Movie Review: City On Fire (1979)

Genre: Disaster Thriller  

Director: Alvin Rakoff  

Starring: Barry Newman, Susan Clark, Shelley Winters, Leslie Nielsen, Ava Gardner, Henry Fonda, James Franciscus  

Running Time: 106 minutes  

Synopsis: A disgruntled ex-employee sabotages an oil refinery, causing a massive firestorm that consumes the adjacent city. Mass casualties ensue, and among those caught in the flames are a heroic doctor (Barry Newman), the corrupt Mayor (Leslie Neilsen), a wealthy benefactor (Susan Clark) who has a relationship with both, a dedicated nurse (Shelley Winters), an alcoholic television news personality (Ava Gardner), her producer (James Franciscus), and the city's Fire Chief (Henry Fonda). Evacuating the main hospital becomes a focal point of rescue efforts.

What Works Well: The opening scenes are standard and inoffensive in attempting to set the context, and the set-on-fire stunt performers are excellent.

What Does Not Work As Well: This Canadian production is a dreadful attempt to join the tail end of the 1970s disaster movie parade. Almost hilariously bad but often just painful, the writing and acting are atrocious, with numerous lines of dialogue quotable as tone-deaf treasures. Leslie Neilsen unintentionally practices for his impending niche, but Henry Fonda (reciting his lines with a dead-eyed lack of conviction) and Ava Gardner (overplaying the drunken schtick) jointly win the most embarrassing prize. The production values and special effects betray a limited budget, while the final hospital evacuation sequence takes forever, and mostly features extras.

Key Quote:

Fire Chief: All it takes is one man, could be anybody... your neighbor, my neighbor... one man to destroy a city.

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Movie Review: The Salzburg Connection (1972)

A hopelessly muddled mess, The Salzburg Connection is a sorry excuse for a spy thriller.

In Salzburg, American lawyer Bill Mathisen (Barry Newman) is on vacation and running an errand for his boss when he stumbles onto a mystery involving the missing husband of photo shop owner Anna Bryant (Anna Karina). The missing man was taking photos of a lake when he was murdered, and shortly thereafter Bill's client, a certain Mr. Yates, is also dead after paying for pictures of the lake.

Anna's brother Johann (Klaus Maria Brandauer) gets involved in extracting a long-buried Nazi chest from the lake. The reinforced box contains the names of Nazi agents potentially still alive and working in top government positions across the world. International spies from the CIA, Mossad and the seductive Elissa Lang (Karen Jensen) of the KGB are hot in pursuit of the secret cabinet, leading to many more murders.

The Salzburg Connection is an inexcusable and ineptly constructed flop. The adaptation of the Helen MacInnes novel lacks structure, logic and any sense of drama or tension. Director Lee H. Katzin throws undefined characters and events at the screen with haphazard intent, unable to string together a rational narrative or create any empathy for the numerous spies, counterspies and innocent bystanders.

The action moves from lacklustre scenes of surveillance and break-and-enters in Salzburg to dark sequences featuring indiscernible and ambiguous men stalking and killing each other in the forest. Most of the time, it is not clear who is doing what to whom or why, and more to the point, it is never clear why anyone should care.

The central mystery of the Nazi chest is not explained until two thirds of the way into the film, adding to the aimless structure. And once revealed, an abstract list of names is far from a compelling prize to drive all the cheap cloak-and-dagger antics.

The few positives include some pretty scenery, and on just the one occasion, Katzin injects a pulse and conjures up a clever counterintuitive car chase.

Barry Newman delivers a decent Elliot Gould-type performance, while Anna Karina as the grieving widow with a secret and Karen Jensen as the sex kitten spy both deserved better material. Unfortunately, The Salzburg Connection just offers disconnected muck.

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