Horizons en flammes

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!

"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!".

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.

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.

In my process of reassessing of all pictures watched in the past, Irwin Allen's Fire! Was one harder to find out, I've been looking it for a long time without success, out of blue I saw it on second hand dealer and right way I've purchase an original US's edition copy with any kind of subtitles available, I've took it anyway, I had watched it exactly in early 1980, on TV together to my older brother.

Even being an Irwin Allen's fan due the four classic series on the sixties, it's an excruciating and hard experience watch this film let us annoyed by such lousy picture, preposterous screenplay and others oddities at the behest of Irwin Allen who at this point already lost sense of ridiculous, when he still insist in make disaster movie whereof the story goes insanity due so contrived offer.

In small town that only business comprises timber extraction lead by the old owner Sam Brisbane (Ernest Borgnine) using almost all labor work from there, also aided by some prisoners coming from correction facility Larry Durant (Neville Brand) and Frank (Erik Strada) aiming for commute the sentence, Larry perceives the only way to get away from there is through a fire, then he settles a plan to do it without raises suspicion, then he let a burning cigarette underneath of the dry woods, it triggers a wildfire of enormous proportions, worst meanwhile a student group escorted by a teacher a child lost from the group and when the teacher realizes the fire approaching the only way is get out there and later tries saves the child.

A Helicopter bringing the water battle the blaze, however as expected ends up crash on the forest, helped by Frank that is fleeing, the fire reaches at lumber mill, Mrs. Martha Wagner (Vera Miles) the owner of the lodge which received the injured workers in the middle of forest also in jeopardy by fire nearby and they must rescue them at once, anyway a total mess, the master of disaster movies did again, in time I'd bought the DVD for nostalgia only knowing previously the stodgy content of 97 minutes of agony and suffering hoping the time goes faster, over such appalling outcome, have mercy!!

Thanks for reading.

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First Watch: 1980 /How many: 2 /Source: TV-DVD /Rating: 5.25.