Review of The Towering Inferno (1974) by Kenneth B — 19 Feb 2014

It's part disaster, part thriller, made by Irwin Allen, who became known as the "Master of Disaster," due to his helming of films such as "Airport" and "The Poseidon Adventure." It's over two hours of characters trying to battle and escape a skyscraper that's going up in flames. I've always been afraid of fire, so that's one more reason why "The Towering Inferno" sticks out in my mind so much. But even aside from that, it's commonly looked at as one of the best disaster films ever made; it was made during the heyday of these types of films, and it still holds up much better than the silly Roland Emmerich films.

Okay, the movie is long, so I'll try to keep this review quick. Paul Newman plays Doug Roberts, an architect who heads over to the Glass Tower in San Francisco, which he designed for owner James Duncan (William Holden); at 138 stories, it is the world's tallest building. So that makes it all the more troublesome when, during a systems check, an electrical short starts a fire on the 81st floor that goes undetected. But Doug's still noticed flaws in the design and confronts the electrical engineer and Duncan's son-in-law Roger Simmons (Richard Chamberlain) about cutting corners and taking a kickback. Right away, we're introduced to what an obnoxious a-hole he is. He's snobby, selfish, pig-headed and oblivious to responsibility...I love this guy; I mean I hate him, but I absolutely love to hate him. No doubt that's what they were going for, and it's so satisfying to see Duncan just drill him in the stomach during the climax. I'd like to think audiences cheered at that point. But now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, there's a party going on that night to dedicate the building, with pretty much everyone in attendance: U.S. Senator Gary Parker (Robert Vaughn), Mayor Robert Ramsey (Jack Collins) and his wife, and nearly 300 others. But finally the security guards notice smoke coming from the storage room on the 81st floor, which burns engineer Will Giddings (Norman Burton) as he pushes one guard away from a burning door before it explodes. As the fire department is on their way, Doug tells Duncan to get people out of the promenade room on the 135th floor, but Duncan believes a fire fifty floors below them won't affect them and insists the party continue.

Finally, the firefighters arrive, led by Battalion Chief Michael O'Hallorhan (Steve McQueen), as the fire is growing at a fast pace. O'Hallorhan gets Duncan to start letting people get downstairs by the elevator; I feel like it's smarter to start with the stairs, but on the other hand, it is 135 floors to the ground. And here is when the movie becomes a race against time, as the people inside the tower are hurrying to escape the building as the fire rages out of control, with each new method of escape eventually being lost. This movie is an interesting look at how people react during a crisis: some panic, some lash out, but some are holding their emotions together in an attempt to keep everyone calm. Doug's girlfriend Susan (Faye Dunaway) remains nervously upbeat to bystanders, while Lisolette Mueller (Jennifer Jones) races down to the 87th floor to get a pair of children and their mother out, since the mother is deaf and can't hear the alarms. Slimy Roger starts drinking and refuses to take responsibility for the situation.

At the center of the story are Doug and Michael; I must mention the sort of rivalry that went on between Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. Both wanted top billing for the movie, and in the opening credits, they're arranged diagonally, so they both basically are top billed. When McQueen discovered that Newman had 12 more lines than him, it was changed so they both have the same number of lines. So when McQueen enters the movie, Newman doesn't have quite as much to do for a while; McQueen is rallying the firefighters, while eventually Newman finds his way up the Promenade Room while helping Lisolette and the kids get out of their room. Both somewhat resent each other on-screen, with Michael at one point saying, "There's no sure way for us to fight a fire in anything over the 7th floor. But you guys just keep building them as high as you can." Why is that, exactly?

How are the other characters? Well, one that stands out is Faye Dunaway; she's great in just about anything she's in (please note that I haven't seen "Mommie Dearest"). Robert Vaughn gets some strong scenes as the Senator; Fred Astaire, who was nominated for an Academy Award for this movie, plays Harlee Claiborne, a reluctant con man who charms Lisolette. I also like the scenes with Felton Perry as firefighter Scott; not too many, but he just stands out to me. And there's also...O.J. Simpson, who plays Head of Security Harry Jernigan. He's okay for what scenes he's in; he helps get a woman and a cat out of the building, and he motions for people to call the fire department. Not a whole lot I can say, but it's great to see this many big, talented people in a movie like this.

So "The Towering Inferno" is big in its story, scale, characters, special effects and music; what's wrong with it? Well, like I said, it's a long runtime; about as long as "The Dark Knight Rises." That's not necessarily bad, since there's usually so much stuff happening. But there are scenes that feel unnecessary and/or long, like with the stuff between Dan Bigelow (Robert Wagner) and his secretary Lorrie (Susan Flanner); they basically have the same roles as a teenage couple that go off and have sex in a slasher movie. Some of the ways in which people panic just didn't seem natural to me, like when a whole group rushes the elevator after Duncan tells them they can't use it and end up burning to death, or on the roof when the helicopter is about to land and two panicky women rush out and cause it to crash. Panicked behavior is probably common, but this bugged me a little bit. I also felt like fire was spreading in places that it didn't seem possible to spread to; how can it go to the floors that it did? Then there's the scene where Doug, Lisolette and the kids are heading up stairs to the Promenade Room, when they see a door that's been blocked by an overturned wheelbarrow of cement. Really? What moron tipped that thing over and then didn't tell anyone about it? There's also the ending, where they blow up water tanks over the Promenade Room to drown the fire. How exactly could it get everywhere to put out all of the flames? It seems to mostly travel down and not actually cover every bit of the floors. And wouldn't there still be a fire on the roof where the helicopter crashed?

Well, much of my gripes are nitpicking; I don't really think there are any flaws that distract from the film too much. It's a great disaster film, which don't come around too often. There have been films about fires and floods and volcanoes and asteroids and whatever else that have come out since then, and while I wouldn't call this my favorite disaster film of all-time, there's just something about this movie that feels so classy and well-crafted. It's basically my worst nightmare come to life: trapped by fire with nowhere to go. I dread the day that they remake this movie; they've already remade "The Poseidon Adventure," so I feel it's only a matter of time before this one suffers. No doubt the fire would be CGI, which would ruin practically any attempt at grand realism they would be going for.

But regardless, this is a great, sometimes thrilling movie from the '70s. The leads carry plenty of weight in their roles and are very convincing, the dialogue does have a lot of technical talk that may be hard to follow at times but is still relatively strong, and perhaps most important, there's plenty of tension, which you can't do without in a movie like this. I admit I would have liked to see more characters interact with each other, like Doug with Roger more than just that one scene early on, but for what it is, it's a splendid film.