Cult-Movie Review: Dark Star (1974)

Conceived as Planetfall, Dark Star (1974) is the first film of director John Carpenter and writer Dan O’Bannon. The film began as a student project at U.S.C. in 1970, with principal photography occurring early in 1971. 

The film underwent re-shoots in 1972 to extend the fifty-minute production to eighty-minutes, and to make it viable for a theatrical release. The film was then purchased by Jack H. Harris (The Blob [1958]), who demanded additional re-shoots. The film finally premiered in 1975, and met with positive reviews, but relatively little audience appreciation.

Regardless of its origin as a student film, Dark Star is today considered a cult-classic.  Its low-budget nature does not take away significantly from the film’s success in part because it is clear the filmmakers had both a creative strategy, and an example to follow.  

In short, Dark Star is the anti-2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  As a work of (caustic) 1970s art, it knowingly draws all the opposite conclusions about space travel, mankind, and man’s place or role in the universe. In so cleverly over-turning the 2001 apple cart, Dark Star not only lives up to its title, it remains one of the funniest science fiction films made in the 1970s.

“Don’t give me any of that intelligent life crap. Just give me something I can blow up.”

Eighteen parsecs from Earth in Sector EB-90, the spaceship Dark Star continues its apparently un-ending mission: to destroy unstable planets in order to pave the way for human colonization. 

Unfortunately, the ship has grappled with some severe damage recently, and the newly promoted captain, Doolittle (Narelle) is ill-prepared when one of the ship’s thermonuclear bombs prepares to detonate while still attached to the underbelly of the ship.  Dark Star’s computer suggests teaching the bomb the study of Phenomenology. 

While Doolittle grapples with this existential crisis, Sergeant Pinback (Dan O’Bannon) battles a mischievous alien pet that has escaped from captivity and Lt. Talby (Dre Pahich) dreams of seeing the mysterious Phoenix Asteroids with his own eyes…

“Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?”

Dark Star is an outer space comedy that succeeds brilliantly on the basis of a very good, well-told joke. Visually, thematically, and in terms of philosophy, the film cleverly operates as the antithesis of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Being the “Anti-2001” may sound like a relatively simple or juvenile thing, but actually the opposite is true considering how consistently Carpenter and O’Bannon’s film develops its world-view.  By creating a world so clearly and deliberately the inverse of Kubrick’s vision, Dark Star’s creators have fashioned an intelligent and challenging response to that beloved science fiction film, one that meaningfully re-evaluates mankind’s nature and his place in the universe.

In brief, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a majestic, stately picture that establishes the mysteries of the universe in the form of the monolith, but which also suggests that man’s progress over time possesses a shape and a purpose; moving from ape-like primitive to evolved star child. 

By contrast, Dark Star suggests the absolute absurdity and pointlessness of the human existence, and therefore of the universe itself.  Right down the line, element-to-element Dark Star mirrors and parodies 2001’s sense of “cosmic purpose” with its own sense of man’s irrelevance in the scheme of things, as well as his general pettiness.

In Kubrick’s 2001, the space age is beautiful, stately, wondrous and because of man’s intended destiny, even ordered.  The spaceship and space station interiors are depicted as roomy and minimalist, and the incredible visuals of space vessels in flight -- docking and landing -- are sometimes accompanied by instances of classical music such as the Blue Danube Waltz, a composition that suggests the formal, dance-like nature of objects in space, and in motion.  

2001’s “theme song” as it might even be considered is “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” a formal composition by Richard Strauss (1864 – 1949) which again, primarily denotes order.  As Kenneth Von Gunden and Stuart H. Stock wrote in in Twenty All-Time Great Science Fiction Films (Crown; 1982, page 190), the composition:

“…opens with an ascending phrase of three notes…which represent Nietzcshe’s view of the evolutionary rise of man…These three notes serve note that the number three is essential to the film: from the perfect alignment of the three spheres of Earth, Moon, and sun at the beginning to the appearance of things in threes.”

