Watch Fire! For Free

Lack of good storyline.

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Grizzled convict Larry Durant (Neville Brand in peak crusty form) decides to start a forest fire as a diversion to cover his escape. However, said fire soon gets out of hand and becomes a raging inferno.Director Earl Bellamy relates the gripping story at a swift pace, makes nice use of the breathtaking sylvan scenery, builds a good deal of tension, and stages the hairy fire set pieces with considerable skill and aplomb. The taut script by Arthur Weiss and Norman Katkov displays a refreshing dearth of pretense and keeps the cornball sappy subplots to an admirable minimum by getting right down to exciting brass tacks after only fifteen minutes of basic setup. Ernest Borgnine delivers a delightfully hearty performance as hearty lumber mill boss Sam Brisbane. Moreover, there are also sturdy acting contributions from Vera Miles as feisty widow Martha Wagner, Alex Cord as the rugged Dr. Alex Wilson, Patty Duke as Alex's fed-up physician spouse Peggy, Erik Estrada as noble Native American felon Frank, Donna Mills as sensitive school teacher Harriett Malone, Lloyd Nolan as the amiable Doc Bennett, Ty Hardin as tough warden Wyatt Fleming, Gene Evans as gruff forest ranger Dan Harter, and Michelle Stacy as adorable little girl in jeopardy Judy. Both Dennis Dalzell's crisp cinematography and Richard LaSalle's spirited score are up to par. Best of all, the fire sequences are convincing and harrowing in equal measure. A neat little teleflick.

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.

This film was one of the very last disaster movies not to be ridiculed by the critics. The main reason for this must have been the realistic and very good fire sequences. While later disaster movies had credibility problems, this one was actually pretty realistic. Well worth a look.