Seriously? Not ONE single review for this mini masterpiece? That's an injustice which I intend to correct!
I'm guessing that the city with the power outage woes is New York despite there being no mention of the name of the city in the movie. But it looks like New York so we'll assume that it is!
'The Night The City Screamed' is a 1980 TV movie and was made at a time when these kinds of 'disaster movies' were very popular. Despite the TV production values and constrictions of a low budget, this follows the same formula as the others...
Introduce lots of characters, give them a few lines throughout the movie and spend half an hour at the end tying things up, by letting us know how things panned out for each of them.
It's both cheesy and preachy in parts but a patient viewer can probably forgive that because of the generally campy feel of the whole thing.
It works because of the fabulous cast. If any TV archivist is scrolling down the credits of this movie they'll be wetting themselves. The incestuous club of big- name buddies are wheeled out for this one and even if you don't know all the names, you'll recognize almost all the faces.
There are big guns like Raymond Burr, Robert Culp, and Don Meredith... an appearance by David Cassidy who owns a broken TV set and a horrible mustache... Jonathan Frakes is buried in here somewhere and dozens of other names and faces you'll recognize also show up.
You really could write a good book or make a documentary about this movie even though the flick itself isn't really that good.
'The Night The City Screamed' was watchable back in 1980 because it was a good TV movie and it can be watched again today (2017) because it isn't! There's a good quality copy of this on YouTube, so get over there with pens and pencils at the ready... how many faces can you put names to?
