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The Towering Inferno Reviews
$14 million worth of Holy Cow! Spend more -- efficiently -- and you get more. More stars, more effects, more scale, more suspense, more crises, more impact, more of that feeling the foyer that you have your ticket's worth and then some.
It is an almost-perfect meshing by ingenious, productive technicians and a finely-attuned acting brigade of a complicated production into a magnificent "epic" in the best C.B. DeMille tradition.
With The Towering Inferno, disaster movies have come of age. It is big. It is immensely engaging. And above everything else, it is terrifying.
We finally come to the ultimate disaster picture of them all. And, in a word, the best. The Towering Inferno... is not only the best disaster picture crashing around the crowded circuit, but it is also one of the year's best films.
It's a technical achievement more concerned with special effects than with people. That's why our attitude towards the film's cardboard characters is: let 'em burn.
Despite the pretense of social criticism, this is a profoundly reactionary movie, in its primitive morality, and in its fundamental assumptions about men and women.
One thing is for sure, the film is a fine tribute to fire fighters and repeatedly points up the problems in fighting a fire in tall buildings.
If I'm nice to The Towering Inferno, if I say it's probably the best of the disaster pictures, that it delivers in value received the price of admission and probably a little more, do you think the disaster picture would go away happy? And stay away?
The Towering Inferno is a visceral experience, and a helluva good argument for living close to the ground, in an asbestos pulp tent.
You'll find yourself looking around for the movie theater's fire exits just in case.
I sat on the edge of my seat, aghast, and let myself be totally gripped by a film which doesn't let you go for a single second. Exhilarating.
Incredible's the word for the fantastic variety of chaos, from suffocation to incineration, from plunges to explosions, from shattering glass to burning helicopters.
Not only was I sickened by the sight of people being crushed by buildings, blown through windows, drowned and burned alive, but after a while I began to feel bored. There are only so many ways one can be put to violent death.
A rip-snorting, flame-belching dragon of a film... The special effects are astounding and will no doubt race neck-and-neck for an Oscar with those devised for Earthquake.
With 1974 the year of the uncommon disaster, The Towering Inferno certainly is the tallest, and perhaps even more ambitious than Earthquake.
The idea behind The Towering Inferno is neither particularly entertaining nor exciting, but rather gruesome.
The Towering Inferno, a three-hour saga about a fire in the world's tallest building, left me limp with exhaustion. In fact they could have easily put the fire out by wringing my palms.
If pyromania is your hangup or you hero-worship firemen, then The Towering Inferno is your movie. Otherwise, despite its top-heavy cast of superstars and its $14-million budget, it is not an attractive way to spend an evening at a cost of $3 a head.
It is a marvelously produced action and suspense film that outdoes every other movie in its category.
The movie is flawed in important ways to keep it from joining the ranks of the great films of the '70s... but the end product is so impressive that the film becomes the definitive masterpiece of its genre.