Dark Star’s first anti-2001 conceit is to adopt country music -- the vernacular of personal stories and human emotions -- as its theme song.  The country music genre is not generally symbolic in nature, but literal in its storytelling of failed love affairs or a relationship now lost.  So where Kubrick utilizes his music to suggest the transcendent and ordered nature of space travel, Dark Star’s theme, “Benson, Arizona” by Bill Taylor evokes nothing of grandeur or cosmic importance.

The lyrics of “Benson, Arizona” explicitly involve the long separation between an astronaut and his Earthbound love, a love that connects that astronaut not to the future (and evolution), but the traditional past.  

This connection is like a tether, dragging him back to earthbound concerns and therefore precluding the chance for growth or transcendence.  Dan O’Bannon noted this context when he said in an interview that the astronauts’ days aboard Dark Star were sad and ridiculous.

The specific comparison between 2001 and Dark Star involves the nature of life on a ship traveling in space.  In A Space Odyssey, the crewmen fly the roomy Discovery towards a rendezvous with destiny near Jupiter.  In Dark Star, the unkempt astronauts fly their ship, the Dark Star on an endless quest across the galaxy to destroy unstable planets.   One journey is, in keeping with the name of the ship, about “discovery.”  The other is about death and destruction…about “blowing things up.”

In the course of these journeys, both men are contacted by home, and again, Dark Star makes a point of inverting the themes featured in Kubrick’s film.  In 2001, a news anchor for BBC-12’s “The World Tonight” interviews astronauts Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) about life on ship.  There is a time lag of approximately seven minutes because Discovery is 80 million miles away.  But meaningful conversation about life in space is still possible…just delayed.

Dark Star opens with a message from McMurdo Base on Earth as a military officer contacts the crew and notes that there is a ten year time lag in conversation because Dark Star is 18 parsecs distant from Earth, a gap that makes any meaningful conversation impossible.  In 2001, the “entire world” joins the BBC interviewer in wishing Dave and Frank a “safe and successful journey” to the stars.  Dark Star’s communique to Earth, by contrasts gets play in “prime time” and “good reviews in the trade,” but the actual content of the message from home is negative.  Earth will not be sending replacement radiation shields to the damaged ship, because of budget cuts and the vast distance separating the ship and the home world.

Both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dark Star also comment on “intelligent” devices and their relationship with mankind.  In the former film, the mellifluous-voiced HAL 9000 becomes murderous on the journey to Jupiter, and must be de-activated.  Under Dave’s auspices, man re-asserts his rightful control over the machine (thus symbolically conquering technology; the latest in the line of tools since the ape-man through that bone into the sky in the film’s prologue…) and then heads off to evolve via the stargate/monolith “trip.” 

Once more, Dark Star inverts that very premise.

Here, the crewmen of the Dark Star must interact with a talking bomb, one who is convinced that it must detonate (following an accident aboard ship which activates it) and thus kill everyone.  The ship’s acting captain, the appropriately-named Doolittle (Narrelle), -- who all-things considered would rather be surfing – must teach the bomb Phenomenology in order to prevent it from self-actuating and detonating.  After the bomb learns Phenomenology -- the study of consciousness, essentially -- it becomes an ego-maniac, convinced that it is the only sentient being in the universe.  The bomb decides that it is God and before detonating declares “Let There Be Light.” 

In other words, in Dark Star, man does not conquer his technology.  Instead, he is eclipsed and destroyed by it. Technology supersedes man, and man does not evolve…he is destroyed.  Dark Star even re-parses the transcendental stargate sequence of 2001 to its own ends. It is notable too that the bomb adopts the self-image of man: as destroyer.  The ship’s mission was to blow up planets, and now the bomb will blow up man, a variation of that mission.

In Kubrick’s film, Bowman endures a “cosmic trip,” and the aging process, and then is re-born as the evolved “star child.  There’s a cosmic trip” in Dark Star too, but it is not transcendental in nature.  A crewman named Talby (Pahich) joins the glowing, colorful “Phoenix Asteroids” and becomes indistinguishable from them.  The message is hence that man is not unique and special -- he is not a delicate snow-flake -- but rather part and parcel of a vast, meaningless universe, and in some ways just another grain of sand inhabiting it. 

Doolittle, meanwhile also meets his distinctly not transcendental end. He surfs into the atmosphere of a planet…and burns up. His point of greatest self-actuation is reliving his favorite form of leisure…a hobby.

