User reviews

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.

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....

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" was made in 1979, when the disaster genre was already past its prime - and a dispirited, tired affair it is. Most of the actors (except for the amusingly unbalanced villain) sleepwalk through their roles, possibly knowing that the film had no chance of reviving the genre. At least there are some pretty realistic effects, though the movie never makes clear how exactly the fire spread over the entire city. (**)

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.

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...

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.

The Towering Inferno was definitely the high point of 70's disaster movies, this may well be the nadir of them. Somehow they managed to get Henry Fonda and dear old Ava Gardner to appear in this travesty, but everything about this is rubbish. Pop trivia.. This is not Leslie Nielsen's first foray into disaster world, he played the ship's captain in The Poseidon Adventure AND Shelley Winters played a main role in the same movie.

Poor Henry Fonda. In the end of his career, he had to be in City on Fire. This movie had the most ridiculous dialog ever. I actually cringed when some of the characters said their lines. None of the B-plots made enough sense to follow through on. The start of the fire was absurd. There was no attempt to build up to an actual motive. The writers thought that CPR was the only action to take in an emergency and that old men using a bedpan was necessary for the audience to see. This movie was made purely to burn some gasoline for the big fire scenes and so that stunt men could be lit on fire. 1 out of 10 is generous.

City On Fire is a disaster movie about... well a city on fire which gave several ageing Hollywood stars something to do in the late 70's. At the end of the 1970's and pretty much at the end of the disaster movie's original box office trend came City On Fire a film that fizzled fast but featuring a certain player out of a certain earlier disaster movie, can you guess???? It's Ava Gardner, having survived Earthquake and The Cassandra Crossing, City On Fire would be her final disaster movie, although it's true in this film she isn't given much to do, she does add a comic twist to a film that shouldn't really be funny in the first place.

City On Fire tells the story of a modern day large American city, in reality that large American city was actually Montreal, in Canada, this city which is never named has a rather large, looming, dangerous feature, an oil refinery, (starting to get an idea of what might happen in this film?) Yes if you have fired up your imagination you may have already guessed that it is this oil refinery and one annoyed employee who is passed over for promotion who sets off a change of events that leads to a series of explosions at the plant and across the city, buildings burst into flames, people run around screaming, cars are thrown into the air, TV presenters swear and walls fall down revealing men on the toilet.

As the heat is turned up and city starts to burn people at the brand new hospital are trapped in a potential firestorm, this would mean that all the oxygen within the hospital would be burnt out along with everything else in the surrounding area. A rescue attempt is set in motion for the trapped people and patients.

The film has long been given a rough ride, true it isn't an amazing piece of cinema and it does rely to heavily on stock footage of fires but among that is this fairly interesting and exciting story of the rescue attempt watched under by the supervision of fire chief Henry Fonda and local television presenter Ava Gardner, Shelley Winters is also thrown in for good measure having gone belly up in the Poseidon Adventure here she gets all hot under the collar as a caring but tough talking nurse. These three Hollywood legends are joined by funny man Leslie Neilsen who believe it or not is mayor of doomed city and only a few years away from his role in disaster movie spoof Airplane and a bunch of lesser names such as Barry Newman and Susan Clark in lead roles as chief doctor and rich widow whose money was burning a hole in her pocket.

Not a great film but it's Luke warm build up means the film fizzles out before it's big bang finish.

Not the lemon it's often branded, "City on Fire" is an entertaining Canadian disaster movie with a capable cast, some good sets and special effects, and better than average dialogue. Two separate fires converge to create an inferno of biblical proportions, with various notables becoming victims. The plot focuses on a disgruntled oil refinery employee (Welsh) who triggers one of the blazes, while in another part of the city, pre-pubescent kids discover that cigarettes really do kill. Local surgeon's (dependable Barry Newman) disenchantment with bureaucracy, goes on temporary hiatus as he tries to save his hospital, that lies in the path of destruction. His valiant efforts hampered by the mayor's (Nielsen) ill advised attempts to achieve martyrdom, spurred on by the lure of the polls.

