Marketed as another disaster flick in the vein of The Towering Inferno, Rollercoaster never really reaches the heights (pun not intended, despite myself) of that flick and, due to only having a solitary scene of deadly action, can't really be classified part of the sub-genre instead playing out like an overlong mad bomber thriller - a theme that would show up a couple of decades later in such fare as Speed and Blown Away. Much like its counterparts this does sport a cast heavy on well-known faces and you really can't deny that the drawn out opening sequence where our bomber (Timothy Bottoms) sets a remote bomb onto a rollercoaster rail, and its resulting crash that sports some epic smushing of obvious dummies, is a pretty decent kick-off but that's about all the action you're going to get until the finale rolls around where popular theme park Magic Mountain gets some free publicity (as does a flash-in-the-pan rock band called Sparks) becoming the target of our bomber and his plans to destroy the freshly opened loop coaster.

Given that Bottoms' unnamed terrorist spends most of the movie being one step ahead of his pursuers, as well as showing off a calm menace while the score by Lalo Schifrin trills on in the background sounding like a slasher movie reject, we really don't learn anything about him other than he's using bomb threats to extort five major corporations. Into the picture arrives investigator Harry (George Seagal) who, in the mildest form of character development, is recently separated from his wife and called in to try and track down our bomber - only managing to become a pawn for our baddie as evidenced by a bloated mid-section where he's guided around as part of a hand-off of a briefcase filled with a million dollars.

As written by Richard Levinson and William Link, Rollercoaster is generally a leisurely paced bore. They've taken a cast of veteran actors such as Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda and spent way too much time having scenes of them all gathered in a room planning how they're going to capture our villain. It also doesn't help that the proceedings feel very TV movie in delivery, which may be because director James Goldstone spent most of his career in television - though he did make the awesomely titled James Garner vehicle, They Only Kill Their Masters, in 1972. Things just aren't very engaging and it's pretty lacking in destruction considering that: a) it was thrown into the disaster sub-genre, and b) it was one of only a handful of films (the others being Earthquake, Midway, and Battlestar Galactica) that was presented in "Sensurround", a gimmick that caused theatre patron's seats to vibrate. However, there is that pretty great first fifteen minutes and some of the interplay between Segal and Bottoms works, making things not a total washout.

In the lead Segal holds things down nicely and is certainly given more to do than his more experienced co-stars. Bottoms, billed here as "Young Man", handles his quiet psychopath character well even if I spent most of the movie hoping to get even the mildest glimpse into his motivation. Susan Strasberg (The Trip, Bloody Birthday) takes on a small role as Harry's new girlfriend, Helen Hunt (TV sitcom "Mad About You") plays his teenage daughter in her screen debut, Craig Wasson (Body Double, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3) shows up as drugged-out hippie, Robert Quarry (Count Yorga, Sugar Hill) plays the mayor, and Steve Guttenberg (Police Academy) has an unbilled appearance as a messenger. Yeah, it's quite the cast for those of us who dig looking for familiar faces in side roles.

Rollercoaster isn't that bad, really, it's just a mediocre effort that goes on a bit too long and isn't nearly thrilling enough considering all the mayhem a terrorist in amusement parks could possibly get into. It has a few solid moments and performances but you're not likely to remember it much the next day. (Chris Hartley, 11/3/14)

Directed By: James Goldstone.
Written By: Richard Levinson, William Link.

Starring: George Segal, Richard Widmark, Timothy Bottoms, Henry Fonda.