THE CASSANDRA CROSSING **

You can say what you like about Carlo Ponti and Lew Grade as producers but they certainly knew how to assemble a cast. The main pleasure of watching "The Cassandra Crossing" is seeing the all-star cast get theirs, or not as the case may be, on the Trans-Europe Express on its way from Geneva to Stockholm. You see, as well as a host of famous faces this train is also carry the plague and it's up to Burt Lancaster and Ingrid Thulin back in Geneva to decide what to do with it. As disaster movies go this one lacked the big-budget thrills of an "Earthquake" or a "Towering Inferno", (most of the money must have gone on the cast), but director George Pan Cosmatos handles the suspense admirably enough and the movie certainly didn't deserve the critical hammering it got when it first appeared. (Again, the magazine "Films and Filming" was one of the few to leap to its defence and even awarded Martin Sheen a Best Supporting Actor prize though, surprisingly, it is Ava Gardner as an old broad with a toy-boy in store, Sheen, who gives the film's best performance). It's certainly no classic and the script and most of the performances stink but as action flics go this one has a lot to recommend it.