When this production was about to be released late in 1974, there was plenty of hype about it; a TV short about the dangerous conditions of its making, articles in the trades about the unique deal struck up by two major studios to co-produce it (common now; then unheard of), yet when I saw it, the very day it premiered in my city, it did not disappoint. This is the Gone with the Wind of disaster pictures. Even at the time, I felt there were things wrong with The Posiedon Adventure and Earthquake; the former had its biggest scene at the beginning and the annoying, trashy cop-hooker couple, the latter had a stupid collection of subplots which you could tell some the actors themselves were bored with.
Not the Towering Inferno. The style and the tremendous scale of this film still inspire awe in me. The spacious interiors of the offices and penthouse have been criticized as cheesy; they weren't on the big screen then and sure, they were 60s-looking but that just cued me to the old Hollywood 'Scope vibe. For genuinely cheesy art direction, please report to Earthquake.
Most important, the primeval human fear of being burned alive is at the heart of the plot. Even now, when I read about this happening to someone it makes me shiver. Oddly, this obvious fact hasn't been often commented upon by many commentators, yet it is what gives the movie its nightmarish kick.
SPOILERS: Besides having the largest cast of major stars ever in one epic motion picture (something never duplicated to this day), it has so many scenes that stay in the memory, like Paul Newman, knocked unconscious by an explosion in a staircase zillions of stories up, sliding down the tangled wreckage to certain doom until he recovers just in time.
The pyrotechnics reach their apex at the end, and that's breathtaking. But to many, the most memorable sequence occurs between Robert Wagner and his secretary Susan Flannery, trapped in an inner office after a tryst. Here far deeper emotions are plumbed. Trysts in offices are not unknown to us, but to end up being killed as an indirect result of it, geez Later, after Wagner has gone out into the inferno in a futile effort to get help, Flannery, who has seen what immediately happens to him, slams the office door and desperately tries to avoid the roaring flames for a few more minutes. We are made to identify with her and her reactions. Like we might be, Flannery is very frightened but still seems able (barely) to keep her head. However, we can sense she knows that like her lover she's going to die very soon. Which she does, in a graphic, terrible manner.
The horror of this scene is hard to shake off. The nature of this entire episode may be lurid, but the way it is handled lifts it to another plane.
This gets a 10/10. I almost lowered it to 9/10 due to some minor technical and logical flaws noted by other commentators. But I realized it didn't matter.
Not the Towering Inferno. The style and the tremendous scale of this film still inspire awe in me. The spacious interiors of the offices and penthouse have been criticized as cheesy; they weren't on the big screen then and sure, they were 60s-looking but that just cued me to the old Hollywood 'Scope vibe. For genuinely cheesy art direction, please report to Earthquake.
Most important, the primeval human fear of being burned alive is at the heart of the plot. Even now, when I read about this happening to someone it makes me shiver. Oddly, this obvious fact hasn't been often commented upon by many commentators, yet it is what gives the movie its nightmarish kick.
SPOILERS: Besides having the largest cast of major stars ever in one epic motion picture (something never duplicated to this day), it has so many scenes that stay in the memory, like Paul Newman, knocked unconscious by an explosion in a staircase zillions of stories up, sliding down the tangled wreckage to certain doom until he recovers just in time.
The pyrotechnics reach their apex at the end, and that's breathtaking. But to many, the most memorable sequence occurs between Robert Wagner and his secretary Susan Flannery, trapped in an inner office after a tryst. Here far deeper emotions are plumbed. Trysts in offices are not unknown to us, but to end up being killed as an indirect result of it, geez Later, after Wagner has gone out into the inferno in a futile effort to get help, Flannery, who has seen what immediately happens to him, slams the office door and desperately tries to avoid the roaring flames for a few more minutes. We are made to identify with her and her reactions. Like we might be, Flannery is very frightened but still seems able (barely) to keep her head. However, we can sense she knows that like her lover she's going to die very soon. Which she does, in a graphic, terrible manner.
The horror of this scene is hard to shake off. The nature of this entire episode may be lurid, but the way it is handled lifts it to another plane.
This gets a 10/10. I almost lowered it to 9/10 due to some minor technical and logical flaws noted by other commentators. But I realized it didn't matter.