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.

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!

In 1976 Warner Bros. produced the made-for-TV movie FLOOD! It seems like some executives thought it would be a great idea to do it all over again, but this time featuring a lot of flames and heat instead of water. Ergo, in 1977 there was FIRE! So what can I say about it? Well, it is what it is: A 70's made-for-TV disaster-flick. Once again, nothing special here. But one thing that FIRE! has going for it, is that it doesn't really has a tedious first half (which FLOOD! painfully suffered from).FIRE! doesn't waste too much time and starts with a bunch of convicts working in a wide-range forest. Two of them seem to have come up with an ingenious plan to escape (which basically means: Start a fire and then run for it!). Their plan fails and the fire is put out by fellow-convicts. When they leave, however, the the smouldering ashes start a new fire and a disaster is born.Now after having read the synopsis, I was thinking the subplot with two convicts on the run could add a nice touch to it (being hunted down by the local authorities amidst the hellish inferno of a burning forest). But sadly that didn't happen. All we get is various rescue missions (people being trapped in an isolated lodge, a missing girl, a pilot that crashes his helicopter,...). Even though one of the convicts eventually does decide to make a run for it, it still felt too much like if you were watching an episode of TV's RESCUE 911 (William Shatner anyone?). OK, we do get to see a lot of fire and some explosions but neither of them are really exciting. And the ending is pretty pathetic and abrupt. Some guy runs into the infirmary and announces: "The fire is under control. It's almost out", while a few minutes before that we could still see the forest, and even parts of the town (in the only, nicely photographed, composite shot of the whole movie) were still heavily on fire. The scene prior to his announcement even had a friggin' gasoline-truck exploding which could possibly "whipe out the whole town". That was actually a pretty dumb scene: The truck was on fire, so they decide it has to be moved because of the destructive consequences if it were to explode. So what do they do? One guy jumps into it, drives only (approximately) 100 meters with it, then jumps out and "Boom!" goes the truck. No harm done. Boy, oh boy... And then after that one guy having announced that the fire was under control, Vera Miles gets sad and has these ridiculous, cheesy flashbacks of Ernest Borgnine. Then a kid comes up to her, she hugs it and the movie ends. Boy, oh boy...Maybe I could give FIRE! one extra point because of the "It doesn't waste much time"-argument. But I won't. It's basically the same stuff FLOOD! is made of, even down to the dialogues where everybody is telling everybody "I love you" for no apparent reason. Once again, FIRE! isn't badly made or anything, and the acting is acceptable. But this flick really is for disaster-fans only. General movie-watchers shouldn't even bother watching it when it just happens to be on TV. At least that's my opinion.

"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!".