The Towering Inferno + Intro

The world's tallest building is skyscraping testimony to ingenuity and innovation. In the hands of "Master of Disaster"; film producer Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure - also screening as part of this mini Disaster! season), it's also the world's tallest matchstick.

An all-star cast gathers for this tall story of lofty dimensions: eight Academy Award nominations and three Oscars. On the night of the building's dedication, fire erupts, trapping people on the upper floors and igniting multiple tales of heroism and loss involving a firefighter (Steve McQueen), an architect (Paul Newman) and others caught in the steel-and-glass inferno (including William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire and Jennifer Jones). With star power, pyrotechnics and suspense in abundance, The Towering Inferno sizzled at box offices worldwide.

The first picture co-produced by two studios (20th Century Fox and Warner Bros), and based on not one, but two novels, this epic feat of pyrotechnics also gave equal billing (and pay) to
its two leads, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. Newman’s architect returns to San Francisco for the dedication of his new skyscraper, but soon suspects the electrical engineer (Richard Chamberlain) has been cutting corners. A fire duly starts on the 81st floor, while a party gets under way on the 135th .

McQueen’s fire chief tries to get the situation under control, but the building is too tall to have a fire successfully fought from the ground. A stellar cast includes William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Jennifer Jones, Robert Vaughn and Robert Wagner. Another Irwin Allen production.

About Disaster! Season

This film is part of our Disaster! mini season, a short season curated by Jamie Sellers, celebrating the brief golden age of those blockbuster American movies that used a looming or ongoing disaster as their main plot device, this being roughly a period through the early 1970s.

These movies had A-list ensemble casts of Hollywood stars past and then-present, and directors with an eye for the dramatic. Irony is all but absent – no-one’s tipping the wink to the viewer, everyone’s deadly serious, and quite often very angry too. It IS okay to laugh though, on occasion – in fact, we defy you not to.

Plot devices might feature an arrogant or careless authority figure whose actions (or lack of) are partly or entirely responsible for the unfolding chaos; a blue-collar folk hero whose down- to-earth commonsense ultimately averts an even worse scenario; and often a stupid kid who ignores every danger sign and puts him or herself in grave mortal danger. Warning: it’s the early ‘70s, and chauvinism is not in short supply.

Jamie Sellers is a freelance Music Curator, extreme quizmaster, and occasional singer. He’s been volunteering at the Electric Palace since September 2019. He watches around 250 films a year, and counts among his favourites The Hustler, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Ordet. His favourite current directors are Alice Rohrwacher, Kelly Reichardt, Francois Ozon and Christian Petzold.

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