One of the things that made Unstoppable (now on DVD from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment) so completely fun to watch was how much it called to mind all those other great disaster movies over the years involving planes, trains and automobiles (to name just a few methods of travel) turning into killing machines. So once you've watched this entertaining movie and scoured its many Blu-Ray extras, check out some of our other favorite man-vs.-machine epics:
The Airport series
Oh, the 1970s -- a decade where America's collective fears about politics, the environment, the economy, and the generation gap could be funneled into disaster movies. And none inspired more copies than Airport and its ever-more-bonkers sequels: the oft-parodied Airport 1975 had stewardess Karen Black attempting to simultaneously land the crippled plane while uncrossing her eyes, Airport '77 features an airliner getting sucked into the Bermuda Triangle, and The Concorde... Airport '79 posited the notion that an SST flying at the speed of sound could still have a pilot open the side window and shoot a handgun at a nearby Russian jet. They really don't make them like this anymore -- if they did, a stewardess would have landed the aircraft in Snakes on a Plane.
The Poseidon Adventure: The other great 1970s travel-will-kill-you movie is this epic about an ocean liner that turns upside down and the plucky handful of survivors trying to make it to the bottom of the boat. This is one of those rare movies where I agree 100 percent with both its most slavering fans and its snickering detractors. And let's just say I know way too many people who saw this movie as children and who have spent the rest of their lives figuring out how they would survive an upside-down ocean vessel.
Speed: Years before Airplane! basically killed off the disaster genre via outlandish parody, a movie called The Big Bus attempted to do the same thing, packing in the usual drama and heroism into a much more mundane mode of transportation. So kudos to Speed for taking buses seriously and turning this potentially hackneyed premise into one of the great action flicks of the '90s.
The Car: What do you get when you cross The Exorcist and Smokey and the Bandit? A "horror" movie about a demonically-possessed automobie (with a really scary horn) that terrorizes a small town. No, really. THIS HAPPENED!
Share your favorite vehicle-of-doom movie in the comments.