1976’s The Cassandra Crossing opens with a shot of the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.  Though the film (and the shot) may be from the 70s, one look at the ugly brutalism of the WHO’s headquarters is all it takes to understand the mentality that, nearly 50 years later, would lead to the organization serving as China’s mouthpiece during the COVID pandemic.

Three Swedish terrorists attack the American mission at the WHO.  One of them is killed by a guard.  Another immediately falls victims to an unidentified disease that is apparently a new form of the Bubonic plague.  The third (Lou Castel) escapes and boards a train that is heading for Sweden.  Two Americans, Col. MacKenzie (Burt Lancaster) and Major Stack (John Phillip Law), and Swedish doctor Elena Stadner (Ingrid Thulin), try to figure out how to stop the spread of the infection.

While the infected terrorist lurches around the train, the passengers go through their own personal dramas.  Renowned neurologist Jonathan Chamberlain (Richard Harris) flirts with his ex-wife, writer Jennifer Rispoli (Sophia Loren).  Wealthy Nicole Dressler (Ava Gardner, whose voice sounds like a cigarette ad) boards the train with her heroin-addicted younger boyfriend, Robby Navarro (a long-haired, dark glasses-wearing Martin Sheen, acting up a storm and apparently having a lot of fun for once).  Herman Kaplan (Lee Strasberg) is a regular on the train, a Holocaust survivor who enjoys a good chess game with the conductor, Max (Lionel Stander).  Haley (OJ Simpson) is a narcotics agent who is disguised as a priest.  Susan (Ann Turkel) is the hippie who just wants to have sex with her boyfriend (Ray Lovelock) but who keeps getting interrupted by other passengers.  When she complains about already having had to already deal with one “sweaty pervert” during the day, Chamberlain replies, “Which sweaty pervert?”  By this point, Chamberlain knows about the infected man and is trying to track him down before he can infect anyone else on the train.

The Cassandra Crossing is several films in one.  It’s an all-star disaster film.  It’s medical thriller.  Once Col. MacKenzie decides that the best way to deal with the train (and to cover-up the fact that America was researching germ warfare) would be to send the train over the infamous Cassandra Crossing, an unstable bridge that is on the verge of collapse, it becomes a conspiracy thriller.  It’s all a bit ludicrous, though in this post-pandemic age, there is definitely a renewed power to the images of Hazmat suit-wearing soldiers carrying submachine guns and threatening to kill anyone who resists going into quarantine.  When it comes to films that make Hazmat suits look menacing, The Cassandra Crossing can proudly stand with George Romero’s The Crazies and Zombi 3.

Of course, with any disaster film, the real purpose of the movie is to gather together a collection of familiar faces and then allow the viewer to spend two hours trying to guess who will survive and who will not.  The cast is full of actors who all probably deserved a better script.  Richard Harris, Burt Lancaster, and Ingrid Thulin all look somewhat embarrassed.  Ava Gardner and Martin Sheen fully embrace the melodrama.  In fact, it’s hard for me to think of any other movie where Sheen actually seemed to be having as much fun as he does while playing the drug-addicted, prone-to-histrionics mountain climber in The Cassandra Crossing.  As was typical of his film career, O.J. Simpson gives a very earnest performance.  He’s not exactly good but it’s obvious that he’s trying really hard and it would make him likable if not for the fact that he’s O.J. Simpson, just 20 years away from getting away with murder.  Out of the ensemble cast, Lionel Stander, Lee Strasberg, and Sophia Loren are the one who probably come the closest to actually giving good performances.  Loren’s husband, Carlo Ponti, produced the film with Sir Lew Grade and Loren gives a performance that is blessed with the confidence of knowing her career had survived far worse than The Cassandra Crossing.

The Cassandra Crossing is the epitome of a film that’s not necessarily good but which is definitely entertaining.  Between the drama-stuffed plot and the overwritten dialogue and the performances of Gardner and Sheen, it’s campy in the way that only an overproduced 70s disaster film can be.  For certain viewers, there’s undoubtedly a lot of joy to be found in the scenes in which the passengers finally start to stand up to the authoritarians trying to force them into quarantine.  That said, this is one of those films where we’re not meant to get particularly upset about hundreds of innocent people dying just because the main characters managed to come through unscathed.  The film’s ending is right up there with Man of Steel as far as needless destruction is concerned.  Fortunately, the ending also features some terrible miniature shots, all of which remind us not to take it all too seriously.

To paraphrase another 70s film: “Forget it, Jake.  It’s The Cassandra Crossing.“