In the world of disaster movies, where meteorites fall, cities crumble and luxury ocean liners roll over easier than a puppy wanting its belly scratched, one movie has the reputation to tower over them all. The reason for this, obviously, is because it concerns an actual tower some 138 storeys tall and with The Towering Inferno, Irwin Allan, the master of distaster behind The Poseidon Adventure and The Swarm, arguably perfected the disaster into it’s most epic form.
Mixing in the type brand of star power these things tpically attract with audacious stunts and an utter disregard to the survival rate of anyone who isn’t the star, The Towering Inferno had become standard holiday viewing for anyone young enough to remember planting themselves in front of the television during the 80s. But in a world of CGI, IMAX and other such bells and whistles, can a stoic epic from 1974 still burn as brightly as it once did?
It’s the grand opening of The Glass Tower, a colossal building that stands 1688 feet tall amid the San Francisco skyline, and chief architect, Doug Roberts, has reluctantly returned from a vacation in the country to be there for the auspicious occasion. Waiting for him is James Duncan, the project’s developer and his fiancée, Susan Franklin – who both give him very different greetings – but as prep for the big night get underway, Doug discovers something rather alarming. It seems that Duncan’s son in law has been cutting corners when it comes to the building’s wiring which could overload a cause a potential fire risk at any moment, but in true 70s style, the higher ups dismiss this as mere panic mongering.
However, unbeknownst to everyone, a fire has already started and is burning away in a small utility room on the 81st floor and once the celebrations are fully underway on the Promenade Room on the 135th, it decides to make its presence known with horrible timing. Things start off slow as the flames work their way out of the utility room and start to spread, but after the majority of people are evacuated and the San Francisco fire department is called, things rapidly get out of control as the fire consumes everything around it with the ferocity of Augustus Gloop in a branch of Thorntons.
Luckily, hard nosed SFFD Chief Michael O’Halloran who arrives and starts taking charge of the situation and between him and Doug, there seems to be a chance that they might actually get on top of this Inferno before it towers any higher.
On the other hand, this isn’t just a 70s disaster movie – it’s the 70s disaster movie and anything that can go wrong, will go wrong – especially with 300 members of San Francisco’s hoi palloi trapped 515 meters in the air…
When it comes to choosing the best 70s disaster movie, you only really have two choices: The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure (anyone who piped up with Beyond The Poseidon Adventure should go directly to the back of the cue), but while the misadventure of the SS Poseidon is the far more tragic and dramatic of the two – Shelly Winter’s heart attack is as cruel as the genre’s ever been – The Towering Inferno turns out to be the far more dynamic entry. Sure, we don’t have a finale where Gene Hackman’s turtle-necked priest rages at God while dangling from a pressure valve, but in its place we have the double act of Paul Newman and Steve McQueen as they coolly cast their piercing blue eyes over the situation and get into all sorts of daring do. Putting aside the notorious solution to which one of them technically gets top billing (on the poster, one name is on the left and one is higher), watching these two screen legends unite and exchange stoic lines while double-teaming a gargantuan blaze is a legitimate kick.
Of course, there are plenty of other familiar faces dotted around, trying to avoid a char broiled end and the remainder of the cast includes a regretful William Holden, an underused Faye Dunaway, a slightly out of place looking Fred Astaire, a typically smug Robert Wagner, and even smugger Robert Vaughn and a vaguely reptilian looking Richard Chamberlain on dickhead duties as the magnificently shifty son in law who causes this whole mess in the first place. The group go through the usual motions of the supporting cast of a disaster movie as they generate either internal conflict or enact noble sacrifices in order to keep the plot dynamics moving while either McQueen or Newman are otherwise disposed.
Of course, for a film this massive, you need to give folks what they paid for – it was technically adapted from two different source novels, co-financed by two different studios and Allen himself even pitched in to direct the “action” scenes while John Gillermin handled the bulk – and this meant providing a spectacle the like of which audiences had never seen before and its here where The Towering Inferno starts to edge out irs competition.
While The Poseidon Adventure is mostly cramped and claustrophobic, locking its protagonists within dank, upside down confines, Inferno instead has the whole San Francisco skyline as its backdrop and blazing fireballs are more visually more spectacular than rising water any day of the week. On top of that, the movie is surprisingly vicious when it comes to dispatching the more unlucky members of the cast. With a spoiler warning in full effect, the deaths in Poseidon are admitting sadder, but watching Wagner and the secretary he’s been bedding in secret endure truly horrific fates as they find themselves trapped with no way out are legitimately disturbing. Likewise, when the resolve cracks in the spineless Chamberlain and he decides to try and jump the cue for the absurdly rickety chair the firefighters are winching between buildings, the panicked crowd manages to take a hapless Vaughn with them just in time for the cable to snap sending all involved on an express trip to the sidewalk.
Awesomely cold celebrity deaths aside, if The Towering Inferno has a flaw (aside from that faulty wiring, that is) it’s that in an effort to be the biggest and baddest blockbuster on the block, it’s become incredibly bloated in order to give the movie the grandeur it’s so desperately aiming for. With the movie clocking in at a hefty 165 minutes (McQueen doesn’t show up for the first forty) while still craming in all the nail biting moments it can, it’s admittedly a lot, but when you have this much spectacle to show off and the fire scenes being so ferocious (arguably unbeaten until Ron Howard’s Backdraft), you can forgive the filmmakers a bit of bloat.
Equal parts cheesy and sadistic – surely the perfect recipe for any aspiring disaster flick – The Towering Inferno has blazed a definitive trail in disaster history.
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