The most popular film of 1974 was a thriller about faulty electrical wiring. Put enough special effects and movie stars into something, and you can turn almost anything into a hit, I guess.

It’s genuinely impressive how much sexual content they jammed into a movie where the only location is on fire from about the eighth minute onward. No blockbuster today would be allowed to be this horny. That, and McQueen’s steely turn as the most unflappable firefighter in San Francisco, counts for something in my book. (Or my two books, since two studios who held options on two different skyscraper disaster novels —  The Tower and The Glass Inferno — decided to combine them, right down to their titles, into one massive t production.)

Did it have to be so long though? I recognize that this is the towering inferno, so a standard size blaze simply wouldn’t do. Nevertheless... it long.