The Towering Inferno (1974)

The Towering Inferno

Call No: TEMP 1615

Disaster movies have been around as long as there have been people to watch them. In the early seventies, there was a market for big death-defying blockbusters like Airport and The Poseidon Adventure. One of these was The Towering Inferno, one of the first films ever to be produced as a joint effort by two major studios. The story is based on two separate novels: “The Tower”, which was bought by Warner Brothers, and “The Glass Inferno”, which was bought by Twentieth Century Fox. The two studios decided to work together and combine the two novels. This film was the result.

Nominated for eight academy awards, The Towering Inferno is about a ravaging fire that rips through the tallest building in the world, trapping over three hundred guests on its top floor. Architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) discovers during the unveiling of his masterpiece, the tallest tower in the world made of glass, that all of the wiring in the building is potentially faulty. When a fire breaks out on one of the upper floors and begins to spread, it is going to take Doug, fire chief Michael O’Halleran (Steve McQueen) and all of the help they can get to stop what will soon become the most dangerous fire ever seen.

The film boasts a true all-star cast. What makes this film different from other devastation blockbusters like The Day After Tomorrow or Twister are the number of intertwining stories involved in the film. This isn’t to say that the film drags or gets bogged down in the personal lives of the people involved. The film is set up to give you an idea of the people involved. You understand their lives and become sympathetic towards them. Their losses feel like your losses. This isn’t true of all of the characters though. Some of the characters are designed to be disliked, but the film gives you the freedom to decide this for yourself. (As an added and very entertaining bonus, one of the characters is played by O.J. Simpson, pre-trial and not as terrible as one might expect).

Paul Newman as Doug Roberts

The only thing that some viewers might have a problem with is the length of the film. At 165 minutes, this isn’t a casual Friday afternoon movie. It’s not an incredibly long movie, but it’s not a quick view. A large part of the beginning of the movie is used to set up the stories and help familiarize ourselves with the characters. Once the stories have been established, everything moves quickly from there, with only the occasional pause and dramatic scene.

If you like action movies and films that feature plenty of destruction, you might want to give this a look. The storyline isn’t as tight as some of the more recent disaster films, but what it doesn’t offer in story it makes up for in fire. Lots and lots of fire.