Up and down, Dark Star functions so colorfully and so amusingly because it undercuts and reverses the premises of the grand Kubrick film again and again.  In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Discovery is a perfectly-ordered technological paradise featuring very few signs of human character or individuality.  The Dark Star’s living quarters, by contrast, look like a messy dorm room.  The Discovery is so spacious that Frank Poole can jog alone through a vast circular track.  The Dark Star, by contrast, is so small that its crew literally possesses no elbow room on the bridge.

The men of Dark Star are also not the brave, resourceful astronauts we have come to expect from efforts like 2001 or Star Trek.  Talby sits alone on the observation deck, isolated from the crew.  Pinback can’t be bothered to feed his alien pet.  Doolittle would rather dream about surfing in Malibu than handle the ship’s problems. Even the injured captain, Powell -- who is kept stored barely alive in some kind of cryogenic freeze unit -- is more interested in his hobby (baseball in general, and the Dodgers specifically) than in helping the ship survive a crisis.  The evolution of man does not seem like much of a possibility with these characters as the spearhead for the future age, does it?

Even visually, Dark Star plays knowingly as a mirror reflection of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  In Stanley Kubrick’s film, the Discovery first passes on the screen from left to right, a visual short-hand for a journey outward.  In John Carpenter’s Dark Star, the ship passes from right to left, thus implying a journey back rather than forward.  Since the film concerns man’s inability to transcend petty concerns and specific incidents (reflected in the use of country music as well as the crew’s petty demeanor), the idea transmitted is that mankind is forever journeying, but not really heading anywhere of import.

There’s an old truism about movie-making that goes: the best way to criticize a film is to make another film yourself.  In some crucial and cerebral fashion, Dark Star epitomizes that notion, and note-for-note, it overturns the premises and ideas of the grand 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

If the 1970s is truly the wake-up from the hippie dream, as my friend and mentor, Johnny Byrne used to insist, then Dark Star is pointedly the wake-up from the 2001 dream; an acknowledgment of the absurd and pointless nature of man’s existence…even in the Space Age.

The Films of 1974: Earthquake

It’s no secret that, of late, I’ve been experiencing a resurgence of interest -- a love affair of sorts, I guess you could say -- with the disaster films of the 1970s.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974) hold up beautifully, for example. Each of those Irwin Allen-produced films concerns more than chaos and wreckage. These are films about the human spirit, and the drive that compels us to keep fighting when all hope seems lost.

My love affair with the genre, however, hits a speed bump with this week’s featured film, 1974’s Earthquake.

film written by George Fox and Mario Puzo and from director Mark Robson simply isn’t in the same league as the efforts I note above.  Instead, Earthquake is a meandering, largely suspense-less effort that suffers from the fact that the action is too spread out, and therefore tension is sacrificed.  A ship at sea and a high-rise on fire are largely inescapable, and concern people with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.  Earthquake’s central disaster -- a quake that registers 7 on the Richter Scale -- doesn’t mine any particular location for suspense, and the result is a film that often feels aimless and directionless.

It doesn’t help, either, that high-point of this film -- the earthquake – occurs after the first hour, and leaves very little of excitement left for the film’s denouement. 

The acting in the film is pretty terrible too (Ava Gardner, I’m looking at you!), and the character relationships are, at times, baffling.

The last straw, perhaps, is the inconsistent special effects. Some moments during the quake are believably rendered, but other moments -- such as the one notorious moment involving blobs of cartoon blood in an elevator -- are downright ludicrous.

Every genre has its highs and lows for certain, and the disaster film format is no exception.  I believe was spoiled by the quality of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, watched back-to-back. Earthquake is thoroughly pedestrian.

But hey, at least Earthquake is better than The Swarm (1978), right?

“The question is: what in God’s name do we do now?”

In Los Angeles, at the Seismological Institute, a young graduate student analyzes data suggesting a tremor, and then a massive earthquake will strike the city in less than 24 hours. His superiors are reluctant to believe his dire warning, and equally reluctant to report his findings to the governor and the mayor.

