Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

zardoz-13 "Airport '77" director Jerry Jameson's methodical reenactment of Charles Whitman's infamous sniper spree in Austin, Texas, back in 1966, that left sixteen citizens dead and another 32 wounded provided affable Disney star Kurt Russell his first major dramatic role. You've never seen Russell like he is here, and his performance is notably taciturn. Before he climbed atop the tower at the University of Austin campus, Whitman stabbed his mother as well as his wife to death. As usual for a Hollywood made-for-television feature, scenarist William Douglas Lansford and writer Antonio Calderón have played fast and loose with the facts. Hispanic Austin Policeman, Ramiro Martinez (Richard Yniguez of "Cancel My Reservation"), was one of the cops who ultimately stormed the tower and killed Whitman. Actually, none of Martinez's bullets killed Whitman. Nevertheless, in the name of political correctness and diversity, the producers probably appropriated his ethnicity to make things compelling. Interestingly enough, by the time that Whitman started blasting away at random targets, an army of private citizens armed with their own rifles turned out in numbers to retaliate with their own hailstorm of bullets. Meantime, Whitman did not discriminate in his choice of targets, but Jameson couldn't depict this murderer in too harsh a light since "The Deadly Tower" was a made-for-television movie. For example, Whitman pulls a knife on his mother and wife, but Jameson doesn't show this psycho carving either woman up. Indeed, he doesn't lay a finger on his cute little puppy. Jameson cross-cuts between Whitman and Martinez. The day that Whitman launched his one-man massacre, Martinez had learned grudgingly that the department refused to promote him to the rank of sergeant. John Forsythe, Pernell Roberts, and Clifton James play Austin cops in supporting roles as everybody mobilizes for the situation. Jameson maintains tension, suspense, and atmosphere throughout this competently made, 92-minute, crime thriller without resorting to obligatory blood and gore. Furthermore, he doesn't let an abundance of plot hinder the action. Russell is particularly outstanding because he had never played such a homicidal hellion. In real life, Whitman wore sneakers, while the producers showed our protagonist polishing his Marine boots with fetish-like appreciation. Quite possibly, the producers added this fascination with boot leather because the sniper that Andrew Robinson played in the theatrical feature "Dirty Harry" wore paratrooper jump boots and kept them gleaming. Of course, Jameson and his writers take the opportunity to slip in some anti-gun rhetoric. As far as made-for-television movies rate, "The Deadly Tower" qualifies as one of the best despite some of its anti-gun propaganda.

park1971 A powerful 1975 TV movie about the real life events that took place on the University of Texas campus in 1966 when a deranged 25 year old Charles Whitman began shooting people from the top of the Tower. When it was all over it would be the largest one-person murder spree in U.S. history to date. Whitman played by a young Kurt Russell who at the time was known for his light hearted Disney movies. Russell's portrayal of the killer is very effective as he keeps silent like a man possessed. This was an early glimpse of the kind of role Russell would do later in the 80's with Escape from New York and The Thing. The movie also focuses on the rescue team and police officers who put their lives on the line that fateful day. YouTube has some actual live news footage of that August day in 1966 where a camera is fixed on the Tower and you can see the assailant moving around and shots being fired. The movie is now on DVD through Warner Brothers Archive Collection and it looks great!! Also check out the real life crime TV movies Killer in the Family and The Deliberate Stranger on Warner DVD!

JimHammond This is a very memorable movie - I have not seen it in over fifteen years but I still remember many scenes from it very well. It ranks right up there with the class of its genre, movies such as "Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster", "The Jericho Mile" and "The Day After". It is not only a story of Charles Whitman, but it also tells the story of Officer Ramiro Martinez (the policeman who made his way into the tower and killed Whitman). It also gives a good description of the logistics used by the entire police force that terrible day. No surrealism is used in the filming process - harsh, lusty reality sets the tone.I do not know if this movie is available on video, but if it is, by all means take a look at it.

tostinati This is pretty much what you expect for the time. There is a fair amount of the pedantic attitude that plagued a lot of TV of the 70s in general. I chalk it up to this: After decades of not being able to say words like "pregnant" on TV, concede cultural differences or problems between races, or generally "act real", TV did so with a vengence in this liberated decade after All In The Family. To make a "message" film or TV show was as essential to auteurs and actors of the decade as beads and smoke were at the front end, and polyester leisure suits with Boeing 747 collars were at the back end of the decade. Today, it seems to us that they were all only stating the obvious, that writers and directors and actors who were certain they had a divinely inspired insight had nothing more than a been-there-done-that brain fart. There was a lot of, as the Bard says, protesting too much. Morals to the story were the order of the day. "People should get along with each other." "Killing is wrong." "People should be tenderer, and more forgiving." Well duh. Into this environment comes an old (but interesting) news story about a troubled guy who comes unhinged one day and goes on a killing spree. The novelty is in the way he did it: sniping people as they went about their daily business hundreds of yards away, from a tower, with a high-powered scope rifle. In 1966 Charles Whitman had staged a one-man seige in Texas that made Rambo's little donniebrook with the local constabulary, a few years later, look as mild as Joe Average tearing up an out-of-town parking ticket. TV of the 70s, being what is was and is, took one tack: Why of course, it's the gun control issue again, in another guise. One can fairly hear the intonations of some producer as he sells the network on this subject "I conclude, gentlemen, our message is that guns cause misery." And not one "Well duh" in the bunch. This, after all, was the 70s, when the crazy twin mojo of auteurism and "relevance" seems to have made any crock of doodoo salable to the powers that were.Kurt Russell is as good as always. (One could see Jan Michael Vincent in the same role, and I bet lot of people probably remember him as Charles Whitman, instead of Russell.) The script is a drag. Mediocre. --You pick the adjective. This story could be made into a compelling film in any decade. The combination of parental abuse and intense perfectionism, and being taunted with impunity by every authority figure he came in contact with, seems to have destroyed the inner life of the real life Whitman. This film conveys that pretty well, and it is at it's best in the first half. The denouement is of course absorbing, but overall there is a laxity in production that, compared to today's films, makes this, like a lot of 70s TV and film, seem thrown together. (Too much use of optical zoom; no attention to production values, with every bit of wardrobe and location and studio set seeming like a Dragnet loan-out.) When you are on a mission, I guess you can't let the details get in the way.