Sad Ava Gardner plays an alcoholic has-been news anchor, a timely reflection of her status as a faded Hollywood star at the time, while James Franciscus is wasted in a frivolous supporting role as her line producer. Many recognisable local faces fill out the peripheral roles (Donat, Linder, James), and heavyweights Winters and Fonda provide nice human touches to their dedicated civil servant types. Overall, there's plenty of coverage and a nice symmetry between the righteous and the wrongdoers. Unlike "Towering Inferno" the varnish has been stripped by the flames, and there's no holding back on special effects - as such, expect to see a few gory burns victims.

Not overlong, perhaps not unrealistic (so the tag-line warns anyway), and certainly not as clichéd as most disaster movies, "City on Fire" is an involving film with some impressive credentials and doesn't warrant the unfavourable response it often garners. It's not as sophisticated or indeed convoluted as "Backdraft", but is perhaps an improvement on the Irwin Allen production line that had a mortgage on this genre throughout the 70's. So give this so-called lemon a try and I think you'll find the juice is worth the squeeze.

In an unnamed American town, Dr. Frank Whitman (Barry Newman) arrives to work as chief surgeon at Brockhurst Hospital, a newly built facility in the city's downtown. Although the hospital is open, head nurse Andrea Harper (Shelley Winters) complains about a generator that isn't fully operational. Meanwhile, a rich heiress and twice-widow named Diana Brockhurst-Lautrec (Susan Clark), whose $3 million donation made the hospital possible, arrives in town for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. In her hotel suite, Diana greets Mayor William Dudley (Leslie Nielsen), who is eager to resume his extramarital affair with her, while she seems ambivalent. Soon after, a big disaster happens, an old refinery explodes and depicting the sweaty travails of a fire-fighting team squiting around a huge inferno. What Happened to Them Could Happen to You ... In Any City Anywhere!. The Flames Surround You !. The Terror Engulfs You !. The Adventure Scorches the Screen !.

Mediocre and slightly entertaining disaster movie, full clichés and stereotypes with functional performances, while paying tribute to firemen . This catastrophe movie blends action , intrigue , disaster spectacle, suspense and emotional byplay. Arguably, this is not one of the best Hollywood's disaster epics, and this film came at the end of the cycle. The central axis of the film is the explosion of a refinery and the spread of the fire throughout the big city; to make matters worse, there's a hospital in the middle of the holocaust with a woman giving birth, babies to deliver and emergency ops to complete. The stressed protagonists spend most of their time devising grisly ways for avoid to die and to be fired . The explosions, destruction and pyrotechnics are spectacular and breathtaking, being very artisanally and traditionally made , but the film is just another habitual cold-blooded Hollywood product . The storyline borrows heavily from such boxoffice heavywights as ¨The Towering Inferno¨ and ¨The Poseidon Adventure¨, the undisputed kings of the catastrophe films of the 70s , successful films that grossed at box office. ¨City on fire¨ belongs to the last period of the disaster genre that would include the tremendously failed films as ¨Beyond Poseidon¨, ¨Swarm¨ , ¨Flood¨and ¨When the time ran out¨. It contains a cast of second-magnitude actors with the exception for Henry Fonda who pursues his lips and the rest of cast scream, emote and generally irritate; dealing with an enraged pyromaniac, civic corruption, political ambitions, blackmail and assorted hanky-panky. Several stuntmen are set afire, but the titular blaze is handled with unimpressive and primitive effects. The rest is lousy acting, choppy editing, cliched situations and flat roles played by familar faces, such as: Shelley Winters, Leslie Nielsen , James Franciscus and mention for Ava Gardner almost playing herself as a drunk presenter (it was known at the time that she was an alcoholic).

The motion picture was mediocrely directed by Alvin Rakoff . Alvin is a craftsman filmmaker, he's Canadian director both cinema and television . He directed more than 100 television, film and stage productions. As well as a producer of much of his screen and stage work, Alvin is also a prolific writer of original screenplays, adaptations, theatre musicals, plays, and three novels. He made oll kinds of genres in films as: ¨Dirty Tricks¨ , ¨Death Ship¨, ¨Hoffman¨, ¨The Comedy Man¨,¨ The anniversary¨, ¨Long Distance¨, ¨Room 43¨, ¨Cross plot¨, among others. ¨City on Fire(¨1979) rating: 4/10. A below aaverage film, only for the very fans of the disaster genre .

