Theatrically
released on December 16th, 1974, The Towering Inferno turns 50 years
old today. Representing the "height" of the disaster movie craze of the
1970s, it was both a box-office smash and, mostly praised by critics.
With
the advancements in cinema technology in the 1970s, the phenomenon of
the "blockbuster" began to drive production of movies that could take
advantage of the larger screens and better sound systems. The
"disaster" movie became a particularly appealing genre because it could
showcase big visual effects and explosive sound, literally shaking the
foundations of the theatre with massive bass bins pushing the limit of
subsonic immersion. The master of the genre at that time was Irwin
Allen, who worked for 20th Century Fox. He'd had a successful career in
the 1960s with a string of fantastical science fiction TV series,
including Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time
Tunnel, and Land of the Giants.
Allen
had recently scored big with The Poseidon Adventure (1972), a
big-budget, loaded-cast smash that set the stage for so many of the
films that would follow. The film's tale of an ill-fated cruise ship,
capsized by a tsunami, provided the template for viewers to enjoy the
destruction of something massive alongside a cast stacked with some of
the biggest stars of the day. It was an expensive proposition, but the
box office for a hit could go through the roof, and these were movies
that were definitely best seen on a BIG screen!
Securing
the rights to make The Towering Inferno instigated something of a
bidding war between the studios as they attempted to purchase the rights
to the book, The Tower, written by Richard Martin Stern. Warner Bros.
initially announced they'd purchased the book for $350,000.00, beating
out 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures. Columbia bailed on the
project at this point, but Fox bought the rights to a similar novel
published a year later, The Glass Inferno, by Thomas N. Scortia and
Frank M. Robinson. It was a very similar story, and they approached
Allen to direct, but he had heard about the WB plans for a similar film
and warned Fox against producing a second competing movie about a
burning skyscraper. This sort of thing had happened numerous times
before, where similar movies were released to compete with each other,
and both suffered as they cannibalized their audiences. Allen's efforts
convinced Fox to negotiate with WB, and the two studios came to an
agreement to co-produce a single film, with Allen at the helm, shot at
the Fox studios. Fox would distribute the film in Canada and the US,
while WB would have worldwide distribution, and a share structure was
created for the profits.
With
the corporate wrangling out of the way, the film could go into
production and deal with casting, landing Steve McQueen and Paul Newman
as the principal leads, who shared top billing for the film. William
Holden was also in the cast and had lobbied for top billing, but was
refused since his long-term standing as a box-office draw had been
eclipsed by both McQueen and Newman. To provide dual top billing, the
credits were arranged diagonally, with McQueen lower left and Newman
upper right. Thus, each appeared to have "first" billing, depending on
whether the credit was read left-to-right or top-to-bottom. Other stars
included Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Richard Chamberlain, O.J. Simpson,
Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, and Jennifer Jones.
As
mentioned, the film was a major box-office blockbuster upon its
release. I have distinct memories of going to see it in the theatre and
being blown away by the scope and scale of it all. Of course, I was
only 11 at the time, so I didn't notice a lot of the clichés that would
become common in the disaster genre in its wake. While many critics
were impressed with the film, some were less than generous. Pauline
Kael, writing for The New Yorker, panned the writing and characters as
retreads from The Poseidon Adventure. Gene Siskel of the Chicago
Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it "a
stunt and not a story. It's a technical achievement more concerned with
special effects than with people. That's why our attitude toward the
film's cardboard characters is: let 'em burn!"
Regardless
of the critical response, the film has a kind of iconic status for that
generation of moviegoers. SCTV famously parodied the film, dedicating
an entire 1982 season episode to their recreation of the film, as the
fictional TV station moves into a too-tall and too-thin skyscraper
plagued by shoddy workmanship and inferior materials, mocking the
genre's overworked clichés.
