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The Towering Inferno
Drat man’s hubris!
1974
Review: May 9, 2006
Director: John Guillerman
Starring: Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlin, and many more!
Definitely an enhancement.
THE SETUP:
World’s tallest office building catches on fire with a bunch of important guests upstairs.
DISCUSSION:
For some reason or other me and my friend suddenly became really hot to see this on one of our movie nights. I had always caught parts of it on TV, but I don’t think I ever saw the whole thing, so we both set out to watch it.
The horror began even before the movie started when we realized that this movie was 2 hours and 45 minutes. Then the movie starts with a note saying that it is “gratefully dedicated” to the brave firefighters blah blah blah. I don’t know… are firefighters really honored by a shitty 70s disaster movie? Anyway, it would seem that Paul Newman is the architect of this 134-story tower in San Francisco [the issue of earthquake protection is not addressed] and he’s flying in for the dedication ceremony, then he’s going to go off and live a true and spiritual life in the wilderness. The beginning of the movie sets him up as this big nature man; “they say he wrestled grizzly bears in Montana.” Uh-huh. So he’s leaving for the wilds of wherever just as his girlfriend Faye Dunaway is offered the editorship of some newspaper or magazine where she thinks she “really can make a difference,” and so, you know, we have a conflict. A conflict that is pretty much thrown out the window and never addressed again, but a conflict nonetheless.
So anyway, this tower, which is supposed to be all space age, and which features an abundance of hideous 70s ‘cutting-edge’ interiors and wall prints, and a lobby that looks like it could be an extra set from Logan’s Run [which was actually filmed in a 70s mall]. For a while, almost every frame of this has at least one miraculously tacky element, but after awhile it all just overloads itself and you stop noticing. By the way, this director's next movie after this was the 1976 King Kong.
So the evil Richard Chamberlin has replaced the wiring specs Newman recommended with cheap wiring, because he was getting “kickbacks” [stinging, unbridled social criticism here], and so the building is susceptible to fire. This also kind of goes nowhere, though I was surprised that Newman kind of accepts responsibility to everyone rather than say “it wasn’t my fault.”
So anyway, surprisingly soon into the movie a spark lands on a giant pile of lighter-fluid-soaked rags that just happen to by gathered right below the fuse box. This leads to the expected scenes in which people try to warn the corrupt businessmen who own the building and get them to relocate the huge dedication party they’re having on the top floor, and the businessman doesn’t heed the warning, etc. So all these important guests arrive, including the mayor, and they all go to the top floor.
Along the way we’ve been introduced to lots of characters and their individual personal dramas, which gives this movie the overall structure of a Love Boat episode. They’re too boring to go into.
Anyway, eventually the fire is so bad that they have to move the party downstairs, which they act like they can just do at the drop of a hat, regardless of catering issues, the live band, etc. But it happens that only so many people can fit in the elevator, and sometimes that elevator goes directly to one of the floors with the fire. Then a man, charred alive, comes up and drops dead in the middle of the party and panic ensues. Just not enough panic.
This movie is episodic and keeps jumping from character to character, hoping to provide a sort of social patchwork of the brave and the cowardly, etc., that’ll all add up into some tapestry of humanity or some shit. The problem is that jumping around to all these characters draws out the length of the movie, and when one character says “it’s been 15 minutes,” and you realize that that period in movie watching has been 30 minutes, you know that everything here is sort of happening at half speed. Ugh. Then there are things like an excruciating sequence where Newman, a woman, and two kids must climb down a perilous twisted banister, and it seems like we see every inch of every one of their journeys in real time. Eventually you start hoping one of them would fall and be impaled.
But I failed to mention that someone [Maureen McGovern] showed up to sing this song “We may never love like this again.” Oh, and apparently a common problem in modern office buildings is blobs of dried cement spilled right behind doors. Another bizarre thing is that the fire starts on the 81st floor, and we’re shown the building from the outside with the fire coming out the windows. But as it grows, the fire seems to skip about 10 floors each time, as we have several shots of the fire coming out the side of that building, spaced about that far apart. You’ll also notice that the fire spreads downwards as well. As my friend who was with me turned to me and said: “Some drug addict thought this up!”
By this time one has also noticed that we are enduring a complete and utter lack of Faye Dunaway. Where’s the Faye? She has a few precious scenes at the beginning, then one big goodbye, and that’s about it. I guess I was just expecting and hoping for more. You do get a little Susan Blakely action thrown in, but it is hardly a substitute.
SPOILER > > >
At the end, the solution is to blow up the water tanks at the top of the building and it will all come cascading down and put out the fire, which is flat-out dumb. First of all, the collapsing ceiling above the survivors would crush them, but mostly the problem is that the water would just run off the sides of the first few floors it was on. Not to mention that there’s not enough water in those tanks [to add to the fact that we’ve been watching the firemen shoot water at this fire to absolutely no effect for the whole movie]. What’s good about it, however, is it does provide a big, visceral release to the end of the movie, like a big orgasm, so you feel moviegoing satisfaction at the end.
After that, there’s a short scene where Newman and Faye are cuddling at the bottom of the tower and fire chief McQueen comes by, and implies that the big problem with architects is that they don’t consult with fire chiefs like himself before they design a building. You see, the common man has something to say. Newman doesn’t mention that this building was not constructed to his specs, and no one comments on how McQueen really has aspirations of being an architect. But they’re going to work together from now on, and you know… people coming together in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding, that’s what I’m all about. Not.
< < < SPOILERS END
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you want. It’s amusing enough, though way, way too long.
