A man in flames goes flying down the elevator shaft.
"Jesus Christ! It's one of our men!"
"Oh God!"
The dialog is very cheesy. The effects are cheesy.
"It's pretty bad," Mark says.
"It's an inferno. It's a towering inferno."
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Silly Movie of the Week
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1 comment:
"It's pretty bad." Indeed. And it was nominated for Best Picture. Amazing. (Also a good trivia question, because it's the film that got Fred Astaire his only Oscar nomination.)
To think that this movie was like the "Titanic" of its day -- big, long, built around disaster and using then-cutting-edge effects.
Watching it now, it has its charms: Seeing Bobby Brady wearing those wireless headphones with cans so big it looks like he's going to land a plane. Or watching O.J. Simpson save a little kitty.
But, man, fuck: It's just so bloody long (165 minutes)! I swear that sequence where Newman's character helps the family maneuver around the missing stairway takes about 30 minutes. Zoiks!
Still ... When the glass elevator looks like it's going to peal off the building, that's still pretty damn cool. And "Towering Inferno" includes what I maintain is the best example of single-use cursing in movie history: McQueen's one-word reaction when he figures out what it's going to take to blow up the water tanks.
Did I mention how long this movie is?
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