Irwin Allen

A one-time journalism student from New York, Irwin Allen went on to carve out a unique niche for himself in Hollywood as a maker of big-budget exploitation movies, which often made use of middle-level character stars and major actors in their declining years in vital supporting roles. After breaking into features with serious nature films such as The Sea Around Us and The Animal World, Allen turned to exploitation movies. Most of these were either relatively low budget titles that capitalized on bigger, better mega-hits (his Big Circus followed in the wake of DeMille's The Greatest Show On Earth, and Allen capitalized on both Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Mike Todd's Around The World In Eighty Days with Five Weeks In a Balloon and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea respectively). Allen spent most of the 1960's producing a quartet of science-fiction television series (Lost In Space, Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea, Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants) and some lesser, failed pilots that primarily appealed to children, but in the 1970's re-emerged as the most prominent and flamboyant maker of disaster movies, including The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, and The Swarm, all made on huge budgets and featuring all-star casts.

~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide