Meteor |  | Director: Ronald Neame
Actors: Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
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Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 38646
Format: Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 107 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 027616837424
ISBN: 0792843606
UPC: 027616837424
EAN: 9780792843603
ASIN: 0792843606
Theatrical Release Date: October 19, 1979
Release Date: February 29, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com
Sean Connery leads a team of asteroid-battling astronomers in Meteor, one of the last and most unusual examples of the disaster movie craze of the 1970s. In this one, a killer asteroid named Orpheus threatens to collide with the Earth, and Connery must come up with a plan to stop it. Cold war politics date the picture a bit, but they also add some weight to the impending doom facing humanity. Like any good disaster flick, it's populated by an all-star cast, including Karl Malden, Martin Landau, Natalie Wood, Richard Dysart, Henry Fonda, and Trevor Howard. Brian Keith plays Connery's opposite number in the U.S.S.R. While the pacing and special effects are weak compared to similar celestial menaces depicted in Armageddon and Deep Impact, Meteor displays all the benefits of its more powerful cast… not to mention Hank Fonda as President. --Mark Savary
Product Description
Outer space can hardly contain all the stars who round out the extraordinary cast in this spellbinding thriller about a five-mile-wide meteor on a catastrophic collision course with earth. Natalie Wood and Oscar® winners* Sean Connery Karl Malden Martin Landau and Henry Fonda shine in this thoroughly engrossing (The Hollywood Reporter) sci-fi special effects spectacular that rockets across the screen like a speeding comet. A brilliant scientist Dr. Paul Bradley (Connery) is summoned to Washington by NASA chief Harold Sherwood (Malden) who informs him that a huge meteor will smash into earth in six days. The only chance to destroy the meteor is to work with the Soviets revealing to them top secrets. But as the clock is ticking fragments of the meteor split off and come crashing to earth causing enormous damage. And as avalanches and title waves take a devastating toll Bradley works against all odds to eliminate the greatest threat the world has ever known. *1987: Connery Supporting Actor The Untouchables;1951: Malden Supporting ActorA Streetcar Named Desire;1994: Landau Supporting Actor Ed Wood;1981: Fonda Actor On Golden Pond; 1980: Fonda Honorary AwardSystem Requirements:Running Time: 120 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: PG UPC: 027616837424
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 36
 Crash and Burn May 3, 2009
David Baldwin (Philadelphia,PA USA)
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
This flick is a waste of time, talent, and money. This is possibly the worst film Sean Connery has ever appeared in. Hammy acting, leaden direction, inept storytellying, etc. It's worst offense is the super cheesy special effects. They don't even pass the mustard with the original "Star Trek" standards. Heck, "Plan 9" had more convincing visuals. Another debit is the depiction of the destruction of the World Trade Center which is of dubious taste in light of the events that followed. This movie doesn't warrant enough camp to meet the "MST2K" criteria.
 Meteoric Disaster January 11, 2009
Cassandra A. Morrison (Minneapolis, MN)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I love this movie and I don't care who knows it. Sean Connery and Natalie Wood are fantastic together---Brian Keith (who committed suicide in 1997) is great as the Russian Counterpart of Connery's character. Martin Landau (CLEOPATRA, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, SPACE 1999, ED WOOD, SLEEPY HOLLOW---and probably most famous for producing daughter Juliet--hey, does that mean Bela Lugosi is the father of Drusilla? Probably not) is great as the Air Force General who, in the end, puts service to his country ahead of his own ego. And Karl Malden turns in his usual performance---meaning top-notch. The special effects are a bit cheesy by 2009 standards but they worked at the time.
And you should notice the name of the spacecraft that gets destroyed early in the film. It is the Challenger 2. Now remember, this movie was released 1979--seven years BEFORE...well, you know.
The radio station from New Jersey they are hearing in the subway WAS a real station---WKBW. It's no longer around but it's recreation of Orson Welles' WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast---first in 1968 (on the 30th anniversary of the Welles Broadcast) and then all over again in 1971 earned their science fiction street creds before their appearance in this film.
You can learn more and hear the broadcasts here: http://wkbwradio.com/page2.htm
Finally mention must be made of Henry Fonda as the President---Mr. Fonda was the kind of man I would have voted for until thew cows came home...and then I'd have held a gun on the cows until THEY voted for him too!
You will LOVE this movie!
 The power to Destroy is the Power to save November 2, 2008
Golden Lion (North Ogden, Ut United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
1. A five mile chunk of Orpheus is heading for earth and destined to hit the earth in five days.
2. Hercules was built to be a meteor destroyer, however, the fourteen nuclear weapons are pointing towards Russia instead of space. NASA has five days to realign the rockets.