When the predicted tremor occurs, however, the seismologists leap into action, and the governor mobilizes the National Guard in response.

But no amount of preparation can adequately safe-guard Los Angeles from the earthquake that strikes next. Rating a 7 on the Richter scale, this quake brings skyscrapers to the ground, destroys free-ways, and sends house careening off the Hollywood hills. Worse, the Hollywood Reservoir Dam crumbles, and parts of the city flood.

Through it all, a determined architect, Stewart Graff (Charlton Heston) in a bad marriage with his boss’s daughter (Ava Gardner) shows determination and pluck. 

He rescues a number of people, including his boss (Lorne Greene)m at his high-rise office, and then teams up with a suspended police officer, Lou Slade (George Kennedy) to rescue others in the city, including Stewart’s mistress, Denise (Genevieve Bujold) and her young son, Cory (Tiger Williams).

While Stewart attempts to save the injured and dying, others, including a psychotic National Guardsman (Marjoe Gortner), attempt to take advantage of the disaster for their own twisted agendas.

“This used to be a hell of a town.”

In my reviews of other 1970s disaster films, I’ve concentrated on the notion that films like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno thrive on philosophical ideas about their disasters and human nature, not merely the depiction of those disasters. For example, The Poseidon Adventure is about fighting -- to the last breath -- to survive in difficult circumstances; to find the part of God that dwells inside of you, to quote Gene Hackman’s character, Reverend Scott.

And The Towering Inferno assiduously draws a contrast between reckless, money-grubbing Big Business (represented by Richard Chamberlain and William Holden), and the selflessness of San Francisco’s municipal fire fighters, led by O’Halloran (Steve McQueen). One of these forces cares more about profit than people, and it isn’t the firefighters.

Earthquake doesn’t feature a thematic through line or depth that is comparable, alas. Early on, there is much discussion about the responsibility of the seismologists to warn someone in authority about the approaching quake.  Is it right to sound the alarm, knowing that it might start a panic to do so? Is it right to report speculation about a quake, and risk looking like a fool to the media and city politicians if no quake occurs?

These are truly intriguing points, but after they are raised, the movie totally abandons them. 

Without a central location -- or even a galvanizing idea -- to hold the film together, Earthquake quickly proves episodic and underwhelming in terms of its narrative and the hunt for deeper meaning.  

We never find out, for instance, why Stewart and Remy hate each other to such a dramatic degree.  They are an endlessly bicker-some couple, and it’s difficult to have much sympathy for either one of them.  Stewart is having affair, for instance, and Remy fakes suicide attempts on a regular basis.  It’s not a terrible surprise when a Biblical flood washes them away in the film’s final moments, given their “sins.”  But the scene isn’t as powerful as it might be because the audience doesn’t really care for the characters. 

Other moments in Earthquake are downright bad. For instance, Walter Matthau hams it up as a silly barfly wearing a pimp hat in several unnecessary scenes. Why is his character even in the film? He’s a cartoon character who proves agonizingly unfunny, and -- at the same time -- a walking, talking stereotype.

Similarly, what are viewers to make of Marjoe Gortner’s character, a muscle-bound grocery store worker in the National Guard who chooses the event of an earthquake to address his grievances with a group of bullies, and then attempts to rape Victoria Principal’s character, Rosa?

Is he a psychopath? Nuts? A self-hating body-builder?

More than likely, Gortner's character is present to provide some third act tension. The film badly requires that tension because the earthquake has already struck, and the flood is saved for the denouement. Gortner's "Joad" may also represent a Vietnam Age distaste for soldiers, which was seen in a lot of 1970s movies and TV programs, and today transmits as pretty superficial.

The most ridiculous moment in Earthquake, however, arrives when a group of survivors board an elevator during the quake. The car shakes loose of its cable and careens several dozen floors to the ground. There’s a great shot of the screaming people in the compartment, but then several big ,animated bubbles of bright red blood are superimposed over the footage, and launched at the screen.

What the hell?

For a film struggling so mightily to seem believable, and to meaningfully compete with The Towering Inferno, this a reality-shattering moment of the highest order.