I hope too much of Montreal where City On Fire was shot didn't burnn too much in the making of this film. Noting that this was where this was shot you can see many French language signs in this ostensibly American city.

I'm sure a lot of fire newsreel footage got cobbled together to make City On Fire. It's a poor person's version of The Towering Inferno. A few big Hollywood names like Ava Gardner, Henry Fonda, and Shelley Winters who comes out best as a concerned nurse.

Best in the cast is Leslie Nielsen who had the bright idea to build an oil refinery in the middle of his city and when it leaked into the sewers, one spark and BOOM. Leslie is the mayor of this metropolis and is all ready thinking of how best to come out politically.

City On Fire is one mess of a conflagration.

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.

What can I say...were movies really this bad.

Henry Fonda the great actor...what was he thinking when he agreed to be in this disasterous disaster movie.

I won't bore you with the plot..the movie is bad enough without having to try to understand the intricat web of sub plots that exist.

I have a few questions anyone who watches this movie might be able to answer me cause I sure couldn't figure them out.

1) How did the entire city catch fire? 2) The hospital evacuation...why do they run out of oxygen? 3) I didn't think firemen would normally run into a burning building like they do in this movie with no oxygen? 4) What was the contraption that was used for CPR on the injured fireman? Look like a porno prop to me

Leslie Nielsen was doing comedy even when he was doing serious drama. This movie is right out of the Naked Gun series. only problem is the actors take it all seriously.

Susan Clark (aka Websters mum) plays the rich, trampy, heroine love interest for Barry Newman (who is this guy? what a chick magnet really?)

I think my impression of the movie is coming through loud and clear. I love disaster movies usually, but god were all of the 1970's movies this bad?? Surely not....

If you need a laugh watch this tripe if only to appreciate good movies when you watch them.

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 whore 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.

Why don't people like this movie???

I enjoyed a lot! Ok, the only bad things about it, is that it is slow in the beginning. The reason why is because, they introduced everyone which was slow. The second and final thing is that in some scenes you can see the shadow of the camera. THAT IS A GOOF! But it is still a good movie. Don't ask me why it was on MST3k. I think if you like disaster movies this one be one of them. (I am one of those persons, that likes disaster movies.) Even if you do not like disaster movies it is still a good movie. So I would say go out and rent it and if you like it buy it. Or just go and buy it.

9/10 (reason slow in the beginning and you can see the shadow of the camera)

City on fire is a disaster-film which is better than it's reputation. The actors is perhaps as so good as in "Towering Inferno", but the movie have some real exciting scenes to show, and it's not exactly low-budget scenes. The plot is maybe a bit naive compared to "The Towering Inferno", but I remember I thought City on Fire was better than Towering Inferno when I saw both this movies in the 1980's.

7 out of 10 from me

I'm reading the synopsis on Superchannel, or whatever, and this movie is supposed to be about an inner-city refinery being set ablaze before the fire spreads and burns down several blocks of Montreal.

But here I am 30 minutes into this block of Canadian Film Board fromage and it appears to be a feature-length after-school special about the dangers of pre-teen smoking. Plot and acting straight out of Emergency!

Dr. Barry Newman quickly recovers from killing a patient in the ER but just when you think the coast is clear some malcontent from Moose Jaw commits a terrorist attack on the refinery where he works. I think he did it because he was grumbling about his ex-girlfriend or something.

I'm not an insider but was this movie in the can for three years while the producers shopped at back-to-back Banff Film Festivals trying to get it distributed? Henry Fonda looks downright vigorous in City on Fire (released 1979) compared to his enfeebled, wheelchair-bound scientist in The Swarm (released 1978).

It must have been depressing to go from Hollywood royalty to the Canuck gutter like this. Thank heaven he lived long enough to nab a well-deserved Oscar for On Golden Pond.