3. Orpheus has a 30,000 mile/hour velocity. Hercules is a secret project and the military does not want the world to know about Hercules. Dr. Bradley says, a rock, 1 mile wide, would create a 50 mile diameter. Orpheus is ten magnitudes greater, the impact will cause 5 billion tons of earth to be thrown into the atmosphere, reduce solar radiation, and cause an ice age.
4. The President reveals the existence of Hercules to the public. Armed weapon nuclear weapons to destroy any foreign body on a collision course to earth. The Russian have a similar weapon and the US wants a joint operation to destroy the meteor. Each missile has 100 megatons capacity.
5. The Russian weapon, Peter the Great, must be aligned with the US weapons, 16 rockets with 100 megaton per rocket.
6. A meteor strikes in Siberia of earthquake proportions.
7. In Italy, a meteor cluster burned up in the atmosphere and the general believes the threat is over.
8. A meteor smashes into snow cap mountain causing an avalanche causing thousands of deaths in the alps.
9. The big question is where next?
10. Peter the Great fires first and forty minutes later Hercules launches and the weapons switch to their internal decision making systems and explode within a predetermined distance.
11.A hundred foot tidal wave is heading towards Hong Kong, 600 miles per hour.
12. The President address the world, Sunday, "Stay in your homes, have faith, not more, we will let you know when the danger has past."
13. A big splinter is on course for impact with the East coast of the US.
Dr Bradley decides to wait and risk not launching. The missiles successfully launch. The meteor has destroyed most of the New York and communication cut-off. The operation team escapes through the subway tunnels. The river starts to break through.
14. Houston is monitoring the missiles providing reporting every thirty minutes. 4 & 7 Russian missiles malfunctioned and 1 missile from Hercules malfunctioned.
15. Orpheus destroyed and the earth safe.
Boy This Takes Me Back ! April 9, 2008
A. Olmo (Brooklyn, NY USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Good little film Meteor is, and it's one of the one's I saw with Connery in the lead not too long after giving up on Bond for good.
Meteor may never go down in history as the best movie of it's type, but I think for those that even remember it, it deserves a place as the first film of it's kind. Remember this was long before "Armaggedon" "Deep Impact" and all those knockoffs you see on the Sci Fi Channel such as Asteroid and the like.
Indeed I believe Meteor was the first...and best of the "giant rock hurtling to Earth at blazing speed is going to cause our doom" movies. Yeah Armaggedon had all the high priced special effects and high priced cast, same goes for Deep Impact, but I sincerely believe they never did it better than Meteor did. You can say Armaggedon, Deep Impact and Sci Fi's Asteriod are all variations on a theme, a theme that originally began with Meteor, so in that respect it was the first of this type of movie where the main theme is a very common one today in Sci Fi and action movies.
You can say the others are better produced, acted, you like the stars better, whatever. Nothing in my opinion did the subject justice as the film Meteor did.
 Oh, what possessed you? All of you? March 10, 2008
Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
Meteor (Ronald Neame, 1979)
Oh, Ronald Neame. Three of your movies appear on all-time-thousand-best lists in various places (Peter Traver's guide and Yamann's weblog both list The Poseidon Adventure, Travers and the Guardian's weblog both list The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and both the New York Times and Halliwell's guides elect Tunes of Glory); how did you go from such great heights to, well, this? Though I have to say that any movie upon which a pinball game was based is automatically tops in my book, there's just no getting around it: Meteor is a bad, bad movie, all the worse because Neame and uberschlock producer Sam Arkoff managed to line up such an incredible wealth of talent for this film and then proceeded to waste it all as quickly as possible.
The plot: a comet entered the asteroid belt and collided with Orpheus, the largest body there. A five-mile-wide segment of Orpheus is headed straight for Earth, and the Americans (led by Sean Connery) and the Russians (led by the decidedly non-Russian Brian Keith) have to team up in order to stop the Earth from being destroyed.
Connery and Keith are just the tip of the iceberg. Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Martin Landau, Richard Dysart, Henry Fonda, Bibi Besch, and Sybil Danning, among many, many others, signed on for roles of varying importance in this turkey. Everyone here should be jailed for overacting, and Natalie Wood should get extra time added for such a fabulous Russian accent. The special effects are laughable (and to be fair, the special effects were laughable in 1979, as well). Set design is cruelly cheap, and the titles are straight out of TV-movie-dom. The soundtrack must be heard to be believed. The script is rife with plot holes and places where it's obvious the writers did a rush job of patching the ones they found. For that matter, I can't think of anything, save the cast, to recommend this film at all. *
Showing reviews 1-5 of 36
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