source: City on Fire

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.

One of the last of the 70's disaster movie made after T.V. had saturated the genre. The only reason I saw this when it played in a theater was because it was double-billed with "Phantasm" which I HAD to see. The only thing I really remember about this movie was the one scene where some woman has to give mouth to mouth to some old guy who is spitting up a vile looking substance. That frightened me away from CPR forever. I think you will be rooting for the fire before the movie ends.

City on Fire is one of the poorest of the 70s disaster films, but not the very worst (Meteor, Avalanche, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure are all a touch worse). It features a stellar cast that includes Ava Gardner, Henry Fonda, Barry Newman and Leslie Neilsen, but most of them seem bored by the material and just hover around in front of the fire, spouting bad dialogue and wondering aloud how much worse it will get and how many more victims it will claim. The fire is started by a disgruntled employee at a power station. Within an hour, it has spread beyond the power station to the whole city, and the film focuses in particular on the hospital, which is fast becoming an unsurvivable inferno. The scenes of patients and doctors running, drenched in water, through the burning streets are pretty exciting, but come so late in the film that many viewers will have switched off by then. Barry Newman is the best actor in it, given a rare leading role and making the most of it. The others, as I've mentioned. don't seem at all bothered. The production is certainly not cheap. It looks very real amid the fire and death, and to have assembled such a good cast obviously took considerable money. Unfortunately, the film is bad though. It takes too long to get going and doesn't try any new things compared with all the disaster movies that have been made before. I'd give this one a miss I were you, unless you're a pyromaniac or hooked on the disaster genre.

This movie sucks out loud and in living color. Yes, it's a disaster movie (thank goodness that genre is dead), but the real disaster is how this movie plays out. It involves Leslie Nielsen (!) playing a corrupt mayor who allows an oil refinery to be built in downtown somewhere. Meanwhile, Ava Gardner portrays a Barbara Walters-wannabe with a HUGE drinking problem who can't decide whether to put her hands on another bottle of Absolut or James Franciscus' body (ewww). Shelly Winters plays a nurse with some conviction, while Henry Fonda mails in a performance as the fire chief. The movie starts out with a psychotic who is denied a promotion (see SST: Death Flight) at said refinery and who also has a crush on Webster's mom, a wealthy socialite with a * complex. The only thing they have in common is homeroom in high school. Our neighborhood psycho decides he's going to go John Hinkley in pursuit of his Jodie Foster. He eventually buys it at the end, but as Crow said on MST, "we all paid for it". Meanwhile, to give us some honest to goodness firefighting, we are shown a couple of kids in a tree house. One of the kids pulls a Clinton (no inhale) and tosses/drops his smoke in the trash, which burns the apartment building where he lives and puts his sister in the ICU. The fire itself is the main attraction. Everything in town is combustible, and the main drama is whether the fire will suck all of the oxygen away from the new hospital before everyone can escape. None of the big stars appear in scenes together, except for Franciscus and Gardner, and that's too frightening to consider. Sterno says put City on Fire to the torch.

Wow...this film isn't worth the $3.00 someone said they paid for it on DVD... What little story there was made no sense; the depicted behavior of the fire and the use of firefighting equipment were a joke; totally inaccurate, and the large ensemble cast literally ran in circles around and through this disaster of a film...A bigger question than how this film was ever made in the first place would be HOW DID THEY GET THE ALL-STAR CAST TO APPEAR IN THIS DEBACLE? Did they owe the producer a big time favor? Were all their agents away that weekend? Were the stars too old and blind to read the script? Did they read the wrong script, sign on, and then realize too late they were trapped? We'll never know... If you want some misplaced laughter, go ahead and take a look; otherwise head for the hills when this turkey pops up on the boob-tube.

Hurting from pain delivered by this flick. It goes to show what happens when psychos don't get promoted. In some town, there are a lot of people. Crazy guy loses it and sets a power plant ablaze. Mayhem ensues. There's no good acting. I also still have trouble seeing Leslie Nielsen in a serious role. He always still comes out funny. The mom from Webster is in this. She does the most nasty CPR scene in movie history. Barry Newman plays an unfunny, dumb doctor. Not for those with faint of heart and the second half is an inferno of sheer torture. Funny moments are stunt people running around on fire. Stop...drop...and roll....away from this movie.

Although I am a die-hard disaster movie fan I could find little if any redeeming characteristics in this turkey. The acting was dull, and most of the once-were stars seem at best indifferent. One exception is Leslie Nielsen, who turns in a funny if unintentional performance. The plot and special effects all center around the approaching fire storm which threatens a "major" city hospital, all the while followed Ava Gardner in her campiest role since Earthquake as a reporter deeply in the sauce. The special effects are in of themselves Subaru and the director seems to have a grasp of physics that is as limited as his proclivity for having nurses, the average man on the street, the kid next door and even Spot run around on fire. Unfortunately for both the director and the viewer, the images of screaming alphas does little to advance the story. To sum it up in two words: Stay away!

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....