It Started With A Tiny Spark

The Towering Inferno
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA

This week's Tunnel Vision Tuesday was a 35mm screening of what I believe is the greatest disaster movie of all time; the 1974 Steve McQueen and Paul Newman classic: The Towering Inferno.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

My first exposure to this movie was through an Atari 2600 game that my maternal grandmother owned when I was a kid.  Towering Inferno was released by US Games in 1982.  You play the role of a firefighter who ascends the building to put out fires and rescue people who are trapped on each floor.  I first played it probably sometime in 1984 or 1985, and although I wouldn't say that it's my favorite game on the console, it's fun and I enjoyed playing it.

I'm pretty sure that I saw the movie for the first time at my grandmother's house too.  I don't remember if it was aired on television, or if my grandmother rented it, or even if I sat and watched the movie in its entirety when I was a kid (it's 2 hours and 45 minute runtime makes this doubtful).  I know that I watched the whole movie when I was a teenager and I was blown away, but it kind of faded off of my radar in the years that followed... until it was announced for a Tunnel Vision Tuesday screening at the Mahoning.

 

The Towering Inferno premiered in theaters six years before I was born, so it's not something that I ever got to see on the big screen before.  Once again, the Mahoning presented the opportunity to see a movie from a 35mm print on the big screen that I had never even considered that I'd have the chance to experience.

We're in the final two months of the 2023 season.  I think that we have tickets to three more Tunnel Vision Tuesday events and a lot more weekend shows, so there's still a lot of fun left on the calendar, but winter is coming.