Earthquake gets so little right, actually. Ava Gardner is terribly miscast as Lorne Greene’s daughter and Charlton Heston’s wife. I believe she was only three years younger than Greene at this point, and she and Heston share what can only politely be termed “anti-chemistry.”  

Worse, some moments -- like the rescue of Genevieve Bujold’s son from an electrical cable -- make the earthquake seem small and not, literally earth shattering.

But most disappointing of all is the focus on soap opera plotting. Stewart’s promotion, Slade’s disenchantment with the police force, Mile Quade’s motorcycle stunt, Denise’s acting job and other issues are all brought up, but ultimately left unresolved in the face of utter destruction.  

I suppose the film could have considered the way man proposes, and God disposes, but even that idea is not enunciated here.

All that established, I should also write that Earthquake features some beautiful matte-painting of the destroyed Los Angeles landscape.

I think that just about the only way this film could truly be described as gripping is if audiences saw it in theaters in Sensurround. I can see how that rumbling effect would add a whole new dimension to the film’s narrative.

Without the support of this gimmick, Earthquake is rendered, sadly, a completely two-dimensional affair.

The Films of 1974: The Towering Inferno

The Towering Inferno (1974) is the towering accomplishment of the 1970s cinema of disaster. 

This Irwin Allen film was directed by John Guillermin (King Kong [1976]), nominated for eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, and it took home awards for best cinematography, best editing, and even best song . 

As one might expect from a list of kudos like that, The Towering Inferno is dazzling in terms of visual presentation, and more than that, the film is highly suspenseful. Some scenes, especially those involving the fate of Robert Wagner’s character, are also harrowing, and quite frightening. The fire effects are, for the most part, legitimately terrifying too.  

Yet The Towering Inferno holds up best today -- more than forty years later -- due to its carefully constructed social commentary.                                          

I noted in my review of Irwin Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure (1972) last week how that disaster film transmitted a specific philosophy: a brand of muscular Christianity that states, essentially, God helps those who help themselves. Gene Hackman’s character, the reverend, was a spiritual leader, rallying the ship’s survivors to survive one crisis after the other.

The Towering Inferno doesn’t present a spiritual story-line to go with its chaotic tale of an out-of-control fire, but instead transmits a strong message about one very real pitfall of unfettered capitalism.  

Essentially, the film suggests that if the contest for a business is between turning a profit, or insuring the safety of its customers….the bottom line is going to win out, and people aren’t.

As we discover early in the film, shortcuts have been taken on the fiery building’s electrical wiring by a morally bankrupt subcontractor, Simmons (Richard Chamberlain). 

Simmons wasn’t exactly acting alone, either. Jim Duncan (William Holden), the head of the construction company, was going perilously over-budget on the project, and needed Simmons to save two-million dollars...somewhere.

Well, Simmons found the place where he could save that money. And in the end, though two million dollars were saved, at least before the disaster, roughly two-hundred people also lost their lives because of his actions.

This idea of a high-rise building being a dangerous fiasco or scam, essentially (especially considering the company’s abundantly ironic motto: “we build for life,”) is dynamically reflected in one of the film’s intimate subplots or "B" stories. 

A con-man named Claiborne (Best Supporting Actor nominee Fred Astaire), attempts to bilk a party-goer, doomed Lisolette (Jennifer Jones) out of her money. He too values money more than he does people.

Even the very structure underlining the film's character conflicts -- with corporate big-wigs like Duncan and Simmons on one side, and heroic, municipal firefighters like O'Halloran on the other -- adds to the leitmotif about the pitfalls of avarice and greed. A businessman is a person out to line his or her pockets. A municipal fire worker, by comparison, is someone who has dedicated his or her life to helping others.

There's clearly a conflict between those goals, and The Towering Inferno diagrams those conflicts beautifully.

Because it includes this social commentary about our society, The Towering Inferno isn’t mere escapism or disaster porn, as it has been accused of being by some critics.

Instead, this film from Irwin Allen proves a riveting and suspenseful experience that warns its audience that in their rush to make money, some people will cut corners…at the expense of the rest of us.

“We have an equipment problem.”

On the day of a gala party celebrating its opening, the architect behind the 138 story (and 135 floor…) Glass Tower, Doug Roberts flies into San Francisco by helicopter.  

