Talk about a misleading title! Given the sensational English title and the fact this is a European-produced early 70's disaster flick, naturally everybody assumes it's a shameless imitation of the popular Gene Hackman classic "The Poseidon Adventure". But it's not, in fact, in any way related to this movie except that the ships have the same name. This production actually has a lot more story elements in common with "The Towering Inferno", but that movie didn't get released until 1974 so you can't call it a rip-off of that one, neither. "The Poseidon Explosion" re-enacts the supposedly true events that occurred near a Romanian harbor in the year 1970. An all-ravaging inferno breaks out on board a massive cargo ship carrying thousands of bags of explosive fertilizer. Despite of the devoted labor of professional fire-fighters as well as multiple courageous volunteers, the immense fire can't be extinguished and the inevitable explosion is guaranteed to destroy the entire harbor town of Galati as well. It was quite a surprise to find this movie in the Grindhouse Collection box-set. Granted it's an exploitation feature, but primarily this is a genuine and full-blooded 70's disaster movie. Everything that could possibly go wrong on board the Poseidon does go wrong, there's a realistic diversity between heroic characters and people that just intend to save their own butt, there's barely any time for sentimental sub plots and certain people you root for die a horrible death! That's simply the way it should be in this type of films. Superficially speaking, "The Poseidon Explosion" appears to be a poorly produced movie, but that's simply because the transfer to DVD looks cheap and the English dubbing was done by a bunch of illiterate amateurs. If you look beyond these aspects that are typical for Grindhouse flicks, you'll notice an eminent Romanian film with astounding special effects (the fires are menacingly real), devoted actors (Gheorghe Dinica is superb) and convincing set-pieces. Director Mircea Dragan maintains an atmosphere of non-stop suspense and the fire-fighters face a new type of deadly ordeal in every new scene. Now, that's cinematic excitement! "The Poseidon Explosion" is probably one of the most misunderstood movies ever made.
