Given that BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE has finally been released, I hope against hope that labels will start to look in the direction of Lalo Schifrin's WHEN TIME RAN OUT. The film is a non-starter, but the music is terrific.
John Williams' score to THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE is probably the gold standard for "disaster" film scores. From the opening brass-and-string shudders that simulate the approaching tidal wave, through the crash that mirrors the wave hitting the ship, and the adventure theme that, with its succession of five-note rising figures signifying the trek upward and outward from the doomed ship, no score has captured in a classier, more stately way the best that genre of film had to offer.
This is a film I knew really well and it doesn't seem like JW - I've watched it and I think it was "formative" of his later style. Good movie as well (when I was a kid)!! The end when they are rescued - that is JW. . .