Review of Terror on the 40th Floor

TERROR ON THE 40TH FLOOR is the budget television movie version of THE TOWERING INFERNO, made on a fraction of that classic disaster flick's budget and without anything approaching the style or finesse. However, it's not quite as bad as I expected it to be, once you get over the various shortcomings. These include an overreliance on flashbacks to reveal the back stories of the main characters, a technique which quickly becomes tiresome when you want the story to focus on the main action. As usual, a small group of characters (including familiar television faces like John Forsythe and Joseph Campanella) are trapped when a fire breaks out below and gradually rises. The firefighting scenes have an appropriate fierceness to them, and once the characters realise their plight there are some good set-pieces, like the attempted escape in the elevator shaft.