Things Learned From 'When Time Ran Out'

1) Although Webster nearly falls into an erupting and now-active volcano, he and his staff continue stay up there.

2) Scared tourists think they can fly helicopters. (Of course, no one thinks that Newman's character can simply fly people to a safer part of the island as they wait for the rescue ship.)

3) Riding on the sides of helicopters is dangerous.

4) James Franciscus' character graduated from Monty Python's "Argument Clinic."

5) When seeing runaway helicopters, falling tourists, exploding molten rocks (shot from the volcano), and characters catching fire, most of the main cast and extras just stand there and try to act horrified and shocked.

6) Although the tourists see the volcano shell the hotel with fiery, molten rocks that explode on impact, they decide to stay there.

7) An active volcano will select the night as the best time to destroy a hotel with a large, fiery projectile, so the survivors can see it from a great distance.

8) Before trying to escape a tidal wave, chase after your champion rooster.

9) William Holden's character knows a lot about volcanic eruptions.

10) Pissed that Irwin Allen forced them (via contractual obligations) to make another disaster film when the genre's popularity had passed, the main cast decided to sabotage an already-bad film that features cardboard characters, illogical plots by with bad and lackluster acting performances.

11) If any of the tourists saw "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972), they tended to identify with the passengers who decided to stay behind with the purser and then drown.

12) Although they're on an island, there isn't a single boat to be found and thus ferry people to safer distance away from the lava. (If you look at the scene when the volcano first shells the hotel, you can see at least one sailboat in a brief, wide shot.)

13) Asian, Hispanic, and Pacific Islander (?) characters have a 100 percent mortality rate in this film. (Edward Albert's character is excluded because he is racially mixed.)

14) Faulty Bridge Over Flowing Lava Rule: well-known adult actors survive. Lesser-known adult actors die.

15) A truck can outrun a tidal wave.

16) The screenwriter took the dumb and illogical parts of "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno" and combined them to make "When Time Ran Out."

17) When referring to years, William Holden's character refers to them in the "hundreds." (He says 1902 as "Nineteen-hundred-and-two" rather than the more common Nineteen-oh-two.)

18) The wronged wife and the mistress die at the same hotel.

19) James Franciscus' character thinks bedrock is good insulation from flowing lava.

20) Drill for oil near an active volcano at your own risk.

21) Cataclysmic explosions are always animated.

22) In Irwin Allen's disaster films, the equivalent of villains always die in order to ensure that if they survive, they are not sued afterward by any survivors or victims' families.