He is greeted at the tower by his romantic partner, Susan Franklin (Faye Dunaway), who informs him that she wants to stay in the city and take an important new media job rather than leave the city with Doug.

Following this meeting, Doug is alarmed to  learn that safety-back-ups are not yet installed in the building, and there are indications of a fire somewhere in the skyscraper. He discovers that some wiring is too hot, and realizes that the electrical sub-contractor, Simmons (Chamberlain), did not follow specs. Instead, he used cheap wiring with no conduit covers.

Doug is worried the situation could escalate to a full-fledged disaster, but the construction company’s boss, Jim Duncan (William Holden) refuses to cancel the impending party, in part because a Senator (Robert Vaughn) and the Mayor are slated to attend.

Soon, a fuse box blows out on Floor 81, and starts a raging, ever-growing fire.  This conflagration begins to burn out of control, and Doug calls the S.F. Fire Department after a co-worker, Geddings (Norman Burton) dies from burns. 

Fireman Mike O’Halloran (Steve McQueen) arrives on the scene with a team of dedicated fire-men, but he informs Doug that if the fire is above the seventh floor, there is no good way for his men to combat it.

The fire is on the 81st floor..and moving up.

This situation goes from bad to worse as the fire spreads, killing the passengers on an express elevator, and endangering all the party goers on the top floor, in the Promenade Room.

“I want both, and I can’t have both, can I?”

I noted above that The Towering Inferno -- based on the books The Tower and The Glass Inferno -- is actually a social critique of unregulated capitalism. 

A construction company in bed with political elites (the aforementioned senator and mayor) has cut corners to make its budget and get the construction permits that it needs. 

The budget is ultimately satisfied, but human decency is not.  

This leviathan of a skyscraper may be beautiful to look at, but is demonstrably unsafe. 

“Built for life,” in this case, means built for a day. The building does not survive its inaugural celebration.

Simmons is the obvious bad guy here. He installs wiring without conduit covers, and as a result, the wires get too hot. They overheat. They start a fire.

It’s easy to blame Simmons for the entire crisis since he was the hands-on fellow who changed Doug’s specs. 

But there is plenty of responsibility to go around, as Simmons points out. Duncan, of course, wanted to save money, and that became his most urgent concern.  Even if he didn’t specifically tell Simmons to authorize faulty wiring, he created the environment wherein Simmons felt it was permissible to do so. 

 In The Towering Inferno’s climax, Duncan is contrite because he knows fully the role he played in the deaths of 200 people. “All I can do now is pray to God I can stop this from happening again,” he notes.

For some, that may be too little too late.

Similarly, Doug bears some responsibility too. True, he absolutely designed a building he believed would be safe. But Doug never ran his ideas past by an expert who might know something about skyscrapers, fires, and safety issues; a man like O’Halloran. 

O’Halloran calls him out in the film over this particular oversight, noting that Doug is fully aware that buildings as tall as the Glass Tower can’t be protected from fire, and yet Doug keeps designing such buildings.  

At movie’s end, Doug sees the error of his ways, and says that the ruined building ought to be left standing as a “shrine to all the bullshit in the world.”

This was, actually, a building erected on the shaky foundations of bullshit. It had better marketing --- built for life? -- than it did actual safety precautions. It is a reminder of what happens when greed is made more important than human lives.

Poor old Mr. Claiborne is not a bad person, but he too lives by scamming money from people. He pretends to be rich, but can’t even afford taxi fare, as we see in the film’s first act.  He place a greater value on money than on people, and when he loses poor Lisolette, he sees the error of his ways.  He has lost a person he loves, and nothing can make that loss better for him. It was a person, not a “mark” in a con game that ultimately matters most to him. Claiborne's punishment is that he shall be left alone -- with only Lisolette's cat, Elke -- when he could have had the companionship and love of a dear woman.

The film's leitmotif about runaway capitalism and avarice is even mirrored, to some degree, in Susan’s story.  She’s been waiting for five years to get a promotion to story editor at her job, and now the opportunity lands in her lap. She expresses her desire, openly, to have it all, both her job and the man she loves. “I want both, and I can’t have both,” she complains. We can see here the seeds of conspicuous consumption, and the idea that we can have everything we want, when we want it, all the time.

