Cité en feu

This movie follows various people in a mid-sized American city. An angry employee sabotages the refinery located in the middle of the city.

It takes a half hour before the sabotaging happens and even longer for the fire to get started. This spends way too much time introducing all these characters. The best and most important character is the fire. They really need to start blowing up stuff sooner. The audience don't care about the human characters, no matter how great the actors. They want explosions, destruction, and mayhem. There's a bit of that but it's not enough. This is before CGI so it's questionable if they could do more. The composite shot of the fire in the city skyline looks very fake. This uses a lot of stock footage to fill out the destruction. It doesn't have nearly enough action. I appreciate some of the stunt work but it's all not enough. It's also ridiculous but I'm less concerned about that.

MST3K did a nice job with this in their first season. It is one of the better films Joel and the Bots have roasted - not saying much since most of their little treats occupy the worst 300 films of all time here on IMDb.

The acting is variable, and you occasionally feel as if you are watching two different films which were spliced together in order to reach an hour and a half. Leslie Nielson, as ridiculous as it may seem, delivers the best dramatic performance of the lot.

Basically, a obsessive individual gets the wrong promotion at an oil refinery, mouths off at his boss and then, after getting fired, leaks oil all over the entire city and sets it ablaze. Like most of the disaster films of its time, we are introduced to 3-4 different characters who will play some role as either heroes or commentators on the events. The film climaxes as the massive fire approaches a brand-new hospital where Mr. Numan plays one of the heads of surgery.

If you get a chance to see this in its MST3K version, by all means do so. It is one of the earliest truly funny episodes of the legendary show. If you can't see this with Joel and the bots, avoid it at all costs. It burns....

I'm a disaster movie fan and completist so I've been tracking this down for years, I wish I could say it was worth it. It's good for a laugh or two at the improbable idiocy of the plot but that's about the end of its worth.

Closing in on the bottom of the barrel this flick makes no sense, picking up and dropping plot points at random intervals. The villain of this thing is so sketchily drawn you have only the vaguest idea of what his motive is. That is the largest failing of the film there is no clear focus to anything.

None of the characters are compelling enough to invest in and the special effects are laughable. Not a single one is clearly drawn enough for the viewer to know who they are so you can root for them. Full of one time stars this uses them ill. Shelley Winters at least tries to give a performance but Ava Gardner and Henry Fonda, both looking the worse for wear, obviously did it strictly for the loot and are phoning it in, Henry being the worst offender.

If you're a disaster movie junkie this is a must see but for anyone else its a Grade Z mess.

Hey movie buffs, How are you all doing? I here to discuss the movie "City on Fire" (1979). Overall, I thought it was a decent disaster movies. For a movie that was made back in the late 1970's, it was pretty good. I know that there are a few movie buffs out there that will think that I am crazy (Hence the 918,a police code where I live for Crazy Person). But the only problems that I found was that the movie was set in Canada and yet they if you look carefully you could see the American flag and how does an oil/chemical works factory that starts on fire burn the entire city. I would sure like to know that. If anybody knows please let me know, please. But other than that, what more can you ask in a disaster movie: great actors/actoresses, crazy plot, for you disaster movie buffs Shelly Winters:). Keep watching movies and long live Hollywood and misc. production companies.

This movie had a good idea at a start: the city being burned the same way as Chicago in the 19th Century, London on the 18th Century or Rome, under Nero's rules in about 70 A.D. And shall we say Pompei in 79 A.D. under the wrath of the Vesuvius volcano ?

But in the 20th Century. Good idea ! But the genre has passed an earthquake, a high rise building, a cruiseship and so on... And passing again the City of Montreal as a Midwest city, with a big oil field next to it...

Bring on some big stars, some washed up, others who still has it and some second rates, then throw this scenario like The Towering Inferno with soap-like intrigue, with the center subject: the opening of a brand new hospital...

The result: a boring, too slow and predictable movie, with low-rated special effects and the worst cinematography ever for a movie. And noticing for the climatic scenes that it remained in one city street set build on an old quarry in East End Montreal. And to think of it, looking closely, all cardboard...

Sad that the genre was washed-up at the time.

Acting was so-so. Thank God Mr.Fonda did won an Academy Award two years later in a better film (On Golden Pond), but I believe he should have passed this one...

And to listen to the French Dubbing made in Paris... Wondering who dubbed this crap... Unbearable !

Maybe this film should be redone one day... But hey, aren't we tired of seeing those artificial catastrophes when real ones occurred recently ?

A movie to forget... Despite its all-star cast...