The Towering Inferno (1974) on Netflix
PG19742h 45mActionDramaThriller
Architect Doug Roberts designed The Glass Tower, a 138-story San Francisco skyscraper and the world's tallest building. A short circuit during testing ignites a storage room on the 81st floor.
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- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb7.0/1053,529 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes68%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Glass Tower, a 138-story skyscraper in San Francisco, is about to be dedicated. Doug Roberts, the architect who designed it for developer James Duncan, returns for the ceremony. A short circuit in the main utility room is followed by another that sets materials alight in a storage closet on the 81st floor. Roberts sets aside a vacation with his fiancée Susan Franklin to examine the building's wiring, which he finds inadequate. He confronts Roger Simmons, the electrical specialist who oversaw the wiring and Duncan's son-in-law. Upstairs, the dedication party brings guests to the Promenade Room on the 135th floor. Chief Michael O'Hallorhan of the city fire department is called in, and he tells Roberts that crews cannot easily fight a blaze above the seventh floor.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Towering Inferno (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- To provide dual top billing for Steve McQueen and Paul Newman the credits were arranged diagonally, with McQueen lower left and Newman upper right, so each appeared to have first billing; it was the first time this “staggered but equal” billing was used in a movie.
- Author Roderick Thorp said The Towering Inferno, combined with a dream about a man being chased through a skyscraper by gunmen, inspired him to write the novel Nothing Lasts Forever, which was later adapted into the film Die Hard.
- Fred Astaire, famous for his musical dancing roles, received the only Academy Award nomination of his career for this film, and also won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for the performance.
- Fox was submitted The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson, which Allen said had “the same sort of characters, the same locale, the same story, the same conclusion”, and bought it for a reported $400,000; fearing twin films about a tall building on fire might cannibalize each other, Allen persuaded both studios to join forces.
- Warner Bros. won a bidding war against 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures for Richard Martin Stern's novel The Tower, with Columbia dropping out when the price reached $200,000; production chief John Calley paid $350,000 for the rights prior to that book's publication.
- The acrophobic fireman who is afraid to rappel down the elevator shaft was played by Scott, the son of one of the film's two stars, Paul Newman.