The party-goers in the Promenade are not exactly sterling characters, either, for the most part. 

They panic, they push, and they sow disorder through their ill-considered actions. We want them to survive, but cannot escape the notion, either, that they are in danger in the first place because of their wealth (their money, again), and their power. 

Again, and again, these rich people put themselves first. Two women run onto the roof, for instance, for a rescue helicopter, even though Doug warns them not to go. These women interfere, and the copter crashes and burns. People die because they didn't obey the rules.  Just as Duncan and Simmons didn't obey the rules.

At another point, the party-goers flood the express elevator, even though they have been told not to do so; that the express elevator is dangerous.  They are killed.

The message here seems to be that these people want everything, right now, and nothing -- not even safety concerns -- is going to stop them from getting what they want.

But just try negotiating with a fire...

And of course, attempting to restore order in this chaotic situation we find heroic O’Halloran. He is not a fire-fighter for the money, the power, or the prestige. He is a municipal worker: a civic worker reporting to a public hierarchy.  

And even though the powerful don’t listen to him, O'Halloran rushes in to rescue them when they are endangered. They could not care less about his life, but he puts his neck on the line again and again for the civilians at risk.  

At the end of the movie, O'Halloran has been through the wringer, and yet one feels he would do it again in a heart-beat.  In one great shot, O'Halloran takes in the scene on the ground floor.  He scans the wreckage. His men are in body bags. Their equipment is strewn across the floor.  

This is the cost of staying on a budget; of making a profit  At least for O'Halloran.

O'Halloran serves as the living, breathing mirror of those he saves. He’s not interested in money or power. He’s interested in putting safety, not profit, first.  

By contrast, Doug is the character in the film who starts on one side (that of the corporate interests), and changes allegiances as the truth about the building is revealed.  In the end, he is left humbled by this experience, and will not make the same mistake again.  The film’s closing lines involve his desire to seek out O’Halloran the next time that he designs a building. 

He knows where to find him. That's where he's been all along.

The Towering Inferno's tragedy of greed is played out against an amazing and spectacular cinematic background.  

One scene that remains awesome and terrifying involves Robert Wagner’s character, Don Bigelow.  He dons a wet towel, and runs out into a room on fire, convinced he can safely reach an exit.  

He is consumed in fire in seconds. It devours him.

It goes without saying that this horrifying moment is not faked with digital special effects. A stunt man accomplished this run, and it was edited for maximum impact in slow-motion photography so the terror is extended. The moment is stunning and horrifying, and impossible to look away from. It captures the beauty and destructive power of fire in visceral terms.

Other scenes will cause your belly to drop, or flop. 

Late in the film, one nail-biting rescue attempt involves sending a lone person in a chair across a dangling line connecting two buildings  Although some of the process work has aged a bit -- the rear projection, specifically -- this moment still looks great in high-definition. A poor soul sits in that chair (belted in), and is moves slowly in mid-air between burning building and distant sanctuary.

I would not want to take that ride.

Before the film is done, we also see water tanks explode and flood the fire -- buffeting the survivors in the Promenade Room -- and a scenic elevator come off its track and dangle dangerously 110 floors from terra firma. 

These moments are executed with an eye towards maximum suspense and realism.

What surprised me, watching the film today, is that every minute seems genuinely suspenseful, rather than histrionic, and I actually cared about what happens to the characters, especially those played by Newman, McQueen, Dunaway, Astaire, and Jones. 

They don’t all make it out alive.

I felt very enthusiastic on my re-watch of The Poseidon Adventure last week, and assumed that The Towering Inferno might not compare favorably. The Poseidon Adventure was short, to the point, and right on target with its commentary about mankind making his own way in the world.

On the contrary, however, The Towering Inferno may just be the zenith of the seventies disaster format.  

The actors are not just good, but fully engaged, the danger is palpable, the threat is not merely pervasive, but in a way, beautiful, and there’s an undercurrent of social critique underlining all the action. The story means something, in the final analysis.

And that’s how you made blockbusters in the mid-1970s.