GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

memorable-name 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.

mstomaso 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....

InzyWimzy 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.

Sterno-2 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.