Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21846 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-03-08
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Serbian, Turkish, Arabic, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Slovene, Hebrew, Spanish, Bulgarian, Polish, Swedish, Hungarian, Portuguese, Icelandic, Romanian, German, French, Italian, English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 84 minutes

DVD Description
The bus of the title is the world's first nuclear-powered coach and this fabulous parody of early 70's disaster movies hits the mark with misfit stereotyped passengers rediscovering god, sex and the will to live, a saboteur from the oil companies and a cannibalistic driver all coming together for the maiden voyage of the block-long super-coach. The passengers on this fun-filled ride from New York to Denver, including Stockard Channing, Ned Beatty, Rene Auberjonois, Lynn Redgrave and Joseph Bologna ensure that the one-liners come thick and fast in this very funny and engaging movie. Characters and actors from the big budget disaster movies of the era are mercilessly lampooned in a series of classic clichéd scenarios and plotlines - dinner at the captain's table, engine trouble, the piano bar singer, medical emergencies and an old flame with a murky past.

Special Features
Dolby digital 5.1
2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen

Synopsis
A star-studded cast headlines this outlandish spoof on disaster films in which a gigantic nuclear powered bus--containing a swimming pool, a bowling alley, and a piano bar--and goes out of control and nearly crashes while making a coast-to-coast journey. With a cannibalistic driver (Joseph Bologna) and an oil company man who is working overtime to sabotage the bus, the passengers (Stockard Channing, Richard Mulligan, Ruth Gordon, Rene Auberjonois, and more) are assured a bumpy ride. Director James Frawley's (TV's The Monkees) is an obvious influence on 1980's AIRPLANE!

Customer Reviews

Truly Awful
The best place for this film is in your memories if you ever saw it on TV all those years ago. To say it hasn't aged well is the biggest understatement since " Joan Rivers looks like she may have had a little cosmetic surgery"
It is frenetic American sub humour of the Mel Brooks mode. Lots of hammy gurning, running around and if the joke is not funny shout a lot to make it funny.
I remembered seeing this on TV and thought it was OK, but that was a long time ago and it just grates now. All those star cameos and it can't lift it up to mediocre.
Airplne raised the bar, this tried to crawl under it. Avoid, even at the cheap price the next stop from your dvd player will be the bin

The ride of your life!
Before there was `Airplane!', there was... The Big Bus.
In fact, it was three years before Airplane, that this prototype disaster movie spoof appeared, directed by James Frawley who also directed `The Muppet Movie'. Although similar in tone, the humour is less one liner and more atmosphere driven - and on the whole works. OK, it's a bit hit and miss, and it's clear why `Airplane!' is so much better known -but this movie definitely does not deserve to be forgotten.
First there's that high concept idea - a nuclear powered bus on its maiden transcontinental journey, beset by sabotage and a driver who has a reputation as partial cannibal and a co-driver prone to blackouts ("it's ok, it's only when on the move").
Then there's the characters - Father Kudos (Rene Auberjonois, LONG before his Star Trek Deep Space 9 days) who is having an Exorcist-like faith crisis, the couple who are celebrating their divorce, the man with 6 months to live who argues in the lounge with the failed vet over who understands bitterness the most... and of course, that ever cheerful lounge piano player who smiles and sings at whatever comes his way. Robert Bologna and Stockard Channing headline, in extremely similar roles to the pilot and stewardess from Airplane!. Even smaller roles are filled by well known names - Ned Beatty, Jose Ferrer (the man in the iron lung, masterminding the demise of the bus at the behest of the oil industry..).
And one cannot forget, that wonderful bus! The size.. the bad 70's taste décor.. the gadgets! One moment encapsulates the humour the movie is aiming at - with the bus building speed and the brakes failing, the driver suddenly has a brainwave.. the flags of all nations! A button is pressed, and up come the fluttering flags from the roof, helping slow the bus down. Or the bar fight spoofing West Side story when someone shouts `Look out! He's got a broken milk carton!' as the man (John Beck, as `Shoulders' O'Brien) says `I hate to see a man down when he's kicked'.
The wonderful thing about the humour is that it parodies a genre without concentrating too much on parodies of specific movies, the modern day spoofs so often do.
In short, it isn't subtle, it's certainly over the top, it's as hammy as the lead actors name suggests, but if you have a funny bone, this should tickle it.

still good, 12 yrs on!
i saw this first when i was about 12, and i enjoyed it to the last, its very well thought out, and at that age i was also into every piece of machinery out, suffice to say a BIG BUS was top of the list. there are the usual pices of comic genius, small things that never fail to raise a smile! 'he can't be moved', you'll know what i mean if you've seen it. i suggest u buy for a good laugh. no on par with airplane or spyhard but then its not either of those two lol!!