Review: The Towering Inferno – 50th Anniversary

‘One tiny spark becomes a night of blazing suspense’, boasts the tagline of the 1974 disaster movie, The Towering Inferno. A film so big and so EPIC (!!!) it features a cast of famous faces, runs a whopping 165-minutes in length, and is based on not one, but two books!

Richard Martin Stern’s The Tower AND Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson’s The Glass Inferno provide the inspiration for this milestone picture, which tells the story of a group of partygoers who become trapped inside a flaming skyscraper. The fire starts on the 81st floor of the world’s tallest building, is unable to be extinguished, and leads to the aforementioned ‘night of blazing suspense’.

In the movie, a landmark structure named The Glass Tower is having its grand unveiling in San Francisco. The Glass Tower is a mixed-use building, which houses a combination of business and residential spaces, and is a lavish affair for the city.

Yet despite the money that has been pumped into the property, corners have been cut during construction and the all-important safety measures have not been implemented. This would be a dangerous situation at the best of times, but it’s even worse when the building is operational and 300 guests have been invited to attend a grand opening party.

These guests are of course unaware of the building’s shortcomings, and they are also unaware of a small fire which has broken out downstairs. However, they soon learn of the danger that surrounds them when the fire gets out of control, and they find themselves in a fight for survival.

Directed by John Guillermin and produced by Irwin Allen, The Towering Inferno stars Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, Jennifer Jones, O.J. Simpson, Robert Vaughn, and Robert Wagner. The Towering Inferno is arguably the most famous disaster movie outside of 1997’s Titanic, and this year the film celebrates its 50th anniversary.

That’s 50 years of action, spectacle, thrills, spills, and nail-biting drama. It’s also 50 years of heroism, corruption, and death from a cast of characters who tick all the right boxes required for a film of this nature.

You want plucky heroes? You’ve got ‘em in the form of Paul Newman and Steve McQueen who share top billing playing a selfless architect and a brave fire chief, respectively. 

You need a villain to blame for the fire? Sure, how about Richard Chamberlain as a dodgy electrical engineer?

What about a bunch of trapped residents with terrible fates? Well, you can have them too in the shape of Robert Wagner and Susan Flannery who play lovers that get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In fact, The Towering Inferno is filled with characters who serve the purpose of keeping audiences emotionally invested and thoroughly engaged throughout. These characters are moved around the screen as the building slowly transforms into a hellscape, and they do exactly what they need to do to keep things interesting.

But it’s not just the characters who make The Towering Inferno work – the impressive practical effects are fab too. Various stunts and pyrotechnics are thrown into the mix to get the pulse racing and all of this is intrinsic in showcasing the perilous situation.

The flames used on screen are real – there’s no computer-generated hoopla here. So when characters are surrounded by fire, or smoke engulfs a room, there is a serious threat to life.

And because the danger is real, the film becomes believable. The Towering Inferno may have been produced with the aid of a stunt team and plenty of camera trickery, but the use of real flames makes a huge difference in telling this story.

It also helps that The Towering Inferno looks good too. This film doesn’t drop the ball when it comes to characters or effects work, but it also doesn’t miss a beat in the way it is shot either.

Following the release of The Towering Inferno, the movie was nominated for eight Academy Awards. In total, the film won three trophies, including Best Cinematography for cinematographers Fred J. Koenekamp and Joseph Biroc.

Their win in this category was well deserved because they shot a film that was designed to last, and fifty years on from its debut, The Towering Inferno remains flawless because of what Koenekamp and Biroc achieved. Working with director John Guillermin, as well as producer Irwin Allen, the duo delivered the goods. 

And speaking of Allen, a large part of The Towering Inferno’s success is because he spent the film’s $14 million budget in the right way. Sure, some of the cash went on the cast (Newman, McQueen, Holden, Dunaway, etc didn’t come cheap) but the rest went on the sets, the costuming, the lighting, the effects, the editing, and the music.

Allen understood in order to sell the epic nature of The Towering Inferno he had to put money in all the right places and it simply had to be seen on screen. Current producers and studios should take note, because far too many recent big budget movies are falling down in this department, leaving audiences scratching their heads as to where all the money went.

What’s interesting about The Towering Inferno, and yet also very sad, is that all these years on the story remains relevant. The idea of a man-made disaster taking place in the 1970s due to cost-cutting measures struck a chord back then, and unfortunately it continues to strike a chord now for the same reason.

I wish I could say a tragedy such as the one depicted in the film could no longer happen in real life, but this is simply not the case. With continual cuts to services, or inappropriate materials being utilised in construction, devastating fires are still a cause for concern – 2017’s Grenfell Tower disaster in the UK is a tragic example of this.

But putting the real-world connections aside for a moment, what makes The Towering Inferno such an impressive film is the way it has been put together with care and attention. The story may rely on a cost-cutting plot point to set up the tragedy, but there’s no cost-cutting in the production and it still feels as fresh as it did back in ‘74.

Should you wish to view The Towering Inferno to celebrate its 50th year, the movie is currently available on DVD and Blu-ray for those who favour physical media. Alternatively, should you wish to rent or purchase the film digitally, The Towering Inferno is available through all the major video on demand platforms.

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Reviewer/disaster waiting to happen

Alex Wiggan

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