Every time you need a pair of people in this Irwin Allen TV movie, they bring up a soap opera subplot, complete with flashbacks, and they become laughably bad every time they are introduced. The cast as the credits roll by bring chuckles on too, from Ray Milland in one of his patent grouchy old men roles to Leslie Nielson, surely so serious, and Susan Sullivan, turning around in her introductory scene like Maggie in the opening credits of "Falcon Crest". Fans of the nighttime cereal will be amused when she has to swim underwater and gets her foot caught on a rock, similar to something that happened on "Falcon Crest". Then there's a criminal on the run, James Olson, planning to use the disaster to keep the group underground as hostages, getting angry every time someone tries to tell him that he's taking a wrong turn.

I expected Abraham Lincoln to turn up in the shoot-out scene with Leslie Nielsen just like he did every week on the short-lived "Police Squad". Dennis Cole is the leading man, a mine inspector who warns Sullivan (a politician) of potential disaster. Of course they were romantically involved prior to this situation, and that's more soap opera to be dealt with. Of course in the meantime, there's a pond filled with boiling water that they have to Cross by the Rocks, an underground entrance to a cavern that is their way out that they all have the swim through, and the rickety bridge that couldn't hold a child's wage let alone a human adult weight. Each segment of disaster ends as if it's a 1940s serial, and while it's nail-biting at times, it's often silly.

The flashbacks are uninteresting and unintentionally silly, with Milland's daughter (Sheila Larken) feeling suffocated by him, and he is laughably bad, hasn't given mostly over the top, lousy performances since the late 50's. His character is a know-it-all who never shuts up, the type of person who do not want to be trapped within a cave-in. Well maybe not a cave where there's a canyon that goes down thousands of feet that someone ends up being tempted to push him in. Nielsen is at least spared the indignities I've been overly dramatic, laughable part, his issue being memories of watching his partner died which has created issues with his wife Julie Sommars. Yes attention of the that's if he's people are trapped and being held by a crazy man is intense, and for claustrophobic people, that's going to make it even worse. But Irwin Allen hadn't had a good disaster movie for the big screen or TV since "The Towering Inferno", and this indicates why he all of a sudden moved theatrical films to the small screen.