The Towering Inferno is a boisterous, lavish affair by 1970s standards. An army of brave firefighters, led by the ultra-competent Chief O’Hallorhan (Steve McQueen), arrives to battle the fire, an epic struggle that sees a mix of qualified successes and massive tragedies.
Towering inferno movie cast series#
Sure enough, the worst comes to pass and a series of fires break out, trapping hundreds of party-goers above the blaze. This leads to widespread, faulty safety features throughout the entire edifice, which are stressed during the building’s dedication ceremony, which involves a hoidy-toidy black-tie affair on the 135th floor. Unfortunately, the wealthy real-estate developer who financed its construction, James Duncan (William Holden), handed over a few too many contracts to his incompetent, corner-cutting son-in-law Roger (Richard Chamberlain). Designed by brilliant, dashing architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman), the Glass Tower is a masterpiece of skyscraper engineering.
It’s a film that metaphorically lives up to its name: a huge, fiery production about a brand-new building in San Francisco. This prompted me to re-watch The Towering Inferno (1974), a film I half-liked when I watched it twenty-odd years ago, but liked much more this time, but only because I was taking it less seriously. Seeing Underwater recently reminded me of my inexplicable soft spot for disaster movies - especially those of the 1970s, with their enormous all-star casts, simplistic scripts, and clumsy blockbuster ambitions.
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