Fire

This is one of the most boring disaster movies I have ever seen. The actors are playing really bad and walk around like zombies. Donna Mills was the only reason I watched this movie and I must say, she is the only one who seems to be talented in "Fire". Her part is very small and the storyline around her part is sometimes very illogical. She portrays a kindergarten teacher who is out in the woods with a bunch of kids. When the fire gets close to them they try to escape and one child is missing. When she manages it to be saved with the kids she seems to be the only one who was really concerned about the missing child. Nobody else was interested. I must admit they tried to make a good movie by telling several stories about the different characters and how they finally get together in this disaster. But they totally failed by showing everything so boring and characters you won't be interested in. A total waste of time and money, it so forgetable.

This film was one of the very last disaster movies not to be ridiculed by the critics. The main reason for this must have been the realistic and very good fire sequences. While later disaster movies had credibility problems, this one was actually pretty realistic. Well worth a look.

"Fire!" came out at the peak of the disaster craze, when studio heads were actually green lighting movies like "Food of the Gods" and "Empire of the Ants". You would think they could get a little more creative with the title. This one centered on a forest fire and a group of children stranded in the middle of it all. Donna Mills is ultra 70's and very polyester. Pretty predictable stuff. This was a TV movie that came out the same time as the equally predictable TV movie "Flood!".

Earl Bellamy directed this Irwin Allen produced TV movie that stars Ernest Borgnine("The Poseidon Adventure") as wealthy lumber mill owner Sam Brisbane, who tries to win back an old flame(played by Vera Miles) who owns a lodge in their mountain community. Their plans are ruined when a fire involving two prisoners(played by Neville Brand and Erik Estrada) gets out of control, threatening to destroy the area, and cost several lives... Donna Mills, Lloyd Nolan, Alex Cord, and Patty Duke costar. Made concurrently with "Flood"(1976), disaster film is an improvement, with more excitement and interesting story turns, and the expected(if quite familiar) scenes of triumph and tragedy.

If Irwin Allen's 1974 big-screen production THE TOWERING NINFERNO was the pinnacle of the much-despised (by critics, anyway) disaster film genre, then his 1977 made-for-TV film FIRE takes a more horizontal approach to disaster. In this case, it is a massive forest fire that threatens to incinerate a mountain community...and, naturally, the all-star cast involved as well.

Airing on NBC on May 8, 1977, a little less than six months after Allen's previous made-for-TV opus FLOOD, and, like that film, directed by Earl Bellamy, FIRE is set in the small town of Silverton, Oregon, where a disgruntled prison camp worker (Neville Brand) sets a fire to cover his escape from the camp, with the help of a fellow convict (Erik Estrada). But the tinder-dry conditions of the surrounding forest and brush pretty soon turn what was a small fire into a monstrous and uncontrollable firestorm. And when push comes to shove, Estrada, together with the camp's chief officer (Gene Evans), agrees to help with trying to put out the horrific horizontal holocaust he partially helped to start. Among those threatened are such all-stars as Ernest Borgnine (MARTY; THE WILD BUNCH); Vera Miles (PSYCHO); Donna Mills (PLAY MISTY FOR ME); Patty Duke Astin (THE MIRACLE WORKER); and Alex Cord.

I'm not saying that FIRE, or its immediate predecessor FLOOD, are masterpieces by any means; indeed, CGI in today's Hollywood makes even what were nightmarish scenes back in the day painfully old-fashioned. And yes, there is plenty of melodrama to spare, particularly when it comes to Cord and Astin, who are local doctors whose marriage is on the rocks when the firestorm erupts screen.

There's just one thing, though: Strip away the typically melodramatic elements, and what you have is an extremely credible depiction of the kind of disaster that is becoming more and more common in the interior of the western United States. Although the firestorm of this film is arson-caused one, a similar-sized one, caused by fallen electrical lines and hot, dry winds in November 2018, incinerated the town of Paradise, in Butte County in Northern California, and killed eighty-five people. Allen, the Master Of Disaster, might be accused of a lot of things, such as putting spectacle over substance; but not being able to foresee something as extreme as a firestorm isn't one of them.