Flood! (1976) - Mostly dry flood

Let's face it, we're all probably more than a little guilty at watching 'disaster movies' to see the scale of whatever carnage is being inflicted on our helpless protagonists.  I don't want to spoil 'Flood!' but in this case a small town is being threatened by a plague of locusts from the future.  Only kidding.  It's a flood.  Or rather a big dam just by their town and if it breaks - and it's already starting to crack - it'll flood the town and home insurance is going to go through the roof when it comes to the residents' next premium.

So we're introduced to the two men who have an idea as to what might happen and they try to warn the rest of the town.  Or at least they try to warn the town's leader, who - in tried and tested stubborn style - refuses to believe them because if they drain the water from the dam it will impact on the revenue that fishing brings into their local economy.

So our heroes persist in their efforts to warn more people (in between popping home to their respective women who look about twenty years their junior, but that's another story).  And then they go to a different location and warn a different person.  In fact, most of the film is set in - very dry - houses with people talking to people about what might happen, i.e. the flood.

It's only the last twenty minutes or so where you see the actual flood.  Now, maybe this pay-off is so awesome and ground-breaking that it makes the build up worth the wait?  Sadly, this is a TV movie and there wasn't much of a budget for big practical effects, let alone an alien invasion with a skybeam.

So you have a film which is quite long and desperately wants to be an epic in its genre, but the lack of anything that really happens just makes most of it drag.  Pity really, as it does have its charms and with a little more money behind it for the effects in the final act and a little less scenes building up, this could have been quite good.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back