Nonureva
Really Surprised!
Dorathen
Better Late Then Never
Chirphymium
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
Eric Stevenson
Seeing this movie reminded me of how funny "Airplane!" is. I know that that movie was more about airplane disaster films, but you could compare it to any disaster film made at the time. We seemed to get tons of disaster movies by the 1990's. The best one was "Titanic" and even that hasn't aged that well. I'm quite impressed at how they get into the fire right away. I just wanted to see how they managed to fill the long running time.I had no idea O. J. Simpson was in so many movies. At least everyone on the Metoo hashtag hasn't been accused of being a murderer. We really do get some really great special effects that hold up. Admittedly, it is too long but given the reputation these films have now, it's very impressive. You could never make this movie nowadays. Well, at least not right after 911. ***
George Taylor
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.
alexanderdavies-99382
"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.
writers_reign
For a while back in the seventies 'disaster' movies were flavour of the month and this was as good as any and better than some. Irving Allan assembled a host of A-list actors and (literally) lit a fire under them then stood around to see what happened. Allan directed the action scenes himself leaving John Guillerman to deal with any acting and the result in 165 minutes of watchable without being memorable footage. For reasons that elude me Steve McQueen as the fire chief attracted a lot of favourable ink in the reviews I read but then it takes all kinds and yer pays yer money ... Personally I thought Newman and Holden had the lion's share of acting honours and it's always a joy to see Fred Astaire in anything.
