Famed producer Roger Corman was always on the lookout for a popular movie trend he could capitalize on and imitate-usually ahead of the originals release. In the extremely lucrative disaster film genre-which peaked in 1974 with THE TOWERING INFERNO , Corman somehow dropped the ball. He had some success in 1975 with the release of TIDAL WAVE , a dubbed version of Japans number one movie of its time -THE SDUBMERSION OF JAPAN. But his last two disaster themed films AVALANCHE and CATASTROPHE were too late in the game by the time they were released in 1978 and flopped.

Released in February 1978 CATASTROPHE was just that at the boxoffice. Partly because it was advertised as a true disaster movie-not a documentary of recycled newsreels of famous disasters. The marketing was later changed to appeal to the Sunn Classic audiences of pseudo documentaries (IN SEARCH OF NOAHS ARK was a blockbuster)-in essence Corman ripped off 2 genres-and failed disasterely at both.

Trivia: Name the original films these Roger Corman and AIP films were trying to imitate:
1) BIG BAD MAMA
2) UNHOLY ROLLERS
3) DEATH RACE 2000
4)GALAXY OF TERROR