Sorry, this movie sucks

Sadly Over-hyped

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Irwin Allen, master of bad sf on TV, hits the bullseye here. A great movie, made from not one, but two books, it features a stellar cast and superb sfx that still stand up today. Most amazing - no one was hurt during the fire scenes. This comes from the 70's era of disaster movies which today's can't hold up against.

"The Towering Inferno" is one of the better disaster movies of the 1970s. It is well documented that Paul Newman and Steve McQueen were involved in a dispute over who should receive top billing for the film. Despite the way the billing looks in the opening credits, it is Paul Newman who truly dominates in terms of the amount of screen time. It takes a while for Steve McQueen to make his inital appearance and even after that, he isn't in "The Towering Inferno" very much. His being paid $14,000,000 no doubt compensated. The cast is a good one: Robert Vaughn, Fred Astaire, Richard Chamberlain, William Holden, Robert Wagner, Don Gordon, Faye Dunaway amongst others. There are moments of genuine suspense, it is true. In those days of filmmaking, scenes involving fires were all too real. You didn't have any of that shallow CGI nonsense. The main problems with this film, are that the running time is too long by about half an hour and the script is just routine for a film of this kind. "The Towering Inferno" is worth seeing but it could have been better.

Irwin Allen's 1970s disaster films followed a familiar and successful formula. First, characters and situations are introduced, with everything fine and everyone happy; second, a really bad disaster happens (ship capsizing, volcano erupting, fire in a high rise, a killer bee swarm); third, a plucky band of survivors tries to escape their predicament but usually lose several of their members to fairly gruesome deaths. "The Towering Inferno" naturally told a story about a fire in the world's tallest building. Have you ever noticed that these things never happen in two-story office buildings?The plot is, well, people stuck in a building as firefighters try to free them. There are lots of ways for people to die, including falling from great heights, being burned to death, being crushed by falling objects, dying in explosions, helicopters crashing, falling out of exterior elevators, and many others. The film has a sappy (but not happy) ending when the fire's finally out.The cast is superb, including Paul Newman as a heroic architect; Steve McQueen as a dedicated and brave fire department battalion chief; Richard Chamberlain as a slimy contractor who cuts corners on the building's electrical and fire systems; William Holden as the building's greedy developer; Susan Blakely as Holden's comely daughter; Faye Dunaway as Newman's girlfriend; Robert Vaughn as a senator; Fred Astaire as a con man; Jennifer Jones as a lonely widow; O.J. Simpson as the building's security officer; Dabney Coleman (unexpectedly) in a straight fire department role; Don Gordon as a fireman; Robert Wagner as the building's PIO, and many other familiar faces. Everyone looks pretty young now, 43 years later.The film is notable for Steve McQueen's fine performance before avoiding acting for several years. He passed away in 1980, only six years after the film was released. Newman and Holden's performances are one-dimensional but okay, and Richard Chamberlain is great as the film's despicable villain. Say what you like, but the movie's entertaining and it made lots of money. It's no great work of cinematic art, but who cares?

It has been heavy discussed over the years about the "peak" status of this movie, being the most successful production in the era of pretty silly and - in average - overambitious disaster movies between 1970-1980. The trends who invited the greatest movie companies to show us terrible ways to die, fascinates me in present days. The view of the world must have been gloomy and gray, people still wanted to be shown moderate special effects of avalanches (salt) and skyscrapers fully set on fire. (Scale models.) Some of the characters always made it to the end of the tunnel for daylight, some were brutally roasted, the "heroes" who often sacrificed themselves for the crew.The Towering Inferno of 1974 is the one disaster i can re-visit from time to time. Mostly because of the very good casting, and the non-stop action after the entering of the flames. Steve McQueen was in first to act as the architect, but changed his mind. Thank You. Anyone imagine if Newman and McQueen would have been playing the other ones part? OK, If so, we could have discuss it either other way, today, because we wouldn't know anything else. The rest of the stars in this "epic panic" are just statistics for me; Newman grabs the steering wheel from the beginning, but almost has to move over to be co-driver, when fire chief McQueen enters the screen, jumping out of his car beside the "chimney". Equal lines, equal top billing....yes you heard it all before. The great rivals of the 70's (especially McQueen) was apparently sick of ego, and didn't allow the other part to have an inch of attention, or a second more of limelight than the opponent. Today this movie is only remembered by many as a cult flick of the (first) disaster era; some will rank it the as the best, the most successful. Patterns are all there: the love stories, the struggling family relations, the other template people you get to know briefly before the tragic sets in. The bad ones who gets theirs.I still like this one pretty lot, and will pick it up again, maybe this x-mas?