At the end of the glorious 70's the business was still churning out disaster films and a few of my favorites comes from these years. They were always a bit cheaper, even more clichéed and all of them more or less flopped at the boxoffice. But that kinda represents my life and career: a little bit too late and too many fiascos. Corey Allen's Avalanche and Ronald Neame's Meteor are hightly underrated and so even Alvin Rakoff's canuxploitation classic City on Fire. It looks like it was shot quick and dirty, but what a cast:
Barry Newman
Susan Clark
Shelley Winters
Leslie Nielsen
James Franciscus
Ava Gardner
...and Henry Fonda, as you can see on the picture above.
I love when Henry Fonda does one of his one-day cameos. Often behind a desk, always in the same room, communicating either with visiting actors or through telephone with the heroes who's away somewhere fighting disasters, killer animals or just being in some random danger. Here he's in the same control room, watching the fires on monitors and getting reports through radio. Must have been an easy day in the life of Henry Fonda. Love it!
The story is quite simple. A guy, Herman (Jonathan Welsh), gets fired from his beloved job at a oil refinery. He actually gets offered a better job, but when he refuses they don't want to deal with him anymore. Filled with revenge he turns on every tap of gasoline and other flammable liquids he can find and leaves the place. Of course two workers accidentally sets everyhing on fire and soon the whole city (surprise!) is on fire, and it gets closer to the new hospital, during it's opening day!
City on Fire effectivly fills in the blanks and delivers every cliché in the book. Except nuns or someone else from the religious community. But we have the cold-hearted politican, the pregnant woman, the brave doctor, the sassy nurse (played by Shelley Winters of course), a bunch of kids, the home-coming business woman who reunites with the brave doctor... you know the deal. It works very fine and all the actors - obviously there for their paychecks - do their best. Especially my favorite, Ava Gardner, playing yet another alcoholic woman on the verge of breakdown, but who wins over her drunkeness and continues to report in the studio about the disaster around them. For being an actress who only took roles for "the loot", as she said once, she sure has a high quality when it comes to acting.
One of the best things with City on Fire is the ambitious effects and action put into the production. Grant Page, the famous aussie stuntman is the stunt coordinator here and the stuff he and his team does is actually amzaing and some of it even absurdly realistic. There's a shot when a fireman is falling through the floor that looks real, it's in one take and shot in a documentary style. Don't if it's stock footage from another movie, but it's one of the best stunt scenes I've seen in a non-Asian movie. The film is also packed with burning people, falling people, exploding stuff and it has some gruesome burned people and even some blood. It's a lot more graphic than most disaster films I've seen from the 70's. Me like.
City on Fire have some silly reputation to be one of the worst in the genre, but that's of course written and said by people who have no fucking idea what they're talking about. It's hardly the most original and the budget is quite low, but it has a lot of action and melodrama, a fine cast and it's never, never boring.
How about DVDs? Yeah, it's out on a Spanish DVD, widescreen and with English language track, but the quality is typical VHS. The German DVD has better quality, but is fullscreen (what I can remember) and only dubbed in German - but has English subs. I have both of course and I think most of you could live with the Spanish release.
"At the end of the glorious 70's the business was still churning out disaster films and a few of my favorites comes from these years. They were always a bit cheaper, even more clichéed and all of them more or less flopped at the boxoffice."
Yeah, trends come and go.....if you are lucky you might see something cool.
"But that kinda represents my life and career: a little bit too late and too many fiascos."
Don´t be bitter ninja...errr...Fred....can I still call you ninja?
"I love when Henry Fonda does one of his one-day cameos."
I like those too, when an old hollywood legend does something small but effective, like Edward G. Robinson in Soylent Green (1973)and Sean Connery in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves(1991).
"Especially my favorite, Ava Gardner, playing yet another alcoholic woman on the verge of breakdown, but who wins over her drunkeness and continues to report in the studio about the disaster around them. For being an actress who only took roles for "the loot", as she said once, she sure has a high quality when it comes to acting."
I wonder if that wasn´t method acting......I think she spent her twilight years as an alcoholic, bitter, lonely, neurotic.
Gardner did something similiar in Earthquake (1974).
"City on Fire have some silly reputation to be one of the worst in the genre, but that's of course written and said by people who have no fucking idea what they're talking about. It's hardly the most original and the budget is quite low, but it has a lot of action and melodrama, a fine cast and it's never, never boring."
Fuck those people.....critics said the same about Dante's Peak(1997) and Volcano(1997) but I think those movies are very entertaining.
"How about DVDs? Yeah, it's out on a Spanish DVD, widescreen and with English language track, but the quality is typical VHS. The German DVD has better quality, but is fullscreen (what I can remember) and only dubbed in German - but has English subs. I have both of course and I think most of you could live with the Spanish release."
At least it´s not OOP.....good review and thanks.
Posted by: Megatron | March 03, 2013 at 21:32