Fire

This is a great example of a 70's disaster movie! Starts off with all the story lines...Vera Miles and Ernest like each other, but never got married...Donna Mills is a school teacher out in the woods with her class...Erik Estrada is a disgruntled prisoner (falsely accused!)...Alex Cord and his wife are both doctors, but just can't see eye-to-eye about their marriage. Then the fire starts in the woods!! And all the actors come together in various threads (at the lodge, on the road, etc.) to battle the blaze and display their heroism. It's pretty entertaining, and also considering this is PRE CGI affects!! The best part for any Airwolf fans out there (the 80's helicopter action series) is to see Ernest B. (Airwolf's Dom Santini) and Alex Cord (Archangel in Airwolf) together in this!

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.

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.

Fire (1977)

** (out of 4)

Sam (Ernest Borgnine) really loves Martha (Vera Miles) but she says it's too late as they should have acted on this years earlier. A married couple (Patty Duke, Alex Cord) find themselves falling out of love. A teacher (Donna Mills) must make a devastating decision. Oh yeah, there's a convict who starts a fire to try and make an escape and soon this fire is threatening the entire town. The all-star cast then must jump into action.

Producer Irwin Allen struck gold with THE TOWERING INFERNO so why not take that fire a put it in a different location? FIRE was a made-for-television film that comes as a major disappointment and especially if you're a fan of the genre. As you'd expect, there's a great number of familiar stars on hand here and all of them turn in decent enough performances. Obviously most of the cast were just picking up checks for movies like this but it's still fun seeing all of them here. Not only do we get the stars I mentioned but there's also Erik Estrada, Gene Evans, Neville Brand and Lloyd Nolan.

The biggest problem with FIRE is that there's not a single second that you feel any tension. What I really disliked about this movie is that the "good guys" are constantly put in harm's way but there's no a single moment where you feel as if they are in danger. We get some really ridiculous scenes where it seems like the characters are going to die only to have some cliffhanger-style non-sense happen to where everyone is safe. Whenever you're watching a film like this and you can't feel any tension the entire thing is just pointless.

What's worse is that the 100-minute running time seems to drag on and on. There's really not a very good story here as it's all rather routine and especially the various personal dramas that are thrown in. Even the special effects aren't all that great. Sure, one shouldn't expect the same quality as THE TOWERING INFERNO but what's here just isn't all that memorable.

"Fire!" is an okay disaster flick that was above average in quality for '70s TV flicks. The movie is dead serious but the preview is not.

See how Warner Home Video sold this title by clicking on the trailers icon. It's funny!