The Towering Inferno (1974)

The only thing good about 1970’s tepid, boring disaster film, “Airport”, was that it was chock-full of great satirical material that eventually created one of the great movie comedies.     It also has the infamy of having started the disaster film genre that was so popular in the 70s. 1973’s, “The Towering Inferno”, was that genre’s “pièce de résistance”, with its gargantuan budget and all-star cast.   That does not make it a good movie.  In fact, it is not even my favorite disaster movie from this period (that dubious honor goes to “The Poseidon Adventure”).

The movie has a very simple premise to its plot.   Architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) and building developer James Duncan (William Holden), are preparing for the dedication of their newly built “Glass Tower”.   A 515-meter tall, 138 story skyscraper.   The villain in the movie is Duncan’s electrical engineer son-in-law Roger Simmons (Richard Chamberlain), who cut corners on electrical safety specifications required by Doug’s plans, to save money and receive kickbacks.   This resulted in a fire igniting on the 81st floor while a large celebratory dedication party is in full swing on the 135th floor.    The fire department arrives in the seemingly heroic and capable hands of Chief Michael O’Halloran (Steve McQueen).    The fire went out of control, trapping everyone above the 81st floor.     Many sub-characters played by other recognizable actors, burn or fall to their death, or, as in most cases, both.     Doug rescues a couple of cute kids who can’t act, and Chief O’Halloran risks his life a couple of times to save a few lives.   Am I the only one who thinks that the heroic Chief failed miserably in controlling the fire once he arrived?  I will not go into any more details of the plot, because they are not that important.   Of course, we have a villain in Simmons, whose fate is as clear as water from the beginning.   

The “Towering Inferno” boasts an A-list Hollywood cast, and the best special effects money could buy at the time.   In addition to Newman, McQueen, Holden, and Chamberlain, we are given Fay Dunaway as Duncan’s daughter, as well as Doug’s girlfriend, Fred Astaire as a conman trying to con a rich old lady, Robert Wagner as a public relations officer, whose only purpose in the movie is to be burned alive, OJ Simpson as the token black guy, playing a security officer and many more recognizable Hollywood faces.   It is completely impossible for any movie with that large of a cast to include any inkling of depth in its characters.   Even a movie that is 3 hours long.    So, all we get are basic introductions that allow us to witness said characters’ death or heroism.   

The movie was produced by the disaster film Tzar Irwin Allen and directed by the untalented John Guillermin. The result is an expensive looking TV movie that takes most of its premise from the plot of the 1932 classic, “Grand Hotel”. I guess they could have called the movie, “Grand Hotel on Fire”. At least in the 1932 film, the characters were allowed to expand into something that we could identify with. Here, their determination to either die or survive does not give them that opportunity. A great example of this is the character played by Wagner, who, because he is having an affair with his secretary, gets trapped with her in the inferno. There is absolutely no purpose for him or her except to maybe be a cautionary warning against sexual misconduct in the workplace. I wish that was what was on the producer’s minds. Instead, I just think they wanted to kill two attractive people in a horrible and what they felt was a cool way.

While watching the “Towering Inferno”, I could not help but gasp at the many scenes of people falling to their deaths, as these scenes are eerily like the real-life pictures displayed all over the world on 9/11.    If anything positive can be said about the movie, it is this prophetic warning about how dangerous it is to be living on the highest levels of giant skyscrapers.

  A perfect disaster movie needs to suck its viewer into a nightmarish situation, while caring about the people going through the horror, and include great tension and suspense before giving a satisfactory conclusion.  “The Towering Inferno” fails miserably in all those elements.