The Towering Inferno

The Towering Inferno (1974)

Runtime: 165 minutes

Directed by: John Guillermin for the drama scenes and Irwin Allen for the action scenes

Starring: Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Fred Astaire, Richard Chamberlain

From: 20th Century Fox/Warner Brothers

While I've seen this movie more than once before, last night was the first time I saw it on Blu-Ray, where it looks and sounds nice. This is one of those disaster movies from Irwin Allen, who was involved with several movies in that sub-genre in the 70's and the early 80's. It relates to something I'd like to see soon, which is why I decided to watch it when I did. The rest of the review is basically what I wrote about it on Letterboxd, but expanded upon a bit.

To steal the plot description from the IMDb:

“Doug Roberts, Architect, returns from a long vacation to find work nearly completed on his skyscraper. He goes to the party that night concerned he's found that his wiring specifications have not been followed and that the building continues to develop short circuits. When the fire begins, Michael O'Halleran is the chief on duty as a series of daring rescues punctuate the terror of a building too tall to have a fire successfully fought from the ground.”

While at times I did feel its length, otherwise I was able to watch this 165 minute movie in one sitting with little problems. The initial fire that starts everything off happens soon after the movie starts and things are paced pretty well in that you get to meet all the important characters and spend enough time with them to where you care about them and their fate.

A lot of calamities happen (cutting corners while constructing the tallest building of all time... a pretty stupid and yet unfortunately not hard to believe move) and it's fun to watch how they deal with all that goes wrong, and how the brave fire department changes plans when something new pops up. There are memorable setpieces, for sure.

It was nice to see a large cast of memorable actors in action (besides the names listed there was Robert Vaughn, Jennifer Jones, Faye Dunaway, Robert Wagner and in a small role Dabney Coleman; I don't put O.J. Simpson into this category, by the way) doing their thing, even if there were rumors of on-set drama at times. The two biggest stars (who caused some drama themselves, mainly on McQueen's end... they staggered the credits for when their names appeared so that one name wasn't deemed as "being set higher" than the other... talk about petty and ridiculous) had some big heroic moments.

The visual and special effects still look nice and realistic today; who needs CGI to make an effective film with a lot of spectacle and ballyhoo?

This was a big production with two major studios, two major books being put into one story (that is why the two studios came together... they each had rights to a book and the two were very similar so Irwin Allen used his power to make the studios work together) and two big stars who didn't really get along. Yet, everything came together to produce a memorable disaster picture that is still effective and fun 40 years later.

I shall return tomorrow night.