The Night the Bridge Fell Down (1980 TV Movie) User Reviews

This Bridge spans across banality

[ddc300 · 4/10 · 12 March 2014]

Being an Irwin Allen aficionado, I went an purchased the DVD to this TV-movie. While the premise is a good one, the casting is a bit askew as Desi Arnaz, Jr. is grossly miscast as a bank robber (his acting is so forced it's pathetic). James MacArthur delivers his lines in a bored, detached, almost nonchalant manner. There was really no reason this movie couldn't have been done as a traditional 2-hour event. Instead we get loads of soap opera histrionics (in flashback) to fill-out the second-half, showing how the various characters -- now stuck on the collapsing bridge -- first crossed paths with one another. A similar script was done for the equally dull and excruciating, "Hanging by a Thread" (1978). The saving grace for this film was the physical and miniature effects. For TV in the late 70s, the effect of the full-scale bridge set coming apart was quite well done, as was the model-work showing larger spans breaking away and falling into the river below.

Irwin Allen was at his end with Warner Bros. at the time he made this (1979). It was his last TV project before moving over to Columbia Pictures the following year, and clearly, Warner Bros. had no real faith in the project, hence it's airing on NBC nearly four years after it was made(1983), and on a night when it was due to be clobbered in the ratings (aired against the final episode of M*A*S*H on CBS).

Disaster flick with the old TV melodrama story line....that works,

[Movie Hound Video · 6/10 · 29 July 2016]

This was a 2 night event that was shown opposite the Finale of the TV Series MASH. Filmed in 1978, the studio decided to shelve it for 5 years. It was also Irwin Allen's last disaster flick for Warner Bros.

The character studies were decent and the flashbacks worked well. Of course the best part of the movie was the disaster, the set, and the after effects. To make the movie work well for you, all one has to do is sit back and imagine "What would I do in such a situation?"

Eve Plumb did a great role for as small as it was. Leslie Nielsen is great at comedy and also as a sleaze-ball.

I truly enjoy watching these old movies and seeing the stars of the time and go back down memory lane. This movie is now available uncut through Warner Bros official site.

Part Two Is Outstanding, Part One is Poor

[StuOz · 2 August 2003]

Irwin Allen disaster about people stuck on a bridge that is falling apart.

These days this film gets almost no TV screenings, most people will get it on-line from Warner Archives like I did. It comes in two discs:

Disc One (aka Part One): This is about 100 minutes of backstory! The problem with that is that the characters in the flick are not that interesting and the actors playing them (James MacArthur, unknown guy playing bank robber, etc) are not that interesting, so you really don't care about the backstory of these people. You the viewer just want to see the titled disaster about the bridge! It is actually about 48 minutes into it that the bridge starts to fall apart. So my suggestion is this: unless you have a soft spot for unemployed 1970s TV actors from Hawaii Five-O and The Brady Bunch...totally skip Disc One and instead start at Disc Two. You will pick up the story without any problems!

Disc Two (aka Part Two): this begins with three or four minutes of footage from Part One, and yes, all the best bits are seen here! This is about 100 minutes of outstanding TV disaster. The bridge sets are rather cool and the Richard LaSalle score nicely captures the tragedy of the situation.

In a nutshell: if you only watch the second half of it, you will get a blast, and several bridge shakes, out of The Night The Bridge Fell Down.

Yes, this movie is a true disaster alright.

[danzeisen · 2/10 · 5 July 2018]

Sometimes when we revisit the past we find ourselves seeing things with a new layer of meaning or understanding. That's really hard to do when there is almost no substance worth revisiting. The Warner brothers print WAS clean and revealed a well preserved movie that looked and sounded great. The special effects were pretty well done, especially for a TV movie. Sadly, that's about all that's worthwhile. This movie may have singlehandedly destroyed the career of Desi Arnez Jr. There is not much on his resume after this movie, and its kind of easy to understand why when you watch how he flails away so ineffectually in this movie. Even his aggression comes across more as spasticity. Just count the number of times he starts to climb down the bridge and then gives up and comes back up. There are also seemingly endless shots of him playing with rope and doing other seemingly pointless actions. It's a relief when his character finally falls to the water. The time frame given this movie should have allowed really good character development and lots of insight into who they are as people. Instead the writers filled the time with a lot of nothing that led us to care about the characters as people. Even te great Leslie Nielsen comes across as one dimensional and so wooden you almost fear splinters. The writing here is the real disaster and the actors and actresses are left to take the blame. There really is NO excuse for such wooden, cheaply formulaic and cliched writing.Irwing Allen, as producer, was also clearly past his prime. The era of the big budget "Disaster film" was over when this movie was made, but maybe it should have ended before this was filmed. The movie is the real disaster.

The fall of the bridge was symbolic.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 14 August 2019]

A strange structure (the film's, not the bridge) breaks down this extremely long two part TV movie that mixes needless soap opera with a strange disaster, the collapse of a bridge that reopened before it was properly inspected. a bunch of total strangers are stranded on the bridge, and to a prologue, we get to see what happened with them right before and then few flashbacks that spend time showing what has been happening with them in the recent past.

There's a well dressed bank robber (Desi Arnaz Jr.) being chased by the cops, his girlfriend (Eve Plumb) being used by him as a shield, and the oldest baby daddy ever (Leslie Nielsen) running around with his mistress (Barbara Rush) while trying to get his son to the hospital while his much younger wife is out and about. It seems to be ten years past it's selling date (having been on the shelf for four years), and none of the individual soapy storylines are particularly interesting. This easily could have been edited down to 90 minutes and be another okay time-filler, but producer Irwin Allen went for the epic and failed.

A stereotypical disaster movie which results in a bridge falling down.

[paul-185 · 25 January 1999]

This movie ran on and on. Absolutely predictable plot which took forever to deliver. We watched it on late night TV in 1984 with some friends. This movie has been a running joke since that time.

Guess what it aired against on Network TV?

[richard.fuller1 · 9 October 2003]

Yep, this movie had the misfortune of airing opposite the final MASH episode, the two and a half hour movie, with Night The Bridge Fell Down covering three hours.

My brothers were MASH fans. Guess what we watched?