Simply A Masterpiece

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Wow, "The Big Bus" is so funny! I remember I wanted to see this when it came out when I was a kid but it didn't work out. It took many years before I was able to watch this in one viewing. It's great. A great '70s comedy,. A great comedy "period". It's played perfectly. It's played straight but not too straight, kind of. The balance everybody achieved is incredible. The great Joe Bologna is excellent. The rest of the cast is almost as good. It came out four years before "Airplane" but right in the middle of Mel Brooks' films. I need to watch it more often.

It's remarkable that the favorite subject for the rising trend of parody movies in the 1970s end, and the 1980s start, was the disaster movies. Just remember (The Big Bus - 1976), (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! - 1978), (Airplane! - 1980), and (Airplane II: The Sequel - 1982). Though, I deem it natural because of what the disaster movies caused of satiety during the whole 70s decade. Plus, some real disastrous experiences that came in the late 70s such as (The Swarm - 1978), (The Concorde ... Airport '79 - 1979), and (When Time Ran Out - 1980), which were parodies of themselves already ! As you see, The Big Bus took the initiative to mock at that genre, which inaugurated yet another genre. And while it isn't Airplane, it has the seed of its fresh craziness. For instance : the matter of the lead being accused of "eating" people, the cemetery scene, and the bar fight; which's the movie's best moment.Originally, it seems as if Airplane took a lot from this movie, like : the character of a pilot with a troubling past, who's needed suddenly to save the day. How his ex-girlfriend is on the same ride. Or how they come back to each other in the end. Let alone a scene where the stewardesses demonstrate to the riders what to do while the trip is in danger ! The bus was huge with fabulous design. The running gag of the bus's singer was super. And since the first time I watched him years ago, till now, I believe that Joseph Bologna is one the most underrated comedians ever. That guy was great. He could do cracking comedy with the littlest efforts. It's a shame that he wasn't a star in many movies or TV shows as he should have been.Director James Frawley has many funny bones, and bad luck as well; because he didn't direct more movies. However, his comic energy can be felt in countless TV episodes of shows like Columbo, Magnum P.I., Tales of the Gold Monkey, and Vengeance Unlimited. Or a movie like The Muppet Movie (1979). Now, to the negative points. And the first one comes to my mind is Stockard Channing. MY GOD, who thought of hiring her in a leading role in a comedy ??? She looks like an awful version of Elizabeth Taylor, and I don't like Elizabeth Taylor in the first place ! Channing has no beauty, no talent for comedy, so why she's here anyway ??!!The characters on the bus were few, and even fewer of them were interesting. David Shire's music is all the time excited, maybe for parodying the music of other disaster movies, but eventually it didn't work for me. Some of the jokes didn't hit the "funny" mark, like when all the riders had to wear bizarre costumes in the end. And some of them weren't utilized smartly, like the idea of how the evil guy lives in a metal cocoon. Or attaching the scientist father into the ground against his well, which while being creative, it was used laconically. Speaking of laconic things, the end is, with fabricated defeat for the evil guys, and such an incomprehensible surviving for the good guys (I still don't know how the lead saved the bus over the cliffhanger !). Add to that, extremely dull ending shot, and you'll get why this good movie feels not so good for many viewers. It is short, and runs out of clever ideas nearly halfway through it. But for the most part, it's a wonderful comedy, little ahead of its time, and the true disaster is that it isn't any famous.

I actually saw The Big Bus as a kid in a theatre, because I LOVE Stockard Channing, and I got my mom to take me (she put up with a LOT of stuff from me - Thanks mom!).As a 7 year old, I loved it - I wasn't interested in, nor rally was looking for plot 'holes,' or, anything else, other than just silly fun, and, I do remember - all these years later - I did enjoy myself.My mom... well, I never asked, then,but, when I recently asked her, she was vague, so, I'm gonna say I don't think she liked it.In the mid 70's, we had Earthquake (in 'Sensurround' - a theater-wide effect in which every time the earthquake started to rumble, the 'Sensurround' system (a legit sound amplification, which very simplistically speaking, were bass-heavy, and those frequencies REALLY did a number on those in the theatre at the time. It was VERY wild.We had The Towering Inferno- about a very tall building on fire, and The Poseidon Adventure, as wells some others.Then, about a year or two after these big films, came The Big Bus.As I noted in several other reviews, they noticed the similarities between this film and those of the Zuckers & Abrahams, i.e., Airplane!, Naked Gun, and (my favourite of this genre) Top Secret, as well as others.I don't know if the Zuckers or Abrahams had seen The Big Bus, and said they can 'do it better,' or not, but, one can definitely see The Big Bus as an influence on those later films.I can't recommend The Big Bus, to anyone who is looking for a 'quality' film. But, if you are one of those die-hard fanatics, like myself, who are fans of any of the (large) cast, which contains many well known character performers, like Ms Channing, and really don't care about 'plot holes' ('big enough to drive the 'Big Bus' though,' LOL!), then sit back and enjoy.It is NOT 'side-achingly' funny, but, it is 'chortle' funny.I give it a '6,' because I DO like kitsch such as thisAs an addendum, for those who remember this era, NBC was in LAST place of the 'Big Three' TV networks, and they hired (former) 'wunderkind,' Fred Silverman away from ABC.Whilst not a direct descendant of this genre, the Big …'egg' Silverman laid at NBC was a TV series, which was at the time THE most EXPENSIVE (on a per-episode basis) titled 'SuperTrain.'It was not (intentionally) either a comedy, nor a disaster, but, in the annals of TV, it is both.In the entertainment world, one is supposed to describe their projects in one 'grab ya' sentence,' and the descriptive sentence of Super Train was 'Love Bot on a Train.With SuperTrain, the 'circle' was complete, and it wouldn't be until the Zuckers and Abrahams got together and made 'fun' disasters the 'right' way.

Four years before the successful take off of Zucker and Abraham's smash hit spoof Airplane! (1980), director James Frawley's The Big Bus explored remarkably similar territory, lampooning the popular disaster genre in a crazy scatter-shot style. The film's titular vehicle is the world's first nuclear powered bus, a giant, luxury, 32-wheeled metallic titan called Cyclops embarking on its maiden journey travelling non-stop from New York to Denver; unfortunately for the passengers and crew, a crazed oil magnate is out to discredit the bus by putting it permanently out of service by any means necessary.Like Airplane, the absurd goof-ball gags come thick and fast, but The Big Bus's batting average isn't quite as high, a lot of the humour falling rather flat. The film's best bits are its more subtle, throw-away humorous moments, although I imagine that a lot of these might easily be missed on the first viewing. As the film thunders towards its conclusion, the bus loses its brakes and picks up speed, careening round perilous mountain roads; when the bus eventually grinds to a halt (over the edge of a precipice) so do the film's laughs, the remainder of the action being dull and predictable.