Hacker Cinema
The Towering Inferno
1974 · Film · 165 min
Directed by John Guillermin
At the opening party of a colossal—but poorly constructed—skyscraper, a massive fire breaks out, threatening to destroy the tower and everyone in it.
1 negative8 neutralfrom 9 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
9 comments on Hacker News
> "How do you have a problem with this, but Marvel or Star Wars is fine"
Marvel and Star Wars aren't fine--the writing is execrable whenever they aren't outright plagiarizing something else.
Star Wars was schlock meant to sell toys that just happened to become huge. Marvel is pretty much just straight up garbage across the board (some characters are interesting--the stories and world though are pretty uniformly trope-ridden crap).
Modern movies also have the problem that a lot of their revenue comes from overseas--China in particular. They can't risk having writing that is either too subtle for a foreign audience or cover themes that might get them banned by the government.
Thus we get Michael Bay syndrome--spectacle after spectacle and the minimum writing necessary to connect them.
(To be honest--this is nothing new to Hollywood--Michael Bay can trace his roots the whole way back through "Towering Inferno" to "Noah's Ark", etc.)
Good food cheap: (note these are the down and out locals eat here places...)
Reds Java House, breakfast, burgers, dont ask for tomato. (note you will be like 3 blocks from the falling over Millennium Tower)
Shalimar: Best Indian food ever, Baingan bharta from here will make you an egg plant convert.
Henrys Hunan: smoked ham and green beans... salty spicy and tasty.
Go to the mission, have a burrito... There are great burito joints all over, ask someone to take you to a favorite.
If your near the BofA building aka 555 California Street.. its where they shot the bad movie towering inferno (with OJ Simpson). There is a black rock statue out in front you will want a photo with, local referred to as the bankers heart. It's a fun memento of your visit or a grim reminder of what money did to the bay...
I'll leave you with this vision of the SF of the past, its one you can still find if you look hard enough:
"My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . ."
I think this is more of a listicle for those not familiar with how utterly bizarre 70's scifi movies could be. Underrated by non-genre movie fans specifically. One curiosity not listed was "Capricorn One", one of OJ Simpsons movies. Another is the first Mad Max which squeaks in at 1979.
Another genre that could use similar treatment is the 70's disaster movies like Towering Inferno, Airport and their ilk.
> the top grossing films of the era (70s) were no better than the MCU of today.
These are the top films, and second place, for 1970-74
70 Love Story, Airport
71 Fiddler on the Roof, Billy Jack
72 The Godfather, The Poseidon Adventure
73 The Exorcist, The Sting
74 The Towering Inferno, Blazing Saddles
I only stopped because I got bored copying and pasting. I'm not convinced the MCU stuff really compares. And I love all that Marvel stuff! Maybe if they could do a decent soundtrack. .
I agree with you. More than you possibly know.
An apple and a slice of cheese, put on a plate, sliced with some almonds and a little honey. These are the things you sit over and taste and talk and remember, the human things.
I don't want to be so flooded with information. I can't help it. My grandfather (who was born in Belarus), and my grandmother (from Ukraine), they felt it was their obligation even on their death beds to know what was going on in the world, to follow the news. To read every possible thing you could, current or historical, so you would understand every point of view. This is the mentality I come from.
When my grandfather was 80 and dying of cancer, and on a morphine drip, a nurse left the TV on in his hopsital room which was showing the movie "Towering Inferno", and he grabbed my arm and said, "the building's on fire! The building's on fire!" He thought it was a camera shot of the hospital we were in.
Where we are now, our level of comprehension as a society, it reminds me of that.
Movie posters are a complex subject. Way more complex than they have any right to be.
Look at the poster for "The Towering Inferno". Steve McQueen's name is left-most while Paul Newman's name is the highest. William Holden is lower than both of them and to the right, lining up with McQueen's last name. And Faye Dunaway is about half an line lower than Holden's last name.
Then there's fights about how big someone's name/picture can be in relation to others.
Look at the live action Beauty and the Beast Poster. Emma Watson gets a lot of poster estate and first billing. Then it gets a bit crazy. Not to mention, how people are billed is a bit contentious as well. You'll notice that it's mostly a list of names except the final two. "with Ian McKellen and Emma Thompson". That's because being a special mention is worth something. It's a way to give prominence to non-leading actors who are significant in other ways.
The Thor movies do this with Anthony Hopkins. Clearly he's not the lead, but dude has had a career and he was a big get for the movies. For Ragnarok, they even toss it to Mark Ruffalo, probably as a way to acknowledge his part's significance in the film.
Spider-man: Homecoming is another interesting one to look at as well as it gives a lot of real estate to Robert Downey Jr. Tom Holland has a smaller picture than the Spider-man suit, while Robert Downey Jr. is much larger than the Iron Man suit. Michael Keaton also gets the double up, but both of his images are much smaller.
A lot of the Marvel posters are good to look at to see the politicking that goes on as they do a lot of ensemble movies.
And then there's also the fact that sometimes the pictures are made before the credits are put on it. So you're locked in an image but contracts dictate name order.
OT, but don't you miss the Action Architect movies like Towering Inferno and Death Wish.
>Why did they watch it? They could probably say the same about Towering Inferno, or an episode of Game of Thrones or myriad other things. It's all getting ridiculous.
...really?????
It was all over the news. We have the BBC on one screen at work constantly. I saw the footage a few times the day after it happened completely inadvertendly. Not to mention it being all over social media and pretty much unavoidable.
"Just don't watch it" is an idiotic response.
Someone else posted about a very poor taste joke about Grenfell leading to an arrest and people being put in custody, for real.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/05/police-appeal-video-mock-up-grenfell-tower-burned
That's mad. People who commit ABH, hit-and-runs, deal class A drugs and such don't always get taken in to custody -- we regularly have reports (in our local news) of people convicted who commit further crimes because they're out on warrant/bail or only got a warning/fine -- making a bad joke that doesn't physically harm anyone isn't an offense that should lead to imprisonment. You tell them how insensitive it is, then you ignore them and leave them to wallow in their own excrement.
>A spokesperson for the campaign group Justice4Grenfell said the video had “caused great alarm and distress” //
Why did they watch it? They could probably say the same about Towering Inferno, or an episode of Game of Thrones or myriad other things. It's all getting ridiculous.