most of the sound effects were recycled from The Swarm (eg. from a scene where the oil tower is destroyed using the alert sound from the nuclear plant in The Swarm.)
- The film pretty much killed off Irwin Allen's series of disaster movies, as no more Allen's disaster movies have been made since., and it nearly killed his career as both producer and director.
- As mentioned on WTTICI #14, because of the film's failure, it was so bad that the disaster movie genre had to go to a halt due to the declining interest in the disaster film product until it was revived in the 1990s.
Redeeming Qualities That Didn't Run Out
- Despite most of the bad acting, Paul Newman and William Holden gave decent performances as Hank Anderson, and Shelby Gilmore, which they're still the most highlighting part in the movie.
- Unlike The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, it wasn't directed by Irwin Allen, since this movie was directed by a different director, like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno.
- Irwin Allen was at least, smart enough not to be the director of the film since his two previous disaster movies failed, forcing him to have a different director at the same time.
- The idea of a disaster film about a volcano that erupts and destroys a city is amazing although it was poorly executed.
- The soundtrack that was composed by Lalo Schifrin was right.
- Some decent thrilling and action sequences, though still not as good as the previous films.
Reception
Critical response
Much like The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, When Time Ran Out... was not well received by critics or audiences alike. Film critic Leonard Maltin's annual publication of capsule film reviews dubbed the film "When Ideas Ran Out" or "The Blubbering Inferno". Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert selected the film as one of their "dogs of the year" in a 1980 episode of Sneak Previews. The film currently holds a rare 0% on Rotten Tomatoes but lacks a critic consensus.
Box Office
When Time Ran Out... performed poorly at the box office. While it cost an estimated $20,000,000 to produce, the film grossed only $3,763,988. Due to the film's poor US box office results, Warner Brothers insisted on cuts for the international theatrical release, reducing it from 121 minutes to 104 minutes. These cuts were made to the original negative prints and would be prohibitively expensive to restore. All DVD releases of the film have been shortened to international versions.
Trivia
- Before passing away, the late Paul Newman confessed in interviews that this was the only film he ever did for a paycheck. Paul referred to this as "that volcano movie" and added that he and most of the cast were aware that the film would fail.
- Before plans for this film were to be made, there were plans for a sequel to The Towering Inferno since Steve McQueen was under contract with Irwin Allen. The sequel was then canceled after McQueen refused to star in it. Paul Newman signed on to do this film after Steve refused to take part. After Paul Newman signed on, Steve McQueen died.
- There are at least three versions of this film: the original 121-minute cut, a 104-minute cut, and a 141-minute expanded video home video cut.
- During production, actor William Holden was hospitalized for six days to treat alcoholism after director James Goldstone warned Irwin Allen that Holden was messing things up for himself and the co-stars.
- When the film was first announced in 1975, the original main leads were given to Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Henry Fonda, and Jennifer Jones.
