The Towering Inferno (1974)

Steve McQueen and Paul Newman are in a movie together, and it's not a racecar movie? Well, in the 1970s, it was a big fad to make big-budget disaster movies with a large cast. The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and the Airport movies make up a classic niche genre, in which The Towering Inferno garners a top spot.This one deals with a burning building, a skyscraper to be exact. Hence, the "towering" inferno. Countless characters are introduced to the audience, given reasons to become attached, and then placed in dire peril. Who will make it out alive? This film's all-star cast includes Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Fred Astaire, Richard Chamberlain, Jennifer Jones, Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Susan Blakely, O.J. Simpson, Robert Vaughn, and Robert Wagner. Fred Astaire received his only Oscar nomination for this movie, which is the only reason why I watched it. I tend to scare easily, so disaster movies aren't my genre of choice. If you like them, this one is really good. Lots of tension, great special effects (for 1974), heart wrenching drama, and excitement up until the very end!

At this point in time Hollywood would come up with an idea and then beat it to death. The Towering Inferno is the story of a fire in a skyscraper and all the implications of it. We have the obligatory ensemble cast. We have good guys and bad guys. If we use "Airport" as a benchmark, there is the person who, despite warnings to the contrary, does things that endanger everyone. There is the old couple who must stay together because they have always loved each other. There is the heroic fellow who was a coward before. There is the guy everyone respected who now is a coward. There is the suspense element with the rescue forces doing their best but realizing they had never anticipated this. The biggest positive is that it keeps one on the edge of his/her seat. It is non-stop action and really long.

This is by far my favourite disaster movie of all time, a film that transcends its somewhat cheesy genre origins to become one of the greatest movies ever made – full stop! It helps that it was the first film I ever saw, at the age of four, and even re-watching it today I can remember many of the classic moments. I was so young back then that I couldn't even pronounce the title – I used to call it 'The Fire in the Flats'! Although it's a lengthy movie, the running time is justified, because there's never a second wasted. The skyscraper setting is perfectly utilised, transforming from a posh, technologically advanced masterpiece of design into a raging death trap spelling destruction for many of those trapped inside. I get shivers just thinking about it. Director John Guillerman does a splendid job of building suspense and terror in equal measure and the result is a taut masterpiece. The script is also unusually good, a combination of two popular 'burning skyscraper' novels in one satisfying whole.What else is there to say? Great choreography – the fire itself is almost a living creation, more terrifying than many a movie monster. The action scenes are hair-raising, especially the bit on the broken stairwell. John Williams' score is music at its melodramatic best. And the cast – what a cast! McQueen and Newman butting heads and Newman coming off tops as the heroic architect (although that's not to deny McQueen's presence as the fire chief); Faye Dunaway and Jennifer Jones lending Hollywood glamour; Fred Astaire as a lovely old man; Richard Chamberlain as one of film's most loathsome villains; plus minor roles from familiar faces like Robert Vaughn, O.J. Simpson, and Robert Wagner. Add in effects that still stand the test of time even today and you have one fantastic movie.

It has been heavy discussed over the years about the "peak" status of this movie, being the most successful production in the era of pretty silly and - in average - overambitious disaster movies between 1970-1980. The trends who invited the greatest movie companies to show us terrible ways to die, fascinates me in present days. The view of the world must have been gloomy and gray, people still wanted to be shown moderate special effects of avalanches (salt) and skyscrapers fully set on fire. (Scale models.) Some of the characters always made it to the end of the tunnel for daylight, some were brutally roasted, the "heroes" who often sacrificed themselves for the crew.The Towering Inferno of 1974 is the one disaster i can re-visit from time to time. Mostly because of the very good casting, and the non-stop action after the entering of the flames. Steve McQueen was in first to act as the architect, but changed his mind. Thank You. Anyone imagine if Newman and McQueen would have been playing the other ones part? OK, If so, we could have discuss it either other way, today, because we wouldn't know anything else. The rest of the stars in this "epic panic" are just statistics for me; Newman grabs the steering wheel from the beginning, but almost has to move over to be co-driver, when fire chief McQueen enters the screen, jumping out of his car beside the "chimney". Equal lines, equal top billing....yes you heard it all before. The great rivals of the 70's (especially McQueen) was apparently sick of ego, and didn't allow the other part to have an inch of attention, or a second more of limelight than the opponent. Today this movie is only remembered by many as a cult flick of the (first) disaster era; some will rank it the as the best, the most successful. Patterns are all there: the love stories, the struggling family relations, the other template people you get to know briefly before the tragic sets in. The bad ones who gets theirs.I still like this one pretty lot, and will pick it up again, maybe this x-mas?