CONDOMINIUM (1980)

THE FILM (Mini Series)

FILM DIRECTOR: Sidney Hayers

SCREENWRITER: Steve Hayes

FILM STARS: Barbara Eden, Dan Haggerty, Steve Forrest, Ralph Bellamy, Stuart Whitman, Richard Anderson, Larry Bishop, Macdonald Carey, Dane Clark, Linda Cristal, Don Galloway, Arte Johnson, Jack Jones, Dorothy Malone, Nehemiah Persoff,

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: John D. MacDonald

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Fawcett Crest

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1980

COUNTRY: USA

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1977

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Disaster, Drama

WORDS: The mini series I watched with my mother when it came out. It was, as most mini-series were then, an “event”. It had a large ensemble cast made up of Hollywood former stars and TV stars … Barbara Eden (stunning as always) was one reason I watched it as a kid and also, for altogether different reasons, for the much underrated Stuart Whitman and Dan Haggerty (every kid loved Grizzly Adams). It may have been 70s TV (it was filmed in 1979) with cheesy clothes and funky faux disco music but it was riveting … or at least that’s how I recollect it. I haven’t seen it since.

Generally hard to find, I turned to the book. This was an easy ask as John D Macdonald I love. He has taken himself out of his usual crime setting but there is a enough mystery, money, local corruption  and Sunshine State (Florida not Queensland though it could be set in the latter) developer shenanigans going on yo recall any number of his Travis McGee private eye novels. Perhaps Macdonald wrote this to cash in on the disaster films of the 70s (Earthquake, Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure, and the later When Time Ran Out and Meteor) which predate the film but not the novel but it doesn’t matter. This is superior corn. MacDonald’s novel is long with many characters (most given a “life”) and the mini-series, by length alone (3 hours), gives enough to each character to do justice to the novel.  It’s a page turner of a book … now I just have to watch the mini-series again.

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